04. Introduction - 1:1-5

Introduction - 1:1-5

“Paul, apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised Him from among the dead …” (1:1)

Paul was his Roman name as a Roman citizen. Saul (meaning ‘desire’) was his Hebrew name as a Jewish descendant of the tribe of Benjamin. We can see in Php 3:1-21 how he was very highly regarded among his peers in Judaism in the sect of Pharisees, but although he was ‘desired,’like Saul the king of Israel (1 Samuel 8:1-22; 1 Samuel 9:1-27; 1 Samuel 10:1-27), coming from the same tribe, he had to learn that he was by nature an enemy of God, so the experience he had on the way to Damascus, as he briefly describes here, made him Paul, meaning ‘little one.’It is very striking that when he started his first missionary journey, in the years after his conversion in Acts 13:1-52, when he is used by the Holy Spirit to present the gospel, his name is also said to be Paul. Paul, the ‘little one,’not Saul ‘desired,’could be used for service to God. The title ‘apostle’is here, of course, connected with the apostolic authority that he had. Paul’s opponents would object saying, ‘This man calls himself an apostle but he is not of the same level as the twelve from Jerusalem.’But although Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58 says, “And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am”(v.8-10a), it was not an inferior apostleship that he had. His apostleship was connected with Christ ascended in the glory whereas the apostleship of the twelve was connected with the Lord on this earth. The Lord called the twelve, and although one of them, Judas Iscariot, was replaced by Matthias in Acts 1:1-26, they received their calling from the Lord when He was here on earth, and this was later confirmed by the risen Lord in John 20:1-31, whereas Paul’s apostleship is connected with Christ in the glory. That is the great difference. This does not mean that there was a conflict between them. Paul went up to see Peter and remained with him fifteen days (1:18) so he had time enough to explain to him what his calling was, and Peter had time enough to judge whether it was of God. The time was not long enough for Peter to have taught Paul a lot of things; that was not the purpose of his visit, the purpose was to get acquainted and to have confidence in each other. Peter worked later in the same area that Paul had worked and in 2 Peter 3:15 he confirmed Paul’s writings to the Hebrew Christians saying, “as our beloved brother Paul also has written to you according to the wisdom given to him.”So there was a very nice co-operation between the two. The Judaizers sought to drive a wedge between Paul on the one hand and Peter on the other suggesting that the twelve, being called by the Lord on this earth, were real apostles, whereas this self-proclaimed apostle was not really a vessel of the same order. But that is not true. The apostleship that Paul had from the exalted Lord had a very special character that comes out in his writings. He was not inferior at all. The word ‘apostle’means ‘sent one.’In this sense we may apply this in a wider sense to all believers as all believers have been drawn out from this world. It is very remarkable that the Lord said this when He called Paul. The Lord said He would deliver him “from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee”(Acts 26:17). The “people”were the Jewish nation and so the Lord took him from the Jewish nation and from the Gentiles. He was born a Roman citizen in Tarsus and he was born a Jew also, so he had double citizenship, but the Lord took him from both. Then He said, “unto whom now I send thee.”That is exactly the case with believers today in the whole Christian era. The Lord has drawn the Christians to Himself and then sent them to be His representatives in this world and in that sense we are all apostles. However, there are no apostles today with the kind of authority that these had in those days. Why can I say this? One of the criteria was that an apostle had to have seen the Lord in resurrection (Acts 1:22). We see Him today through faith, crowned with glory and honour, but we never met Him on the road to Damascus, we never met Him in Galilee, we were not there, so that kind of apostle is not around. There are people who claim to be apostles with a special authority today but these are false claims. In the very limited meaning here Paul was the only apostle of this order and we see in the New Testament that he shared the information that he had received with others. In Ephesians 3:1-21 he speaks of the eternal counsel, of what the Lord had entrusted to him, but he shared it with the others so there was not a conflict with the other apostles - simply a different emphasis.

