Our scripture reading is going to be coming from back and forth within the book of Acts and within Paul’s letter to the Galatians. I will pause between each so you can move back and forth more easily. We will be beginning in Acts chapter 9.
For some days he, Paul, was with the disciples at Damascus, and immediately he proclaimed Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’ And all who heard him were amazed and said, ‘Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem of those who called upon this name? And has he not come here for this purpose, to bring them bound before the chief priests?’ But Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.
When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.
And when he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles and declared to them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who spoke to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them at Jerusalem, preaching boldly in the name of the Lord, and he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists, but they were seeking to kill him.
And when the brothers learned this, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.
In Galatians 1, Paul writes, ‘For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 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, 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 15 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,’ and they glorified God because of me.
Back to Acts chapter 11. Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was on them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people, and in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.
Now in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them, named Agabus, stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world. This took place in the days of Claudius. So the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea, and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
Galatians chapter 2: Then after 14 years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up because of a revelation and set before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.
But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery, we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
And from those who seemed to be influential, what they were makes no difference to me. God shows no partiality. Those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised, for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles.
And when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised, only they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
And lastly, Acts chapter 12, verse 25: And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark.
Let us pray. Lord, you have given us your word. You have instructed us to study your word, to hear your word, to learn your word, and from your word let it now be made clear to us through your revelation by the Spirit. Open our eyes and our minds and our hearts to receive what you are teaching and give us a clarity of understanding of just what you wish us to know. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is what we call an occasional document, meaning that it was written to a specific group of people addressing a specific item of concern, speaking through and to their immediate circumstances and their specific contexts. Yet still, it continues to carry a great weight and value beyond the original ancient Galatian church audience because it has been given to us as scripture, as the inspired word of God, and therefore it is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the people of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
So it behooves us to try and understand the lessons that Paul is imparting with the same understanding with which the Galatians heard and understood them.
Now today, whenever we hear something like, ‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,’ we instinctively know and understand the context out of which those words were spoken. Without conscious effort or thought, we remember the history that surrounds them and just what led to them being spoken.
We understand that those words are the product of their specific historical moment, yet they still stand the test of time for they continue to have meaning for us as Americans because they speak to our shared heritage and have influence upon our modern lives. We remember that the military campaign which ended near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 3, 1863, was an attempt by the forces of the Confederacy, led by General Robert E. Lee, to invade the northern states in order to threaten the District of Columbia and President Lincoln to hopefully try and force a union surrender for a victorious ending to the war in favor of the southern secessionists.
However, following Lee’s defeat, this battle and the battleground took on an even greater meaning after President Lincoln gave his famous speech. Instead of using that opportunity to further divide the nation against an enemy, the president used it to set the stage for hope for our future unity and American restoration.
We remember and know this history because, well, we learned it. We were all taught it in school, helping us to celebrate the more perfect union in which we believe we live and grasp the full understanding of our inalienable rights that we enjoy and were given to us by God.
Now the members of the Galatian church, they knew Paul and some parts of his history in ministry already, just like we know our American history. So they instinctively knew what he meant and could immediately apply it to their lives. This immediate and instinctive understanding of the context is why it is so very important for us to diligently study the scriptures and to be students of history—to ask questions and to better learn what God has done for us alongside your fellow believers—so that we may better understand what the biblical writers meant for them and mean for us and then apply the same meaning to our lives.
The meaning of scripture does not change, but sometimes what it directly means for our lives or how we might specifically apply its truth to our lives may change based on our circumstances. But still, the application of scripture may change, but never the meaning.
At this point in our text, Paul is recounting a lot of biographical information—his ministerial resume in one sense—to further support his assertion that the gospel which he preaches is of divine origin and that his apostolic authority comes from Jesus Christ alone and not from the other disciples back in Jerusalem. He is arguing, ‘I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel, for I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.’
This is the point within the letter which has caused many believers much consternation. They’ll suggest that either Paul or Luke, when he writes about the same period in Acts, may be lying or that perhaps Paul wasn’t really the author of Galatians simply because it contains some details which are not found elsewhere in scripture and which, to their minds, seems to contradict other historical statements in the Bible.
This section is also where the greatest sense of heartburn develops when we try to gauge the when of the writing of Galatians and just who the Galatian churches were. So now, believing that the Bible is wholly true, we must reconcile these questions and answers for ourselves.
We believe that the Bible possesses within itself an inner harmony such that it will always agree with itself and cannot contradict itself. Disbelieving people will search for and claim to find so-called contradictions and then use them to try and persuade folks against the faith. They will deny the inspiration, authority, sufficiency, and inerrant nature of scripture to do it.
But what they often ignore in their arguments is the understanding which comes from considering the whole as opposed to clinging only to a small part of it. Again, they are the ones who think, ‘I can do all things’ through a verse taken out of context.
Whenever something in scripture seems to be unclear or even contradictory, we will find clarity and understanding somewhere else within the Bible. We call this principle the analogy of faith or the analogy of scripture. Using scripture to interpret scripture is the first principle of biblical interpretation, and through this application of this principle, we believe that in the clear and plain reading of scripture, we are capable of knowing all that we need in order to be saved and also understand the meaning to be able to apply it to our lives.
