Galatians 1 - Not Man, but God: Keeping the Gospel Pure

1-5: Introduction

Apostleship = from God, not man

‘…an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father’ - the focus is clear from the beginning: ‘God, not man’

Salvation is according to God’s will and displays God’s glory

Paul even identifies his readers as those who enjoyed salvation from Jesus, “who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.” The common salvation they shared was according to God’s will and designed to show his glory. So who is Paul elevating: God or man?

6-10: Danger of a “counterfeit Gospel”

When Paul says “different Gospel,” he doesn’t mean that there’s actually a real live competing “good news” that can hold its own against the real Gospel. In fact, his words indicate the opposite. Paul uses two different words for “another” in vss 7-8. In 7, he warns about “another gospel” and uses a word for “another” that identifies the false Gospel as different from the true one altogether. Then in 8, he says it’s “not really another gospel,” meaning that it can’t compete with the original - it’s not even the same kind of message. So what Paul is talking about here is a counterfeit gospel. It kinda sounds like the real good news, but it’s not.

Paul calls that counterfeit gospel “distorted” - that means it’s twisted, turned, bent. This is important - the false teachers haven’t created a new counterfeit gospel from scratch; they just tweaked the real one. Distortion can be subtle, almost unnoticeable - that’s what makes this more dangerous than a flat-out different gospel.

What kind of counterfeit gospels exist today? How do others distort the gospel? How are we tempted to distort the gospel?

No level of created authority allows for a different gospel

It doesn’t matter if you’re an apostle; it doesn’t matter if you’re an angel - you cannot come up with a different good news than the original. So who is Paul elevating: God or man?

Messengers proclaiming false “good news” are cursed

And if you try, Paul says you’re “accursed” - anathema = devoted to destruction. Not a cool word at all.

Substitute “good news” appeals to men, not Jesus

If you’re like me, you probably looked at Gal. 1.10 as a verse about not being a “people-pleaser.” If you’ve read Ed Welch’s book When People Are Big and God Is Small or Max Lucado’s story The Yay-Yuck Man, that’s what I’m talking about. We recognize that it’s wrong to let the opinions / reactions of others place us under a false bondage, and it’s easy to quote Gal. 1.10 here. But look at what Paul’s really talking about. It’s not struggling with how your co-workers will respond to your invitation to church, it’s not acting like a hypocrite because you’re afraid who might criticize you behind your back. These words are Paul’s defense of his bluntness in calling out teachers of counterfeit gospels. They tie this part of his argument back to his main point: who is more important: God or man?

11-24: The source of the real Gospel

Paul’s personal introduction to the Gospel

Paul’s background in Judaism was nothing

Judaism was the premier “external obedience” club. This passage reminds us of his similar testimony in Phil. 3.4-7:

I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Why is this important for the rest of the book?

God sovereignly brought Paul to the Gospel:

Again, who is Paul elevating: God or man?

Paul’s quiet introduction to Gospel ministry:

We sometimes read Acts and assume that right after the road to Damascus, Paul was immediately out planting churches and writing letters. But Acts actually goes silent on Paul for three full chapters, not mentioning him again until he is commissioned with Barnabas in 13.1 – While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.”

It was three years before Paul spend time with the other apostles in Jerusalem. He was basically unknown in the cities where he preached, in fact, people’s only knowledge of him was that he had stopped persecuting Christians and started proclaiming the Gospel.

The reaction of Paul’s converts brings us back to the main theme of this chapter again: who is the gospel all about: God or man?

Defining the Gospel

Paul gives a simple explanation of the gospel in verse 4: Christ “gave Himself for our sins to deliver us.” Paul gives a fuller explanation in I Corinthians 15:3-8: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, … he was buried, … he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve."

Application

So over and over again, Paul has raised the same issue here: the Gospel is all about God, not man. That truth is, in this chapter, wrapped around the necessity of keeping the Gospel pure. So, if the gospel is all about God, what does that mean for us as we keep the Gospel pure? How can “all about God” help us guard the Gospel?

Any formulation of the Gospel that puts human need at the forefront is off. Any Gospel idea that puts us at the center of the Gospel is “distorted.”