Apostolic Credentials (1:10-24)

Apostolic
Credentials (l:10-24)

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

Then three years later I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas, and stayed with him fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. (Now in what I am writing to you, I assure you before God that I am not lying.) Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; but only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.” And they were glorifying God because of me. (1:10-24)

One of the primary objectives of the Judaizers who were stirring up so much controversy and confusion in the Galatian churches was to discredit Paul’s apostolic authority. They knew they could not successfully undermine his teaching of God’s gracious gospel until they undermined his divine authority in the eyes of the church members. In order to accomplish that end, they spread the idea that Paul was not a legitimate apostle but was self-appointed and that his motivation was to elevate himself and build up a personal following. They accused him of putting aside the Mosaic ceremonies, standards, and practices in order to make the gospel more appealing to Gentiles by removing its Jewish associations. He also made the gospel easier for Jews to accept, they argued, because he removed the demanding requirements of traditional Judaism to which all loyal Jews subscribed.

The strategy worked as the accusations of the Judaizers had caused many members of the Galatian churches to begin doubting Paul’s apostolic legitimacy. Since he was not among the original apostles, whom Jesus personally called, taught, and commissioned, just where did he get his message and authority? Did he get them second hand from the other apostles, or did he simply make up his own brand of the gospel and arrogate apostolic authority to himself? What right, they asked, did Paul have to speak for God, as he persistently claimed to do?

There is no evidence that the early church ever doubted the apostleship of the Twelve (the original eleven and Matthias, who replaced Judas). The eleven were hand-picked and trained by Jesus; and under the Lord’s direction they chose Matthias, who had been among the disciples who accompanied them “all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us—beginning with the baptism of John, until the day that He was taken up from us . . . a witness with us of His resurrection” (Acts 1:21-26). The credentials of the Twelve were well known and well attested.

Jesus had promised them, “When they deliver you up, do not become anxious about how or what you will speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what you are to speak. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Matt. 10:19-20). Although many Christians like to claim it for themselves, that promise was given to the apostles alone. The Holy Spirit may bring things to our remembrance and give us clarity of mind when we are called to testify for Him under oppressive conditions. But Christ promised new revelation only to the apostles, who were the sole authoritative spokesmen of His Word before the New Testament was written. “These things I have spoken to you, while abiding with you,” Jesus told them. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you” (John 14:25-26). The Holy Spirit not only enabled the apostles to remember accurately and completely what Jesus had taught them during His three-year earthly ministry but divinely revealed to them every additional truth He later declared through them.

After Pentecost believers “were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42), because they recognized that those men were divinely appointed to preach and minister in Christ’s stead. Their apostolic authority was confirmed by “many wonders and signs [that] were taking place through the apostles” (v. 43). When they spoke for God, it was God Himself speaking through them.

But Paul was not even a believer, much less an apostle, when Jesus made those promises to the Twelve and when the early church in Jerusalem submitted to their instruction and leadership. He was not converted until several years later and, in fact, after he had been the most destructive enemy of the infant church.

It was not difficult, therefore, for the Judaizers to raise doubts about Paul in the minds of many believers. Now that he was no longer with them in person to teach and protect them, they became prey for false teachers. The fact that Paul declared himself to be “an apostle of Gentiles” (Rom. 11:13) may not have endeared him to some Jewish believers, who still harbored strong prejudice against Gentiles, thinking them to be utterly outside the sphere and privilege of God’s concern and grace. And the fact that Paul frequently affirmed and defended his apostleship suggests that it was frequently questioned (see, e.g., Rom. 1:1; I Cor. 1:1; 9:1-2; 2 Cor. 1:1; ITim. 1:1; 2:7). Although in humility he saw himself as “the least of the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:9), he knew that, as far as his calling and authority were concerned, he was “in no respect. . . inferior to the most eminent apostles, even though I am a nobody” (2 Cor. 12:11).

It must have wounded Paul deeply to learn that many believers in Galatia had been persuaded by those false teachers to question his motives and to doubt his authority and the truth of his gospel. But he did not make his defense on the reflex of feeling but on the basis of fact. He did not make an emotional appeal for renewed personal loyalty to himself but rather presented clear evidence that contradicted the accusations being made against him. His concern was not for his own popularity or personal success but God’s truth. His defense of his apostleship was for the purpose of defending his authority and the integrity of the gospel he had faithfully proclaimed in the Galatian churches and everywhere else he went.

