Wouldn’t it just be easier to develop some kind of gospel, some kind of good news, that says, “I’m okay and you’re okay”? Wouldn’t it be easier if we had some kind of gospel that says to those who think you are justified before God by praying five times a day or fasting during certain periods that they’re okay for doing that unto some God, whatever name they may give their God? Wouldn’t it be easier to say that those who outright deny Jesus Christ but live seemingly morally good lives that they’re okay? And wouldn’t it be easier to say even to those who trust in Jesus and good works for their justification that they’re okay?
I mean, talk about good news! If that was our message, we would get to have great conversations with our unbelieving neighbors. Instead of having to say to them that they are sinners under the judgment of a holy God, and that’s why they need Jesus Christ, we would get to say, “You know, I’ve got some good news for you. You’re okay, just like you are and are in no danger of hell but will live forever with the Lord. I just wanted you to know that God approves of you. He accepts whatever you have done whether it was some service done unto him or some false God, it doesn’t matter. He accepts your efforts and counts it as righteousness before him.” Again, that would sound like good news.
C. S. Lewis paints some kind of picture like this in the last of his books in the Chronicles of Narnia series. In the last volume, there is one standing before the true God, Aslan, who had been devoted to the enemy, Tash, his whole life. The following dialogue transpires as the man stands before Aslan:
“Alas, Lord, I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash.”
He answered, “Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. . . . I take to me the services which thou has done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.” . . .
But I said also (for the truth constrained me), “Yes, I have been seeking Tash all my days.”
“Beloved,” said the Glorious One, “unless they desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”1
So, wouldn’t that be nice and easy to be able to say to others, “Listen, you don’t have to place your faith in Christ as your Lord, you can place your faith in some false God, but in the end you’ll be okay because God will count it as if you’ve believed in Jesus”?
To this, the Bible screams, “No.” By looking at this book of Galatians, it’s clear that Paul would scream, “No.” Sure, it might seem nice and easy to be able to say to everyone, “I’m okay; you’re okay,” but if it’s not true, then does it really matter how nice and easy it feels to us? It’s easier to tell a little boy playing on the railroad tracks that he’s fine and in no danger. It’s much easier to do that than to talk to him, yell at him, and do everything necessary to get him off the tracks before a train comes, but if he remains on the track and ends up dying, I don’t think anyone would say that doing the easier thing was good and helpful and right.
So it is with the gospel. There is only one gospel. There is only one message of good news that really is good news. There is only one answer to how someone may be made right with God, and it is by placing your faith in Jesus Christ having died for your sins and having been raised from the dead so that you might be justified. There is only one gospel, the message that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scripture,” as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. It doesn’t matter if we come up with a message that the culture is more comfortable with. It doesn’t matter if we take a poll and find out what people would like for us to say and what would make them accept us. The truth is, the gospel is what it is, there is only one true gospel, and it cannot be changed.
And I know that in here we would say, “Yes” to that claim. I could stand up and preach at the Southern Baptist Convention and make that claim and hear people yell, “Amen” across the room and perhaps even have to stop for a bit to wait for the applause to die down. But I want more than to have you all agree with this today. I want you to know why that is the case. Why can’t we just alter the gospel to be a message that our culture wants to believe or is convinced really is good news? And the answer to why we cannot change the gospel but must preach it as it is, without alteration in any way, is because the gospel was not created by man. It was not some message the church created in the first century and thought people would like. It was not some message that was created by someone who thought it’d be fun to try to make a name for Jesus. The gospel has come directly from the Lord himself. This is why we know that Paul would scream, “No” at any attempt to alter the good news to fit what people want. He would scream that it is not ours to alter. In fact, the main assertion that Paul is making in the text we are looking at this morning (Galatians 1:11-24) is that the gospel is not man’s gospel, but God’s gospel.
This is Paul’s clear declaration in verse 11. Paul writes, “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel.” That is, Paul is saying that he didn’t make up the gospel, no other man made up the gospel, but the gospel is the good news about what Jesus has done given to us by Jesus himself. This is the reason why the gospel cannot be altered or added to or made to be something else that our culture desires.
