Paul’s Unique Calling from God: Galatians 1:11-24

Welcome to Episode 2 of Series 1 of our study in the book of Galatians. When I introduced this in Episode 1, I pointed out the extraordinary character of this book, the intense story behind it and the deep feelings that Paul has concerning the situation in the Galatian churches.

Recap and Background

Paul had originally been an opponent of the Church but he then became a leading preacher in the Church, preaching to the Gentiles. The story of the book of Acts tells us how Paul ended up being in a city called Antioch, with another Apostle called Barnabas, and how God amazingly, through the Holy Spirit, called them to set out from this city into territory where the gospel had never been before and to start preaching. It was a very bold thing to do, a very difficult thing to do. Paul and Barnabas started out on a missionary journey. The book of Acts tells us that they conducted three missionary journeys. Paul had different teams with him through those years and he travelled further and further around the Eastern Mediterranean, in what we now call Turkey and Greece. Many churches were planted, but the very first churches that he planted were in a province called Galatia, and these are the churches that he is addressing in this particular letter.

It was an incredibly exciting missionary journey described in Acts chapters 13 and 14. About six different places are mentioned. They start in the island of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean and then they take a ship to the southern coast of what is, in modern day terms, Turkey, and went from major city to major city preaching in the Jewish synagogues and then in the marketplaces and publicly, and proclaimed Jesus Christ. What had happened in that time was astonishing and miraculous. It is easy for us to take for granted that these miracles happened and it is amazing that Paul could actually establish Christian communities within a few weeks of arriving in a place he had never been to before, and a place that didn’t know him. Something really remarkable had happened.

Here is an example from that trip, to give you a little understanding of the background of some of the events that Paul is talking about in the letter to Galatians. For example, when they went first of all to the island of Cyprus, which was their first stopping off point to preach the gospel, they got in touch with the Roman ruler of the island, the most important person on the island. They really wanted to preach to him.

In Acts 13: 8, there was what we might call today a witch doctor, someone practising the occult, someone involved in witchcraft or sorcery, and his name was Elymas. He ‘opposed them and tried to turn the Roman proconsul’ the Roman official, ‘from the faith’. There is an occultist in the same conversation as Paul and Barnabas, as Paul is trying to preach the gospel to this Roman official.

‘Then Saul,’ or ‘Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked straight at Elymas and said, “You are a child of the devil and an enemy of everything that is right! You are full of all kinds of deceit and trickery. Will you never stop perverting the ways of the Lord? Now the hand of the Lord is against you. You are going to be blind for a time, not even able to see the light of the sun.” Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand. When the proconsul saw what had happened, he believed, for he was amazed at the teaching about the Lord.’

Acts 13:9-12, NIV

That is astonishing isn’t it? Paul intervenes. There is a spiritual battle. Someone is contradicting his gospel and he uses the authority of the Holy Spirit to restrict this person by causing him to be temporarily blind. That is a miraculous circumstance and the Roman official is impressed and believes. This is probably the foundation of a church in Cyprus, where there is a church to this day.

That is the sort of event that happened in Galatia when Paul and Barnabas were preaching. Those events happened a year or two before this letter was written. They were recent events. There were other miracles and extraordinary circumstances in almost every city. We will look at one or two of those as we go along. Very remarkable things happened; God supernaturally opened up the way. The Holy Spirit had called them and Paul believed that as he preached miracles would happen, people would believe. It is a remarkable story of God’s grace.

But, as I explained last time, the problem was that Paul, having established the churches, had to leave quite quickly. It says that Paul and Barnabas actually established leaders in the churches – elders and overseers - very quickly, to try and protect those communities. He would have given them instructions as to how to look after those new Christian communities but they had to leave. They went back to Antioch, rested there for a while and then came back later on. In the intervening period, probably within a year of his visit, Jewish believers had come from Jerusalem into those cities and contradicted Paul’s message and started undermining everything that he had built. The way they contradicted it was by saying to the converts, “The message that Paul gave you is not enough for your salvation, you need to become Jewish in order to become Christians and in order to become Jewish you need to obey the Old Testament Laws of Moses.” There were four main areas that they were concerned about: male circumcision, Jewish food laws, worshipping on the Sabbath, and following the Jewish religious festivals like Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. This caused Paul tremendous distress.

One of the things that these teachers would have said to the Galatian churches is, “What authority does Paul have? We come from the mother church. We come from Peter’s church and Peter is the primary Apostle. Jesus appointed him as the leader of The Twelve Apostles. We are coming from Jerusalem and we are telling you that Paul has come in without any real authority. He didn’t know Jesus, when Jesus was walking around in Galilee; he wasn’t one of The Twelve. He became a convert later. Why is he preaching this gospel to you?” In fact, Peter did not authorise them but they came from his church and were introducing these rules and regulations. Their challenge was, Paul does not have true authority from Jesus Christ. This is what Paul is addressing in this opening chapter. We have already seen this theme, but we come straight back to it now.