In Galatians 1:10-12 Paul presents some general credentials of his apostleship and message, and in verses 13-24 he unfolds autobiographical credentials that include preconversion, conversion, and postconversion proofs of his legitimacy.

PAUL’S GENERAL CREDENTIALS

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.

The accusations against him involved the lie that he was purposely watering down the divine standard to make it easy, so that he would be popular and win the support of people weary of the hard, demanding way of legalistic Judaism. They purported that he was simply saying what men wanted to hear.

PAUL WAS NOT A PEOPLE PLEASER

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ. (1:10)

Gar (for) has numerous meanings, which are largely determined by context. It can also be translated “because,” “yes, indeed,” “certainly,” “what,” and “why.” It can also sometimes mean “there,” which is a helpful rendering in this verse. For is not an incorrect translation, but “there” seems to follow better the flow of Paul’s argument in this context. “There,” he is saying, referring back to the strong anathemas of the previous two verses, “does that sound like I am a people pleaser? Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men?” Obviously, Paul’s pronouncing a curse on men (v. 9) does not fit with the accusations of the Judaizers against him. Rather, it unquestionably seeks to honor God, whose truth was being perverted.

If I were still trying to please men refers to the days when he did seek to please his fellow Jews by zealously persecuting Christians, assuming he was being faithful to God while concentrating his effort on favoring traditional Judaism. But in light of what he taught and the way he had lived since his conversion, the idea that he was still trying to please men was preposterous. If that were true, he would not be a bond-servant of Christ. He had surrendered his life entirely to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and that surrender had cost him dearly in human terms. At the end of this epistle Paul reminds his readers, “For I bear on my body the brand-marks of Jesus” (6:17). Some of those marks he had received in Galatia, where, in the city of Lystra, he was once left for dead after being stoned (Acts 14:19). Suffering at the hands of people who were not pleased with him was a common occurrence for him and was the price of honoring God.

By nature, people pleasers are not martyrs. The desire to escape ridicule and trouble is one of their hallmarks. Pleasing men does not bring the severe persecution Paul endured and is totally incompatible with being a bond-servant of Christ.

It was rather Paul’s Jewish accusers who were men pleasers. It was “to make a good showing in the flesh” that they tried “to compel [Gentile believers] to be circumcised,” for the very purpose of not being “persecuted for the cross of Christ” (Gal. 6:12). Paul’s first purpose was “to be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9). And pleasing the Lord Jesus Christ meant that he had every right to pronounce a curse on anyone who tried by a doctrine of works righteousness to detract from the gracious finished work of the Savior (cf. Gal. 2:21). His second purpose was to see men saved and that required strong denunciation of any false gospel that would damn them by its deceit.

PAUL’S MESSAGE WAS NOT DEVISED BY MAN

For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. (1:11)

I would have you know is from gnriz, a strong Greek verb that means to make known with certainty, to certify. It was often used, as here, to introduce an important and emphatic statement that immediately followed. In vernacular English the phrase could be rendered, “Let me make it perfectly clear.” “The gospel I preach,” he said, “is not human either in nature or in authority. I did not invent it or alter it, nor did any other man. Its message is completely divine in origin, without any mixture of human wisdom whatever.” That is why Paul’s gospel is the standard by which all false human theories of salvation are measured and condemned.

Had Paul proclaimed a gospel that was according to man, it would have been permeated by works righteousness, as is every humanly devised system of religion. Man’s sinful pride is offended by the idea that only God’s mercy and grace can save him from sin, and he therefore insists on having a part in his own salvation. The very fact that Paul preached a message of salvation in which works play absolutely no part was itself evidence that his message was from God and not . . . man.