So in order to better understand the mindset in which the Galatian church understood Paul’s letter, we’re going to be examining his biography here in light of the book of Acts along with other secular historical sources to recognize what’s going on at this point in New Testament history.
Fortunately, the New Testament provides us with some unique markers that, with great care and with some help from external ancient historians like Josephus, Philo, Tacitus, and even Plutarch, and alongside archaeological monuments and records that keep on being recovered, we have a better idea now of the winds of scripture and so we may better understand the whole.
Those of you who have been using a chronological Bible reading plan will be familiar with reading scripture in this kind of a way. However, remember trying to read the Bible in this way on your own takes a lot of effort and requires we make certain assumptions and do some guesswork to put together.
Sometimes it’s easy, like when Second Kings quotes the prophet Isaiah, you know, verbatim. Well, other times it is much harder and much less clear. A problem that we sometimes experience when we read the Bible straight on through, only reading it straight on through as if it were an ordinary book, is that we tend to miss the scope of the story. We lose the whole span of time, and it becomes easy to miss the overall sense of time while reading scripture, letting us feel as if some things were worse than they were and others might not have been as bad as they were.
For instance, when we read and study the Acts of the Apostles, it feels like a roller coaster, with all the ups and downs and twists and turns, with the narrative racing along until it ends. And it ends so quickly that we miss the fact that this covers about 30 years in 28 chapters.
Or we consider the whole of the New Testament after the Gospels, which covers about 60 years, with the Revelation being written around 90 A.D. by the Apostle John.
So first, let’s consider the book of Acts. It was written as a history text by the physician Luke for Theophilus. Theophilus was likely a wealthy Christian patron of Luke and/or possibly even Paul, with Luke potentially using a pseudonym for his name, as Theophilus plainly means ‘God lover.’
Since the Christian faith was not yet considered to be culturally positive, similar to other history texts of the same period, the Acts of the Apostles was presented broadly in scope, touching upon and elaborating only on key points of the narrative while offering some commonly known or recognized time-related details to remain connected within the wider sense of history.
Unfortunately for us, in ancient times, accuracy in dating was not as important or specific as we make it in our modern history texts. They did not consider the recording of trivia concerning the names, dates, and places of things to be a virtue, as there was no universal or standard calendar in regular use. The Romans and Greeks used the Julian solar-based calendar, while others like the Jews used a lunar calendar. Histories commonly dated important events in relation to other important historical events.
So when Paul writes, ‘Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem,’ and later ‘Then after 14 years I went up again to Jerusalem,’ he was not suggesting this 3 in 14 as being 365-day periods of time as his meaning of year, but instead he’s using the 3 and 14 in a roundabout way. A modern example of this would be that we can say that we are presently in the fourth year of COVID-19, even though the pandemic and the disease was only identified about 28 months ago, beginning in November of 2019, with the first recorded case in China continuing through 2020 and 2021 and is now still here at concern in February 2022.
And so the COVID period may be described as four years from the perspective of the ancient historian.
Next, the key point dating references here is Paul’s moment of conversion upon the road to Damascus. That is the when of, ‘But when he who had set me apart before I was born was pleased to reveal his Son to me,’ when he received his revelation of Jesus Christ.
So it is very reasonable for Paul to use this, the most important moment of his life, the enthronement of Jesus within his heart and his regeneration by the Holy Spirit as the reference point because it was familiar to and understood by his Christian audience.
Further, within these passages, we find two important historical markers which help us to date Paul’s narrative within the wider scope of history: first, there was a severe famine recorded as troubling Judea around 46 A.D. during the reign of Claudius, and secondly, in the early part of Acts 12, we read that King Herod Agrippa died sometime after Passover in 44 A.D.
So according to the narrative of Acts, Paul’s second trip to Jerusalem ended sometime after Agrippa’s death, and since the purpose of his trip was a preemptive famine relief, it must have begun before 46 A.D. and not later than 44 A.D.
This also means that Paul and Barnabas were likely there in Jerusalem when Peter was imprisoned by Herod because it would not have been unreasonable for them to still be in Jerusalem during the Passover celebration as Jewish Christians.
So knowing these externally confirmable reference dates and understanding the flexibility in dating ancient events, that’s how we’re able to track the conversion of Paul to be around 32 or 33 A.D.
Now, similar to the writings of Josephus and Philo, histories were often written to and for a person’s patron, which necessitated some amount of a personal bias and a persuasive agenda to be included in the text. And clearly, Acts does have an implicit agenda within it because it serves to encourage the believing reader and hearer that regardless of what form persecution or worldly trials may take—whether it be imprisonment, beatings, banishment, or even execution—the gospel will continue to spread across the world, and that the good news about Jesus’ gracious giving of himself for our sins to deliver us from this evil age will overcome all adversity in order to bring all of God’s chosen people to the knowledge of salvation.