Paul’s apostleship was “not from men,”so men were not the source of his apostleship; importantly, the exalted Lord was the source of his apostleship. There are a lot of Scriptures that deal with this calling and this source, Acts 9:1-43; Acts 22:1-30; Acts 26:1-32, Galatians generally, 1Timothy also and 1 Corinthians 15:1-58 amongst them. Christ in the glory was the source of the calling. Neither was it conferred through a human channel. It was not through the apostles in Jerusalem that Paul became an apostle there was no human appointment or ordination, he was called by the Lord and he was sent by the Lord, not on behalf of men or through men; it was totally independent of men. We can make wrong conclusions if we are careless readers of Scripture, because later on in verse 18 Paul stated that he established fellowship with the other apostles. Immediately the enemy tried to drive a wedge between Paul and the other apostles such as in the incident in Acts 15:1-41 but the Lord came in to prevent that, so there was really fellowship between Paul and his fellow apostles. This is emphasized in Acts 13:1-52 when the time had come that the Holy Spirit would send Paul on a missionary journey; we read in verse 2 that the church at Antioch in the northern part of Syria where he had been at least for a year was the first Gentile assembly. In Acts 11:1-30 we read of the founding of this Gentile assembly when Barnabas, being sent by the apostles from Jerusalem, came there and saw the grace of God, and then seeing a need for teaching there went out to look for Saul of Tarsus, and finding him brought him back and they taught the assembly in Antioch for a whole year. But later in Acts 13:1-52 the time had come that the Holy Spirit said in verse 2, “As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them.”This was now a new phase in God’s work and in verse 3 we read “And they laid their hands on them and they sent them away.”By whom was Paul sent? By the Holy Spirit. In the language of the Galatian Epistle we can say, “by the Lord in the glory.”There is no conflict here, the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus work together. We can also say Paul was sent by God. He was not sent by the church, he was not sent by the elders, the assembly there merely identified with that call; that is why they laid their hands on them, they acknowledged that God had called Paul and Barnabas and they were in agreement with that. So here we see the fellowship that Paul and Barnabas enjoyed. They were not doing their own thing, they were doing the thing the Lord had called them for, but they did it in fellowship with the local assembly. But while this is true, that Paul’s calling was not from men nor through men, it was in fellowship with all Christians and so, in short, it was “through Jesus Christ and God the Father.”Paul’s apostleship was connected with Jesus Christ, the Man in the glory, and with God the Father; of course, our relationship is quite similar. We have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven as well as with God the Father.

Then it says God the Father “raised Him from among the dead.”This is an important introduction, for it immediately places the truths that Paul is going to explain on the basis of Christ’s resurrection. The Judaizers, as we will find in this book, were working this side of the resurrection, whereas Paul was working from the other side of the resurrection, he belonged to ‘the resurrection world’where the Lord Jesus is acknowledged in His glory in heaven and where God the Father is known. The Lord established this relationship; it is only on the basis of His resurrection, as other Scriptures such as 2 Timothy 1:1-18 explain in more detail, that we as Christians are on resurrection ground. The fact that we are here in assembly is on that basis, on the resurrection ground. Without the resurrection of the Lord Jesus we would have no link with each other and we would have no link with Him and with God the Father either, John 20:1-31 confirms that. The day of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, He said to Mary, “go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”(v.17). That is only possible on the basis of the resurrection whereas the Judaizers were and are working on this side of the resurrection, the side where the flesh is still operative. So this is a very important point to consider. Further it says, “who raised Him from among the dead.”This is not the resurrection of the dead as we have in Revelation 20:1-15 when all who die in unbelief will stand before the great white throne for the final judgment; this is rather a resurrection from among the dead. Php 3:1-21 sheds light on this. There were millions and millions of dead people at that moment, but God said, ‘This is My man’and He raised Him from among the dead but leaving many more unresurrected. This is characteristic of Christianity. Christianity is based on a risen and an exalted Christ and on the coming of the Holy Spirit who indwells us.

“…and all the brethren with me, to the assemblies of Galatia.” (1:2)

Then Paul writes “All the brethren with me.”I mentioned this fellowship earlier; Paul was in fellowship with the brethren with him, such as Timothy. Let me digress here for a while. Where did Paul meet Timothy? Paul’s first missionary journey in Acts 13:1-52; Acts 14:1-28 brought him first to Cyprus and then to Antioch in Pisidia (in modern day southern Turkey) and then he went up to Galatia. This Roman province of Galatia containing the cities of Derbe, Lystra and Iconium (Acts 14:6) was where Timothy heard the gospel and when Paul came back to Galatia the second time in Acts 16:1-40 he found Timothy and he had liberty to take him with him on this second missionary journey, Silas also being with him. Paul then went a third time to that area and that is described in Acts 18:1-28. In verse 22, when Paul came back from his second missionary journey to Caesarea, it says, “having gone up”to Jerusalem he greeted the assembly there, then he went back to Antioch, because Antioch was the place from where he left on his missionary journey. From there he started his third missionary journey in verse 23, “Having stayed there some time, he went forth, passing in order through the country of Galatia and Phrygia establishing all the disciples.”This third missionary journey ultimately brought him to Ephesus, but again he went through Galatia. We have other references to Galatia in 2 Timothy 4:1-22, 1 Peter 1:1-25, and especially 1 Corinthians 16:1-24 where Paul explains to the Corinthians that he had given orders to the assemblies in Galatia concerning a collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem. In all there are seven references to Galatia or to the Galatians in the New Testament.