PAUL’S MESSAGE WAS NOT RECEIVED FROM MAN

For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, (1:12a)

That statement was particularly directed against the Judaizers, who received their religious instruction primarily from rabbinic tradition by means of rote memorization. Rather than studying the Scriptures directly, most Jews—religious leaders and laymen alike—looked to human interpretations of Scripture as their religious authority and guide. Their theology, moral standards, and ceremonies had roots in God’s revealed Word of the Old Testament, but the biblical truths and standards had been so diluted and distorted by human interpretations that the Judaism of New Testament times was largely received . . . from man and taught according to man’s interpretation. Although the Scriptures, especially the Torah, or law, were ritually given the highest honor, they were not honored by the people through direct study and sincere obedience. In the eyes of many Jews of that day—just as in the eyes of many professing Christians today—Scripture was a religious relic that deserved superficial reverence but not serious study or obedience. The religious ideas they took seriously and attempted to live by were the man-made traditions related to their unique community culture that had accumulated over the previous several hundred years. Many of the traditions not only were not taught in Scripture but contradicted Scripture. With few exceptions, Jews “invalidated the word of God for the sake of [their] tradition” (Matt. 15:6).

But Paul’s teaching and preaching had no such human basis. Neither translates oude, which is here used emphatically, meaning “not even.” The idea is, “Not even I who might so readily have been taught by men was so taught.” Although he had been highly trained in rabbinic schools and was “a Pharisee according to the strictest sect of [Jewish] religion” (Acts 26:5; cf. 23:6), he had discarded every unscriptural notion he had learned in that man-made religious system. No Jew had more reason than Paul to boast in his accomplishments in Judaism; but everything he had accomplished in the flesh before receiving Christ he counted “as rubbish” (Phil. 3:4-8), and even the elements of the story of Christ that he knew prior to his conversion were shallow and empty because of his unbelief. What he now believed and preached he neither received . . . from man, nor was . . . taught by man. There was no human source for Paul’s message. The gospel was not invented by men nor transmitted to him by any human being. This response no doubt reflects another of the Judaizers’ accusations against Paul, namely, that he had been taught his doctrine by the apostles in Jerusalem, who had also abandoned Judaism.

PAUL’S MESSAGE WAS DIRECTLY FROM CHRIST

but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (1:12b)

The gospel Paul preached and taught was neither a human invention nor a human tradition, but was given to him directly by God through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Revelation is from apokalupsis and means an unveiling of something previously secret. Jesus Christ is best understood as the object of that very revelation. It was not that he had no previous knowledge of Jesus. It was for the very reason that he did know something of Him and His work that he had fiercely persecuted those who believed in Him. He obviously had known that Christians believed Jesus was the Son of God and the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, because it was for those claims that Jesus was most criticized and eventually crucified (Luke 23:2, 35; John 5:18; 10:30). Paul had known that Christians believed Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. He also knew that Jesus not only dispensed with the rabbinic traditions but even with the ceremonial laws of Moses. Before his conversion Paul could have accurately stated many of the central teachings of the gospel. But he did not believe those teachings were true and thus had no grasp of their spiritual meaning and significance.

It was only after he himself at Damascus (Acts 9:1-16) came personally to encounter and to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior that he received the supernatural truth of the gospel through divine revelation. As he explained to the Corinthian church, it is only when a person turns to the Lord that the veil of spiritual ignorance and separation from God is removed (2 Cor. 3:14-16), so that the truth received can be understood. And for Paul the details and distinctions of that gospel truth came by special revelation directly from God (cf. v. 16).

It is one thing to claim direct revelation from God but another to prove it. Throughout the history of the church many people have falsely claimed such revelation, as many do today. But Paul was not content merely to make the claim. Nor did he expect his readers to believe him simply on the basis of personal assertions. In the next 12 verses, therefore, the apostle proceeds to substantiate his claim by presenting irrefutable evidence of that divine revelation and of his apostolic credentials.

PAUL’S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CREDENTIALS

For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it; and I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

From the three periods of his spiritual life—preconversion, conversion, and postconversion—Paul shows how certain events before he was saved, when he was saved, and after he was saved all prove his message was received from God.

PRECONVERSION PROOF

Here Paul describes his former standing and activities while he was in Judaism, offering them as a kind of negative proof that his message of grace had no foundation in the beliefs, circumstances, or events of his former life. It becomes clear that nothing in his unconverted life provided the source of the truth he was now proclaiming. In fact, both his conversion and his message were built on divine intervention.