Paul’s Authority

‘I want you to know, brothers and sisters that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.’

Galatians 1:11-12, NIV

Paul is challenging those who think he doesn’t have any real authority and maybe he made up his message, or maybe he is a self-appointed prophet. We mentioned self-appointed prophets in the last episode. As I travel to different countries I notice that, in many cultures, many people claim to be prophets and draw people to themselves because they are prophets. This, in a sense, is what they were accusing Paul of. But he makes it clear that he received the gospel directly from Jesus Christ, not from Peter and not from his own imagination. He wasn’t putting himself up as a special religious leader. He wasn’t even expecting to be involved because he was opposing the church. But he had a divine encounter with Jesus Christ and Jesus commissioned him personally to preach the gospel. Paul is absolutely confident of his message because he is confident it came directly from Jesus Christ.

This goes back to that profound experience he had on the Damascus road which I mentioned last time. I have mentioned it quite a number of times in different parts of explanation about the book of Acts and Paul’s letters because a lot of things go back to the experience that Paul had on the Damascus road. On that Damascus road, according to one of the accounts in the book of Acts.

“I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.”

Acts 26:17, NIV

Paul remembers these words and that dramatic occasion.

He goes on to remind them of the previous story - what was his life like before that dramatic moment? Here he tells the story again in just a few sentences. We want to dwell on this for a few moments because it is such an important part of our understanding.

Paul’s Past Life

‘For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the Church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers.’

Galatians 1:13-14, NIV

No doubt Paul had told the story to the Galatians of his personal background but here he reminds them of it. Paul grew up in a city not far away from the Galatian churches - in the next province, the province of Cilicia and in the city of Tarsus. They would know the city of Tarsus. It was a regional centre; an educational centre; and a commercial centre. He grew up there as a Jew in the Jewish community, attending the synagogue and apparently he had Roman citizenship, which was a special honour only granted to some people. We don’t know how he got that citizenship but maybe his father was in the Roman army and all soldiers were granted citizenship for themselves and their families. Paul had the privileges of Roman citizenship and it appears he had a good education in Tarsus as a young boy in the schools there, which were known to be good schools. He grew up in the synagogue; he was a devout follower of Judaism as a young boy. Sometime whilst he was growing up, we may imagine this to be when he was around 10 to 14 years old, he was picked out in Tarsus to go for special education in Jerusalem. He was taken to Jerusalem as a young man to have an advanced form of religious training under one of the leading Jewish teachers of the day known as Gamaliel. He started out in the Greek speaking city of Tarsus, and then he went to Jerusalem and he had a very high level education in the Jewish faith. He would have studied intensively the Old Testament. He joined one of the religious groups in Jerusalem that was popular at the time, known as the Pharisees, who were very strict in their observance of the Law of Moses and they had many other traditions which they insisted that their followers obeyed. They were full of rules and regulations in order to please God. This is Paul’s background.

He says he “was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers”. In other words, he loved Judaism, he loved the Old Testament history. He loved the Jewish people. He was very nationalistic. He hated the fact that the Romans were there, ruling over Jerusalem. He loved the Temple worship. He lived very close to the Jewish Temple. He could worship there on a regular basis and meet up with the priests. He was in a very privileged position.

Paul was around at the time when Jesus Christ was crucified, in that very city, and then raised again from the dead, and then six weeks later when the day of Pentecost came and there was a sudden religious movement in Jerusalem, and people were proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah. This was the most horrifying thing you could imagine for Paul. He was totally opposed to the Early Church and so he says, in verse 13, ‘how intensely (he) persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.’

In Acts 8: 1 – 3, we see how the first persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and we quickly realise Paul was probably the leader of this persecution. He probably offered his services to the Sanhedrin, the ruling council, and the High Priest and said, “I’ll lead this. I’ll organise it. We need to stop this before it gets out of hand and gets out of the city of Jerusalem. The way to do it is to arrest those people who proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah.” The religious authorities in Jerusalem had their own Temple armed guards. They had their own prison facilities. He was trying to imprison and intimidate as many of the Early Church members as he could. That was Paul in the early days.

So, he understood Judaism; he understood the background. He points out to the Galatians how extraordinary it was that God might choose him. Why should God choose Paul, of all people, to be the leading Apostle to the Gentiles? Very movingly he tells the story:

What Paul Did Next

‘But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I didn’t go up to Jerusalem to see those who were Apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus.’