My car is supposed to be black, but lately it’s started turning gray in some places. I actually don’t mind it. Like beat up hardwood floors, I kind of feel that it’s a sign of character. The car has caught on fire before, and kept on going. So, when I see the paint coming off, it’s almost like a badge of honor for what the car and I have walked through together. But, should someone come up to me and say, “I have some black car paint and I’m a professional car painter,” then I’d have a decision to make. And if I decided to paint it, changing the appearance of my car, that’d be fine. After all, it’s my car. I paid for it. I own it. It’s mine. I can do to it pretty much what I want to do with it.
Now, if you let me borrow your car, I better not bring it back and different color, and say, “Yeah, it’s different, but I just thought it should be, you know, mahogany.” If I did, one thing you’d say to me is, “But it’s not your car. It’s not yours to decide what to do with it.”
That’s what Paul is saying in verse 11. The Galatians have had individuals come to them with a different message, a different good news. Paul had said that they could be justified by placing their faith in the crucified and risen Christ, and that by faith alone they could be justified. And now some false teachers had come in and were saying something along the lines of a claim that they needed to believe in the crucified and risen Christ and be circumcised in order to be justified before God.
So, Paul wants them (and us) to see the terms clearly right from the start. This isn’t an issue of which message you like best or who do you think have come up with a message to would be received better in society. The issue, Paul says, is that the gospel he preached to them, he didn’t make up. It came directly from Jesus. And so there is no other gospel. There is no alternative. The gospel isn’t up for being changed. That is, when we talk about the gospel, the only gospel is the gospel that God has given through his Son, Jesus Christ.
“But,” someone might ask, “how did Paul even get the gospel? How is he so bold in saying that it’s God’s gospel and not man’s gospel? How does he know that Jesus Christ says that the gospel alone is man’s hope?” The answer is found in a big claim that Paul makes in verse 12. If the main assertion of this text is that the gospel is God’s gospel and not man’s gospel, then the big claim Paul makes in this text is that Paul received the gospel by a revelation from Jesus Christ himself.
You want to know how Paul knows that the gospel he is preaching is the gospel from Jesus Christ himself, Paul says it is because Jesus Christ revealed it to him. He writes in verse 12, “For I did not receive it [that is, the gospel] from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
We read of this event in Acts 9:1-22. Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians when the risen Jesus Christ appeared to him in the sky and clearly revealed that he was risen and that his gospel was indeed man’s only hope. And it resulted in Paul immediately proclaiming Jesus in the synagogues, “Saying, ‘He is the Son of God’” (Acts 9:20) and later confounding “the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 9:22). So, Paul received a revelation of Jesus Christ himself, and so he immediately started preaching the gospel he received from him – the same gospel that he had preached to the Galatians. So, whereas the false teachers were probably saying that Paul had changed the message of the gospel and altered it from what Jesus had intended, Paul is claiming that they are the ones who altered the message because what he received and what he is preaching as the gospel is what he received from Jesus Christ himself.
But let’s be honest, that’s a pretty weighty claim. I mean, it’s one thing for the other apostles to say that the message they were preaching came directly from Jesus because they had walked with Jesus throughout his entire ministry, all the way until the time when Jesus ascended back into heaven to take a seat at the Father’s right hand. But Paul was saying that the ascended Jesus came and spoke to him in the sky. That’s weighty. And Paul obviously knows it’s a weighty claim, so he backs it up, giving evidence that he received the gospel by a revelation of Jesus Christ in the verses that make up the rest of our text this morning. We can see each of these points then as evidence that Paul received the gospel by a revelation of Jesus himself. The first of these is that nothing else explains his conversion.
Now, someone might say, “Jesus couldn’t have appeared to Paul in the sky. That’s ridiculous.” But, Paul answers, consider his life. He writes in verse 13, “For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it.”
If you hear someone today say, “I think the next car I buy will be a pickup truck” and then a week later you find out that they’ve bought a small economy car, then you’re probably not overwhelmed with shock and awe. Instead, you probably say to yourself, “He probably just considered gas prices, a few other things, and changed his mind.” No big deal. But (to use an illustration I used a few weeks back), if you heard that Osama Bin Laden was now proclaiming that the United States was the greatest country in the world and was lining up rallies across this nation with Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the U.S.A.” at each one of them, you’re probably going to be befuddled a bit, aren’t you?