Paul had been a Jew of the first order, “circumcised the eighth day, of the nation 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 the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless” (Phil. 3:5-6). His preconversion life was centered totally in law and tradition. Grace was a foreign concept to the religion of Saul the Pharisee, despite the fact that grace was as much the basis of the Old Covenant as the New God’s redemptive work originated from His grace and has never had any other basis. But most Jews, indoctrinated by the religiously dominant scribes and Pharisees, had long since lost sight of God’s grace and had instead come to trust in their own works and goodness to please God. Accordingly, everything in the apostle’s former manner of life in Judaism had been diametrically opposed to the message of sovereign and saving grace of Jesus Christ he now proclaimed and defended.

The first aspect of Paul’s former . . . life that proved he had no previous grounding for the gospel was that he used to persecute the church of God beyond measure, and tried to destroy it. His preconversion knowledge of the gospel, veiled and distorted as it was, made him realize that this radical way of salvation allowed no place for works righteousness and therefore completely undercut legalistic Judaism. Conversely, legalistic Judaism allowed no place for a gospel of grace and therefore sought to destroy those who believed and taught it.

The original language is vivid in describing Paul’s hostility. The phrase used to persecute is in the imperfect tense and emphasizes a persistent and continual intent to harm. The word destroy was used of soldiers ravaging a city. It is also used here in the imperfect, thereby emphasizing the persistence of Paul’s destructive effort. He was determined to utterly extinguish the church. Apparently he used the title the church of God to stress that this was not just a group belonging to Jesus, so that whoever opposed it, opposed only Jesus. Rather, whoever opposes the church opposes God.

Saul the Pharisee had had such passion for traditional Judaism that he could tolerate no contradiction or compromise of it by fellow Jews. Immediately after the martyrdom of Stephen, “Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison” (Acts 8:3). Perhaps a year later, “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, [he] went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem” (9:1-2; cf. 22:4-5; 26:10-11). His single, overriding passion was to destroy the infant church. It was partly because of that activity that he always had a great sense of unworthiness when contemplating God’s saving grace in his behalf (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9; 1 Tim. 1:12-14).

The second aspect of Paul’s former life that proved he had no previous grounding in the gospel was his unequalled zeal for traditional Judaism. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my countrymen, he declared, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.

Advancing is from prokopt, which literally means to chop ahead, as in blazing a trail through a forest. Saul kept on blazing his trail in Judaism, which meant cutting down anything in his path such as Jewish Christians, who in his mind were arch traitors to their ancestral traditions. He was so extremely zealous that he continually punished Jewish believers “in all the synagogues, [and] tried to force them to blaspheme; and being furiously enraged at them, [he] kept pursuing them even to foreign cities” (Acts 26:11). In his extreme zeal, he exceeded many of his contemporaries. Few Jews matched his passion for his religion and his intolerance for the truth about Jesus Christ.

Ancestral traditions refers to the body of oral teachings about the Old Testament law that came to have equal authority with the law Commonly known as the Halakah, this collection of Torah interpretations became a fence around God’s revealed law and all but hid it from view Over a period of several hundred years it had expanded into a mammoth accumulation of religious, moral, legal, practical, and ceremonial regulations that defied comprehension, much less total compliance. It contained such vast amounts of minutiae that even the most learned rabbinical scholars could not master it either by interpretation or in behavior. Yet the more complex and burdensome it became, the more zealously Jewish legalists revered and propagated it.

Living as a devout Pharisee, Paul was outdone by few John R. W Stott writes: “Now a man in that mental and emotional state is in no mood to change his mind, or even to have it changed for him by men. . . . Only God could reach him—and God did!” (The Message of Galatians [London: Inter-Varsity, 1968], p. 32).

Paul’s point in reciting these two general features from his past life was that, prior to his encounter with Christ, there was not the slightest human preparation or source for his understanding, much less accepting and proclaiming, the gospel of salvation by God’s grace working through faith completely apart from works. It was foreign to all his previous thinking.

