Galatians 1

Notes.Division 1. (Galatians 1:1-24; Galatians 2:1-21.)Paul’s Gospel unique in Source and Power.

Galatians 1:1-24

Subdivision 1. (Galatians 1:1-24.)His entire independence of man in it. The Galatians show us, in a pregnant example, how little man can be trusted to hold the blessing that he has. If, in fact, its continuance to him depended upon this, how hopeless would be the case; but our blessings are in Christ, held fast there by divine grace for us, and thus it is alone that they could avail us. The Galatians had received the gospel with joy and thankfulness, yet now seemed ready to surrender it, no doubt without proper realization that they were doing so. They were simply adding the law to it, but, as the apostle shows them, this would be, in fact, to surrender it altogether. He writes with earnestness as always, but with a sharpness which was not characteristic of him. He salutes no one in the letter. He starts at once with his theme, wishing them, indeed, “grace and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ,” but not even addressing them as the church of God, but simply as the “churches” (or assemblies) “of Galatia.” He is, as he says, “in doubt about them.” He has “to travail in birth again until Christ be formed” in them. Thus, they are for him assemblies which have afresh to prove their right to be called Christian assemblies.

Their doctrinal wanderings he treats more seriously than that moral evil which we find at Corinth, and which strikes men naturally as being of a far worse character; but without the gospel, morality cannot maintain itself, and in the doctrine of Christ is the root of all morality. Thus he is as strong and peremptory as possible, pronouncing a curse upon himself or an angel from heaven, if it were possible for such to preach any different gospel from that he had preached to them.

1. He begins at once declaring the unique character of his ministry. He affirms his apostleship in the fullest manner, as “not of men,” (derived from them as its source,) “nor through man” as the channel of its conveyance; but alone “through Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.” He is sent by the risen Christ, as we know, and not simply by Christ risen, but by One whom he sees for the first time in the glory of God in heaven. This character of his ministry marks his whole teaching here. He adds as confirmation of what he is saying, that all the brethren are with him in what he writes. This defection of the Galatians was, as he will show more perfectly, in fact, from the faith held by all.

He adds that “Christ gave Himself for our sins that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” The age, as we have seen, is the time-world, characterized by its opposition to God. The true Prince of the world has been crucified and cast out; the “god of this age” is Satan, but we are thus at once outside the world, -outside the whole region to which the law applies, as is evident. The Father’s will is our deliverance from it. 2. He begins at once, his heart full, to express his wonderment, knowing what he had known of how divine grace had wrought in them, that they were so soon being removed from Him who had called them unto the grace of Christ, to a different gospel. They had had in themselves, surely, the evidence that this call was of God. Blessing and power had not lacked. The gospel to which now they were listening was not another gospel, for there was no other. It was no true gospel, though it might bear the name of that.

It was only the effort of some who were troubling them and who wished to pervert the gospel of Christ. Immediately he denounces them with the utmost severity; but it is love that speaks in the severity itself. If it were himself or “an angel from heaven who preached any other gospel than that which had been preached to them,” (and he repeats this lest they should think that it was an ill-considered outburst) -if any one “preached any other gospel than that,” not merely which had been preached to them, but which they had received" also, “let him be accursed.” He was not, he adds, concerned about conciliating men in desiring saying this. It was for God he spoke, as desiring to have Him upon his side, not seeking to please men; for to be a man-pleaser and a servant of Christ would be in total contradiction. 3. He goes on now to show how he had himself learned this gospel. He had not learned it of men, he had not preached it as being educated in any human school. He had been taught it by one thing alone, the marvelous revelation of Christ to him. It was this which changed him from an enemy and a persecutor to the ardent and self-sacrificing disciple of Christ. The Galatians were listening to human teachers, though, as he has already intimated, they had, in fact, had the gospel which they had received, confirmed to them by the internal evidence as to its character, and the joy and power with which God had accompanied it. 4. He goes now into the circumstances of his conversion. He knew all about this Judaism which they were getting back into. He did not speak as one who had been a stranger to it. On the contrary, he had made the very greatest advances, -was an enthusiast for the law, beyond those of his own nation amongst whom he was, and, as an evidence of this he was beyond them all in persecuting the Church of God and wasting it. How the essential opposition of principles comes out here!

Here it was only the human school that he was following; the traditions of his fathers, with all their appeal to nature and self-interest, stirred up his zeal; but God had better purposes for him, God, who had separated him from his mother’s womb, and now called him by His grace. His Son was revealed, not merely to him, objectively, but in him, to be henceforth the one abiding power and reality for his soul; and the spell of his traditional religion which had set him in opposition to the Christ of God, collapsed in that moment. He was thus the suited preacher for the Gentiles, just as himself no Gentile, but a Jew in fullest reality of zealous legalism. If he gave this up, he gave it up as fully knowing it, as realizing in himself its contrariety to the grace which God had shown him. In the consciousness of this divine call, he now conferred not with flesh and blood, and not even with those who were apostles before him. God had, in his case, broken through all semblance even of apostolic succession, so dear to many since. On the contrary, having received this revelation, he went off into Arabia, into the desert, and returned once more, from such a school as Moses learned in, to the place to which he had come to persecute this faith which he now was preaching. By and by he did indeed go up to Jerusalem “to see Peter; but abode with him only fifteen days, and other of the apostles saw none except James, the Lord’s brother.” Again he went off into regions far apart, and the churches of Judea which were in Christ did not know him even by face. They had simply heard that the persecutor preached now what he had been persecuting, and they glorified God in him. As we think upon this history in its connection with what we have already seen as to the character of Christianity, it is plain how fully the prophetic character is manifested in it as characteristic of its ministry. The prophet is one brought near to God, to learn His mind in His presence, and is sent forth from God, responsible to Him alone in the message entrusted to him, to declare that mind. The priesthood in Israel was successional; but, as a consequence, in fact, of this, the succession guaranteed to it no true spiritual character whatever. The priesthood might, and did as we know, go far astray from God. Still the priest was the priest, and to be owned as that until God were pleased to set him aside; but the prophet even in Israel was a totally different person. Receiving his call in the most distinct way possible from God Himself, his spiritual character was vouched for by this independent call of God.

He who sent him was responsible for him. Acquaintance with God was what marked him. He was characteristically the “man of God”; and as such stood forth for God, as we see in the history, in the times of deepest defection and apostasy, with his message of recall or of warning and judgment. This is, in fact, the character of all New Testament ministry. There is no official standing anywhere, to be revered whatever the life may be. The message from God is the whole matter; and the life if not with God would forfeit at once the claim to reality in the message.

The gift is from God alone, bringing its responsibility with it. To accept man’s authorization of it would only be dishonor to the glorious Giver.