“All the brethren with me”would have included Luke who was with Paul for part of the second and third missionary journeys. He would be implied in the exercise and perhaps others as well, possibly the local assembly where he was at the moment of writing (Antioch in Syria) would also enter into that exercise. So Paul addressed “the assemblies of Galatia.”This is the only letter in the New Testament where we see a whole area addressed, not a local assembly like Rome or Corinth, but a whole area.

“Grace to you, and peace, from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ …” (1:3) This is the general greeting used by Paul, “grace and peace.”Some say “grace”was the usual salutation in Greek and “peace”its equivalent derived from the Hebrew Shalom. I do not know whether that is true, but what we know is that we need grace and peace for every day. “Grace to you”is not only that you stand on the foundation of grace, “Grace to you”means you live from moment to moment in the resources of God’s grace and the resources of grace are going to be developed in this Epistle in contrast to the resources of the flesh or the resources of the law. It is the resources of grace that will bring practical peace with God and form the foundation on which we stand (Romans 5:1), but also there is now peace from God the Father in view of our circumstances and exercises, but also in view of the attacks of the enemy. The people of God need those resources of grace and peace every day, every moment. How beautiful that these resources are connected with God the Father and made available to us in the context of this is the special relationship we have with our God and Father and also with the Lord Jesus as He is now in the glory. The source is one, but at the same time there is a distinction: the family aspect is emphasized with God the Father, whereas with the name Lord Jesus Christ the kingdom aspect or His authority is emphasized. There is no contradiction here, it is two different aspects: on the one hand we have a relationship with God the Father, so there is the emphasis on the family; on the other hand we are subject to the Lord Jesus, He is our Lord and so we are brought together in this submission to His lordship.

“... who gave himself for our sins, so that he should deliver us out of the present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father …”(1:4) This is the basis of everything, we are on resurrection ground, but how can we be there? It is only because of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, without His sacrifice we have nothing, and what a tremendous sacrifice it was! He not only paid everything that was needed to be paid - He gave Himself! Who can fathom the greatness of His sacrifice, the greatness of the price that He paid? Paul refers to this in 1 Corinthians 6:1-20, “You have been bought with a price”(v.20). Who can calculate that price? No one can. Here we see how the Lord Jesus gave Himself for our sins, we see Him as the sin offering without which we would be eternally lost. This is a wonderful reference to the work of our Lord Jesus, the redemption that He has accomplished. And for what purpose? “So that He should deliver us out of the present evil world.”

He is the great Liberator, the great Deliverer, and this was needed in connection with God’s rights. We were in this world under the power of Satan, the power of sin, the power of the flesh and the power of this present evil world, that is the world system as it is under the control of the god of this age who blinds the minds of men (2 Corinthians 4:1-18), but we are now totally free from this system. We have no links with the world whatsoever, there is complete separation, and this is according to the will of our God and Father. This explains the challenge in Romans 12:1-21 that we should not conform ourselves to or be influenced by this world but that we should be conformed to the will of God. We have been spiritually taken out of this world and now we are sent into it to represent the Lord Jesus. These words “world”and “age”and the expression “the will of our God and Father”are worth studying in more detail.

It is wonderful to see that what the Lord accomplished was according to the will of our God and Father. Here the will of our God and Father is fully seen in the intervention in Paul’s life, how his sending and so on was according to the will of our God and Father. If there was one Christian who was in tune with the will of our God and Father it was the apostle Paul. Now the challenge for us is, ‘Am I in accordance with the will of our God and Father?

One more comment here; often the name of the Lord Jesus as a Man is connected with God the Father. It reminds me of Abraham and Isaac. It is wonderful to see how the Father and the Son always act in accord, with one mind; they “went together.”Knowing and appreciating this fact is important for us to understand this epistle fully.

“... to whom be glory to the ages of ages. Amen.” (1:5) This is the conclusion of the introduction. That God may receive glory is the ultimate objective, and also the motive, it certainly was the motive of Paul’s service. It was why he was so concerned, because he knew that if the Galatians were under the influence of these false teachers there would not be glory to God the Father. If we are under the influence of Satan’s reasoning in the religious world then there will not be glory to God the Father. Let me emphasize that; the present evil world implies the religious world, the social world, the economic world, it is the whole system that is controlled by Satan. In the context of the letter to the Galatians, it is the religious world. We will see in chapter 6, in connection with the new creation, that we are now under a new rule that is not connected with the religious world but it is connected with this world of resurrection. The Galatians needed to learn that that what the religious world produces is still enmity against God. We also need to realize this.