CONVERSION PROOF

But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace, was pleased to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, (l:15-16a)

Not until Christ sovereignly in resurrection glory confronted him on the road to Damascus did Paul respond to the great reality of the gospel: that Jesus, though put to death and buried, was now alive. He immediately realized that only a resurrected Jesus could proclaim from heaven, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5).

No human explanation or influence could account for the 180 degree turnaround in Saul’s life. He had been like a runaway freight train that crushes everything in its path. He had lost control of his life and was without restraint. His legalistic zeal had put him on a headlong course of destruction from which no natural force short of death could have deterred him. His apostolic calling could only have been supernatural and sovereign, completely apart from human testimony or persuasion (though he may have heard much truth from the Christians he captured).

Men’s coming to God has always been on the basis of His sovereign will and grace. As Moses explained to Israel in the wilderness, “The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers” (Deut. 7:7-8). Samuel confronted the people with the same message: “The Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name, because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself” (1 Sam. 12:22). God chose the Jews for no other reason than His own holy pleasure and purpose.

David knew he was chosen and anointed king by God’s sovereign election. “The Lord, the God of Israel, chose me from all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever,” he said. “For He has chosen Judah to be a leader; and in the house of Judah, my father’s house, and among the sons of my father He took pleasure in me to make me king over all Israel. And of all my sons (for the Lord has given me many sons), He has chosen my son Solomon to sit on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel” (1 Chron. 28:4-5). From the choosing of the nation of Israel, the tribe of Judah, the family of Jesse, and of Jesse’s son David and grandson Solomon, the process was entirely divine and sovereign. God’s election is based on nothing but His own good pleasure.

Paul did not initiate the choice to be saved, much less the choice to be an apostle. He was “called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God” (1 Cor. 1:1). The phrase when He who had set me apart refers to the elective purpose of God before Paul was even able to consider a choice. No person is saved or called to leadership in the church except by such sovereign and predetermined divine will. “He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:5-6; cf. v. 9).

The Lord set apart Paul to salvation and apostleship not because Paul developed great leadership ability and writing skill or was a determined and hard worker. He had been set apart and consecrated by God even from his mother’s womb, long before he could have demonstrated the least potential for anything. Paul was chosen to be an apostle before he was born, just as Jacob was chosen over his twin brother Esau before their births (Rom. 9:11-13), as Isaiah and Jeremiah were called and consecrated to their prophetic work while still in their mothers’ wombs (Isa. 49:1; Jer. 1:5), and as John the Baptist was called even before his conception to be the forerunner of the Messiah (Luke 1:13-17). Paul’s Jewish readers knew immediately that he was comparing his call to apostleship to the calls of those great men of God. He was not trying to rank himself with them but to establish unequivocally that, like theirs, his call was entirely God’s doing.

This purpose became historical fact on the Damascus Road and in the subsequent days, when, Paul says, God called me through His grace. By means of unmerited love and kindness God actually and efficaciously brought the already elect Saul to Himself in salvation.

God was pleased to reveal His Son to Saul in a direct and absolutely unique way. As “he was approaching Damascus, . . . suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; and he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, but rise, and enter the city, and it shall be told you what you must do’” (Acts 9:3-6). In his testimony before King Agrippa, Paul gives further details of his first encounter with the risen Lord. After identifying Himself as “Jesus whom you are persecuting,” the Lord said, “Arise, and stand on your feet; for this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which I will appear to you; delivering you from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, to whom I am sending you” (26:15-17). God’s direct revelations of Christ and Scripture to Paul began that day and continued during the short time in Damascus and the years in Arabia, and then as God desired throughout the apostle’s life.

The phrase in me does not force us to interpret the revelation as a purely internal, subjective feeling but can mean “to me” and carry the idea of objective experience.

The call to be saved was accompanied by the call to serve, to preach Him among the Gentiles. Although the experience of Paul was utterly unique, God does not call any person to salvation whom He does not also call to service. Every believer is “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). Speaking to believers, Peter wrote, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). We are saved to be witnesses and servants of the Savior.