Galatians 1:15-17, NIV

He recounts here the fact that he experienced a revelation of Jesus Christ near the city gates of Damascus, quite a long way from Jerusalem. He was traveling out to Damascus, outside the land of Israel. When he became a believer and had this astonishing revelation and this great commission, he didn’t go back to Jerusalem. He didn’t go and meet the Apostles very quickly. He actually decided to stay in that area, and he went out into the outlying areas, the desert areas, somewhere around Damascus. He probably got himself a job and maybe met some Christians who were there. We don’t exactly know what happened during this time, but he had to have a complete rethink of his life. Every single thing he believed he had to re-evaluate because he had so many things wrong. He had misunderstood the Old Testament so fundamentally; he had misunderstood Jesus as the Messiah. He decided he needed to reconsider. He was probably suffering intensive stress and shock, realising the terrible things that he had been doing and the incredible grace of God to reveal himself to him.

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Paul’s Story Continues

‘Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas’ (or Peter) ‘and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other Apostles – only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I’m writing to you is no lie. Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only heard the report: “The man who formally persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” And they praised God because of me.’

Galatians 1:18-24, NIV

After this three-year gap, he comes back to Damascus. We find out from the book of Acts that then there is a plot to kill him and he has to escape by being let down in a basket through the wall, because there are spies watching the gates of the city. He had to escape in a hurry and he goes to Jerusalem. Paul is explaining to the Galatians that he has had this unique encounter with Jesus Christ, has understood the gospel and been commissioned to preach the gospel. It was three years before he even met the Apostles. His authority does not derive from them. They can’t claim that he doesn’t have genuine authority to preach the gospel. Paul is emphasizing clearly that his Apostleship is unique, miraculous, and independent of the Jerusalem Apostles.

After three years, he went to Jerusalem. We find out, from the book of Acts, that the church was very scared of him when he first came. It took quite a long time for them to believe that he was safe to be with because he had been a persecutor all those years ago. He spent fifteen days with Peter, and met James, the Lord’s brother, who was also an Apostle and was now leading the church in Jerusalem as its pastor. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know what they spoke about for 15 days? What stories they had to tell. Paul had so many things to learn from Peter, and Peter had so much to learn about Paul’s astonishing experience on the Damascus road. He had heard rumours about it but only when he met Paul could he verify what had actually happened. It appears here, that Peter and Paul formed a friendship, and Peter knew his priority was to preach to the Jews and Paul knew that his priority was to preach to the Gentiles. They would have had a conversation about Peter staying in Judea in Jerusalem and focusing on that area and seeing what God was calling them to do next but they knew that they would be going further in the future. Paul would have said that he wasn’t going to stay there because he was called somewhere else but he didn’t know when and how his mission was going to start. Paul left the area went back to Tarsus, the town where he had started out as a young boy.

What is the point of Paul telling this remarkable story? I find it an interesting story at a human level, to think of how these people related to each other but what is the point of it in terms of the Galatians? Paul is making them understand that they should listen to his preaching of the gospel more than those people who have come in behind him and undermined it because he is authorised by Jesus Christ, and secondly, that authorisation was affirmed by Peter whom he had met for fifteen days. They had fellowship together, they agreed together that they were jointly Apostles but with different responsibilities. Paul is defending his authority and telling them that they needed to believe the gospel he had preached to them because of the authority he has from Jesus Christ, affirmed by none other than Peter the original leader of the Apostolic band.

This background is important because Paul realises that these churches are at risk of losing the gospel altogether, unless something is done quickly and they may just fade away as church communities. Once you lose the power of the gospel at the centre of the church, it is only a matter of time before it fades away all together. He is quite willing to go through his own personal story again and remind them of the extraordinary way that he was called to be an Apostle.

Reflections

As we reflect on this extraordinary story, I want to comment briefly on the issue of God’s timing and God’s calling. All of us who are believers have a call from God that is as true and as real as the call that Paul had. When he was called to faith it was an utter shock. He was very firmly walking in the other direction. If you are a believer, it is always important to go back to the fact that God reached out to you, and have confidence that that was a real process upon which you can build your life. 

The second thing to notice is that Christians are often confused about when they should engage in different ministries. Very often we feel called to do something and we think we need to start immediately. Notice here that Paul, the great Apostle, as soon as he was called, spent three years of preparation. Even after that, having visited Damascus and Jerusalem again, he went to Tarsus. We find out later, he spent about another 10 years in Tarsus before his real mission got started. There is something to learn from this. We must trust God for his timing in our lives. Paul trusted God for the timing. When he was called to go to Galatia, he knew this was the timing, and he was evangelising and planting churches from then onwards for the rest of his life.

Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you found it interesting. There is more of Paul’s story to come in the next episode as we find out that Paul has another important meeting with Peter and the Apostles later on, as they try to clarify the exact nature of the gospel.