Well, Paul’s conversion is more like the Obama Bin Laden illustration. He was persecuting the church and trying to destroy it. Then he sat out for Damascus in order to go persecute more Christians. And then, on his way, without talking to anyone, he all of the sudden changes so that he immediately begins preaching that Jesus is the Christ when he gets to Damascus. How does that happen? The answer is that Paul really did have a revelation of Jesus Christ who appeared to him and proclaimed the truth of the gospel to him. Nothing else explains it.
But, we could say, maybe he realized along the way that it’d be really nice to have the approval of men, and therefore decided to be a supporter of Jesus and a preacher of the gospel. After all, maybe he just wasn’t finding as much success in his former life and thought this new road could lead to him really succeeding in something. After all, a number of people get into professions, realize they’re not doing well, have those around them saying things like, “Perhaps you’d do better if you pursued another career,” and so switch paths. It happens all the time.
But this explanation doesn’t work with Paul. After all, Paul tells us that he already had man’s approval and was already extremely successful.
Paul writes in verse 14, “And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.” You see, if Paul was looking for something to be successful in, then he would have kept going along the path he was on. He was “advancing in Judaism beyond many of [his] own age among [his] people.” Paul was a rising star whom others would have noticed and taken note that he was doing better than those around him. If he was looking for something to be successful at, he was on the right path.
Many of you do not know Marty and Jenny Jacobus. They are a couple serving through Fellowship of Christian Athletes in California, where Marty works to see athletes in schools come to know Christ and take the gospel back to their classmates. Specifically, Marty does much with golfers.
Before going into this ministry Marty had a well-paying job. He made good money and owned and operated many businesses in Jackson alone. Marty and Jenny were doing well. Then, they sold almost everything, gave much away, and went to a very expensive place to do ministry. Now, with that information, could you imagine someone hearing of Marty’s ministry through FCA with golfers saying, “He’s only doing a golf ministry with FCA because he wants to be around people who live the high life. He wants to be able to get a taste of what it would be like to be able to live well, like those who are well-to-do”?
For those of us who know Marty and know his background, we would laugh them out of the room. In fact, we would probably say, “You have no idea what Marty’s life was like before he went to work with FCA, do you?” He had everything you think he’s wanting to get a taste of in life. He had it and left it to do this ministry.
The same holds true for Paul. He had success. He had man’s approval. And he wasn’t ignorant of the fact that following Jesus Christ and proclaiming that man is justified by faith in Jesus alone would lead to less approval and persecution. After all, he had just witnessed Stephen being stoned to death and was himself on his way to Damascus – to persecute Christians. Paul was giving up man’s approval, giving up the success he had, and was setting foot on a path that would lead to many wanting and trying to kill him and proclaiming a message that most of the world thinks is foolish.
Why would he do this? Again, Paul points it out so that we might see, the only answer is that Jesus Christ appeared to him on his way to Damascus and he all of the sudden knew that the message he was trying to root out and destroy was and is indeed the true gospel, the true and only good news for man.
Well, perhaps we might say that Paul was converted in order to draw attention to himself. After all, it is an amazing story. So, maybe Paul was thinking about how to make a bigger name for himself on his way to Damascus when he thought, “Hey, if I all of the sudden change to proclaiming that which I’m persecuting and trying to destroy, I can say, ‘Look at me. See what I did,’ and draw all kinds of attention to myself.” Maybe that’s why Paul began preaching the gospel. But again, Paul shuts down that thought by crediting God alone for his conversion.
If Paul had not received a divine revelation but was simply trying to get glory for himself and draw attention to himself, then this would be his opportunity to point out what he had done. He could have written, “And then I started thinking and figured out what many in my own tradition had missed.” He could have described his conversion in such a way that screams, “Look at what I did. Give glory to me.” Instead, Paul gives all credit to God. Listen to the way he describes his conversion.