And the subject of his preaching was Him, Jesus Christ. To the Corinthians Paul wrote concerning “the testimony of God,” that it called for him “to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:1-2). The Judaizers needed to see that the Gentiles did not need to hear the law of Moses or the traditions of the Jewish elders—only the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So the choice of Paul, his transformation, the revelation and call to preach to the nations were all done by God, not men. Even after that, men played no part in his preparation to fulfill his calling.

POSTCONVERSION PROOF

I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.

John Brown commented that, beginning with the Damascus Road encounter, Christ took Paul under His own immediate tutoring. It was essential for the Lord to establish Paul’s independence as an apostle. He was not taught by the other apostles but was fully equal to them. After spending several days “with the disciples who were at Damascus” and preaching briefly in the synagogues there (Acts 9:19-20), Paul did not consult with flesh and blood. He sought from Ananias or other Christians at Damascus no advice or understanding, no clarification of the revelation he had received. It is not that he would not have been helped by going to learn from other believers, but his being given the unique place of reaching Gentiles seemed to demand that he not be seen as being merely convinced by some Jewish converts to this doctrine. Gentiles might have been more reluctant to accept his message if they perceived of it as of Jewish origination. And the Judaizers needed to understand that the gospel was not at all a heresy advocated by a few Jews.

Paul went away to Nabatean Arabia, a region that stretched east from Damascus down to the Sinai peninsula. Although he does not identify the exact location, it seems likely that he stayed near Damascus. The place and purpose of his sojourn in Arabia are unknown, but that was surely the place of his preparation for ministry.

After his stay in Arabia, the apostle returned once more to Damascus and continued preaching there for a period of time. He almost immediately encountered persecution from the Jewish leaders, a group that doubtlessly included some of the men with whom he himself had once planned to conspire against the Christians (see Acts 9:2).

The fact that “in Damascus the ethnarch under Aretas the king [of Nabatean Arabia] was guarding the city of the Damascenes in order to seize [Paul]” (2 Cor. 11:32) suggests that the apostle also preached in Arabia and had aroused the displeasure of its king. In any case, the Gentile civil authorities of Damascus supported the efforts of the Jewish leaders to arrest and execute Paul (cf. Acts 9:23-24).

The two periods of preaching in Damascus and the in-between sojourn in Arabia alone with Lord Jesus—learning, meditating, and studying the Old Testament—totalled three years. After that, Paul went up to Jerusalem (not to be confused with a later famine relief trip there from Antioch, mentioned in Acts 11:30, or the trip to the council of Acts 15) to become acquainted with Cephas, that is, the apostle Peter. Paul makes a point of noting that he went solely for the purpose of becoming acquainted with Cephas, who was the personal companion of the Lord Jesus and the most powerful spokesman in the early years of the Jerusalem church, from Pentecost on (Acts 2:14-40; 3:11-26; 4:8-20; 5:3-32; 8:20-25). He only stayed with him fifteen days, obviously far too short a time to have been fully transformed from all his Jewish theology and tradition and fully instructed in the gospel. Nor did he see any other of the apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. Paul’s visit to Jerusalem was not to learn more about the gospel message but to meet and get acquainted with (the verb means “to visit with the purpose of getting to know someone”) these two men who had been so close to Jesus and perhaps to learn from them some of their intimate experiences with the incarnate Lord, whom he had come to love and serve, and with whom he had spent those three years getting acquainted.

It should noted that Acts 9:23-25 indicates that Paul’s leaving Damascus was the result of a dramatic set of events. The Jews strongly resisted his preaching and had developed a plan to kill him when the opportunity arose. They patrolled the city gates 24 hours a day waiting to capture Paul, but when his disciples heard of the plot they helped him escape by lowering him over the city wall in a basket.

Apart from such a predicament that threatened his life, Paul may have stayed longer in Damascus. No time frame is given for his going to Jerusalem, but when he arrived there and tried to see the apostles, he was rebuffed because of fear that he was not a true believer (Acts 9:26). Without the help of Barnabas, Paul would not have been able visit even Peter and James. He met none of the other apostles at all, who may have been too afraid or may have been away from Jerusalem at the time. It could be surmised that, though the apostles did not scatter under Paul’s persecution (Acts 8:1), they may have done so by now. When Herod moved against them (12:1), it seems that only Peter and James the brother of John were still in the city, and Peter soon fled to avoid the fate of James (12:17). The mention of Paul’s being “brought to the apostles” (9:27) must refer only to Peter and James the Lord’s brother, who was certainly attached to the apostles at that time. Because of his having seen the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15:7) and his having been intimately associated with the other apostles (much like Barnabas; see Acts 14:14), this James would easily have been considered by Paul to be an apostle in the wider sense.