He writes, “And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles . . .” (14-16). Describing his conversion he gives complete credit to God. Before Paul was even born God had already decided that he would be a messenger to the Gentiles. When God called him, it wasn’t because he thought Paul deserved some great task and had merited a great honor; he called him “by his grace.” And Paul didn’t masterfully figure out that Jesus must be the Christ. He says that God was simply “pleased to reveal his Son to me.” Paul says, “God had a task for me that he had decided I would do before I was born, called me by his grace, and showed me what I needed to see in order to equip me.”
If Paul is pointing fingers, saying, “Look how great he is,” he is not pointing fingers at himself but at God. He even notes that when others heard of what had happened to him, it didn’t result in them giving glory to Paul. He writes in verse 24, “And they glorified God because of me.”
The gospel is such that when someone’s life is changed through faith in the crucified and risen Christ, we do not say, “Wow, that person is amazing.” We say, “Wow, our God is amazing. He is so gracious and so good to redeem sinners.” So, if Paul was making this up to receive glory and honor, then he clear was choosing the wrong path because he was crediting God and holding to that which glorifies God alone. So, again, the only answer is that Jesus indeed revealed himself to Paul on his way to Damascus.
But, finally, someone might say, “Well, Paul probably just spent time with the apostles and they convinced him of this because maybe they had all these motives we’ve been discussing. Maybe they wanted to be able to show off by pointing out what they were able to do with Paul.” But, Paul shuts this down as well, showing that he consulted with none of the apostles for three years.
He says in verses 16-23 that after he saw the Lord and was converted he consulted with no one. He writes, “I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother. (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, ‘He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’”
So, Paul quickly rules out the thought that the apostles had simply argued circles around him and convinced him to depart from his position. Rather, Paul didn’t even see any of the apostles for three years. Then, after three years, he went to Jerusalem and saw Peter and James, but even then, he was only with them fifteen days. Additionally, the rest of the church didn’t even know him personally. They were just hearing that he’d been converted.
So, again, if Paul wasn’t given the gospel by the other apostles and had been preaching the gospel for three years before he ever talked to them, then how did he receive the gospel? Again, the answer is that he had received a revelation of Jesus Christ.
So, in Galatians 1:11-24, Paul goes to great lengths to show that the gospel he is preaching is the direct gospel that he’d received from Jesus. It is not a gospel that any man created but is the gospel that Jesus himself, God the Son, has delivered to us. Therefore, let me conclude with a few thoughts.
First, realize that the gospel is the good news delivered to us through Jesus Christ himself. The gospel is God’s gospel. Therefore, when you think about sharing the gospel with your neighbor or someone else who doesn’t know Christ, and you think, “They don’t want to hear this. They would rather hear from me that they’re okay, that they’re justified in continuing to do what they’re doing right now,” you need to remind yourself that you’re called to proclaim a gospel that has come from God himself. You speak the gospel with the authority of Jesus Christ. He commanded us to go into all nations and to make disciples, telling us that he’d be with us.
So, when that voice comes into your head as you are considering sharing the gospel and it says, “It’s going to be offensive. They’re not going to like this message,” you say, “This is God’s message. It’s God’s gospel.”
Second, remember that just as the gospel changed Paul’s life completely, so it is our only hope for the forgiveness of sins, the only hope for salvation. So, again, fight every temptation to alter or compromise the gospel or to keep the gospel hidden, by reminding yourself that the only thing that can change someone is the true and only gospel. It alone is the power of God to salvation. So, if we really love someone, we will present to them the unadulterated gospel, even though some may tell us they would rather us shut our mouths.
Finally, immerse yourself in the Bible again and again. This text reminds us that God would strengthen us in our holding to the gospel. God desires to equip us to obey him more boldly. But one of the chief ways he equips us is by having us read and understand and meditate upon the Bible. If you find yourself strengthened to go forth in gospel proclamation this morning, then let it be a reminder to you that that is the effect of hearing the Bible preached, and let it lead you not to neglect the reading of the Scripture but to immerse yourself in it. May we then celebrate what God has done for us in revealing himself to us through his Word, for sending Christ to die for us, and for changing our hearts as we come to the table. Amen.