To give his readers the greatest possible confidence in what he was writing, Paul made a common Jewish vow: I assure you before God that I am not lying. That statement, along with many others, contradicts the claims of liberal interpreters that Paul was a sincere and highly capable leader but that many of his teachings reflect only his personal ideas and preferences. If that were so, he would either have been terribly self-deluded or else a shameless liar. He was either an authoritative and completely reliable spokesman for God or he was a sham.

Paul’s point in this part of the letter was to affirm that he had received his gospel directly from the Lord, not from the other apostles. He only visited two of them for two weeks, and only after three years had elapsed since his conversion. Any accusation that he was a second-hand apostle, receiving his message from the Jerusalem apostles, was false.

After Paul left Jerusalem he went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, the latter of which included his home town of Tarsus (see Acts 9:11, 30). This move was precipitated by another group of hostile Jews who were “attempting to put him to death” (Acts 9:29). He was escorted out of Jerusalem to the port city of Caesarea, where he likely took a ship to his home town of Tarsus. He preached there until Barnabas called for him to come to Antioch in Syria.

During a stay of several years in those regions, Paul preached (v. 23). The other apostles were still in Judea and Samaria and had no contact with or influence on him. When word of revival in Syrian Antioch “reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, . . . they sent Barnabas off to Antioch,” who ministered there for a while by himself and then “left for Tarsus to look for Saul,” with whom he then “taught considerable numbers” in Antioch. It was here that “the disciples were first called Christians” (Acts 11:20-26). Paul stayed on as a teacher in the church at Antioch until the Holy Spirit sent him and Barnabas off on their first missionary journey (Acts 13:1-3), and after that they returned to Antioch, from where they were sent to the council in Jerusalem (14:26-15:4).

At this time Paul was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ. Churches is a plural designation indicating local assemblies that are part of the one church. Paul’s two visits to Jerusalem did not include visiting the churches of Judea, which region was usually thought of separately from its major city, Jerusalem (see Acts 1:8). All that those churches knew about this independent apostle was what they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.” For obvious reasons, it had been extremely difficult for believers to accept the genuineness of Paul’s conversion (see Acts 9:13-14, 21, 26). But when the Lord gave such great blessing to Paul’s ministry, resulting in his own persecution (vv. 23-24, 29), his fellow Christians could no longer doubt he was a specially chosen and gifted man of God, and they were glorifying God because of him.

He and Barnabas only made two visits to Jerusalem, one to bring famine relief from Antioch (Acts 11:30) and another to discuss the relation of the Mosaic law to the gospel of grace (Acts 15). Since Paul’s presence there was so scarce for fourteen years (Gal. 2:1), most of the people did not know him except by reputation. And though his gospel had not come from Jerusalem nor been refined there, still the believers there affirmed both it and the power of his apostleship as being cause for glorifying God. The fact that the people were praising God for the very same gospel they knew shows it was identical to that taught by the Jerusalem apostles and was truly from the Lord.

Paul’s point through all of this detailed autobiography was that the charges of the Judaizers was absurd on the surface. The church in Jerusalem, which was still overseen by the other apostles and James, the Lord’s half brother, had long since recognized his apostolic office and authority and glorified God because of him. James, Peter, and John—the three leading apostles among the Twelve—had specifically acknowledged that the grace of God had been given to Paul and they enthusiastically gave him “and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship” (Gal. 2:9). In his second letter Peter not only acknowledges Paul’s divine authority but asserts that his epistles even at that early date were already recognized as scriptural (2 Pet. 3:15-16).

To reject Paul’s teaching is to reject God’s Word. Neither the testimony of Paul himself nor of the other apostles allows another conclusion.

ApostolicCredentials (l:10-24)