That the way of Christ is not subject to its individual members but is the movement of God in the lives of his children and out in the world.
So now, Paul writing this letter, he’s writing concerning several issues, but the heart of the matter is the problem that some people had come to these Gentile converts of his and tried to undercut Paul’s entire ministry. They said that Paul did not have any authority or that perhaps they had greater authority than him; that he was not truly an apostle but that they had been sent by the apostles in Jerusalem to correct and guide them, suggesting that Paul did not tell them truthfully concerning the gospel; that maybe he accidentally left out a few details because he didn’t have all the facts—saying things like, ‘It’s good that you believe in Jesus Christ, but if you really want to be sure of your salvation, then you must do…’ or, ‘It is good that you’re so religious, but if you really want to be spiritual, then do this.’
So to answer these charges, Paul needed to first prove the sole origination of his gospel, coming from Christ, and secondly, that he truly was an apostle, that he was commissioned and sent by Jesus, instead of by Peter and company. He needed to show that he had not gone out rogue, preaching a second or third-hand gospel, but instead that he was preaching the revelation of Christ.
Therefore, he details for the Galatians and us his whole ministry up until the present time, and it is in his interest to not leave out any interactions with the apostles—beginning his story back before his conversion when Paul was a Jewish theology prodigy, having more gold stars than a kindergartner with perfect attendance.
Reminding them that he was more religiously advanced than the other Jews of his same age and that he was so zealous for the religion that he tried to stamp out this messianic blasphemy by following and hunting these heretics into the Roman province of Syria, where on his way into the city of Damascus he experienced a divine realignment of his religion—a mental readjustment that transformed his entire outlook; a change of perspective as immediately sudden and drastic as the flipping on of a light switch in a pitch-dark room: bam, persecutor to preacher, going 0 to 60 in 0.01 seconds.
Now the first thing that any one of us, any ordinary person, could do after coming to faith in Jesus is to go immediately to their pastor and to start asking them questions to learn about what they don’t know—to find out more. But that is not what Paul did. He did not go visit the apostles in Jerusalem or go visit any other earlier disciples; instead, he went off into Arabia.
Now the Arabia he went into is not Saudi Arabia of today nor was it the land of Alibaba and the 40 thieves, but it was a far western region of Mesopotamia—the independent Nabataean kingdom located just south of the Roman province of Syria.
Now exactly where he went in there, what he did there, and how long Paul was there is subject to some debate, with some people thinking that he was out there living like one of the old prophets like Elijah, trying to sort out his new theological perspective. But what seems most likely is that Paul was out there preaching the gospel already to those Gentiles.
What scripture makes clear is that about three years following his conversion, Paul returned to Jerusalem, coming from Damascus—a place to which he had only recently returned. It’s because it’s at this point that Paul left Damascus very much in a ‘get out of Dodge’ kind of manner, being lowered outside the city walls in a basket because of a murderous plot on his life that was being orchestrated by the local Jews with the assistance of the local Roman governor and at the behest of the Nabataean King Aretas IV, which we find in Second Corinthians.
Now the Nabataean kings were usually considered to be friends and allies of Rome, so it stands to reason that either King Aretas was severely influenced by a group of Jews against Paul, or that Paul was considered to be a troublemaking agitator—something that Paul seemed to have a habit of doing everywhere he went down there in Arabia due to his extensive time spent preaching Christ.
Unless Paul was being a nuisance or a problem, this king would not normally be inclined to act against a natural-born Roman citizen.
So Paul tells us that he finally returned to Jerusalem three years after his conversion. He spent 15 days in the company of the Apostle Peter, and now he also got to meet Jesus’ brother James, whereas Luke records that it was here the apostles avoided him out of fear until Barnabas brought Paul to them and spoke on his behalf and in his defense.
It’s easy to understand why the 12 would be so cautious around a guy like Paul that they might even, after receiving such a glowing recommendation as he got, want to limit their risk and exposure. So there is no discrepancy here, and Paul’s account is believable as he confirms it with an oath: ‘In what I’m writing to you before God, I do not lie.’
Now after this meeting, there is no mention of either Peter or James conferring any authority upon Paul to preach and teach, nor is there any recorded record of correction, condemnation, or repudiation of his previous preaching in Syria and Arabia. So it surely appears that Paul was accepted as well as his gospel by them, as one of them in truth, even if he was still being kept at arm’s length.
Luke continues by describing Paul preaching in and around Jerusalem, debating Christ with the Hellenists, the Grecian and Roman Gentiles, such that they also wanted to kill him, which caused him to return home to Tarsus in the Roman province of Cilicia. But that’s a detail he didn’t feel necessary to share the reason for his travels with the Galatians.
Again, with Paul preaching and teaching Christ to the Gentiles in Jerusalem in the apostles’ home base, this would have been the appropriate and reasonable time for them to deny his apostolic calling, to correct or condemn his teaching if they were going to do it. Instead, when the brothers of Jerusalem heard of this plot on his life, they shipped Paul off to his hometown in Tarsus.
Then time passed on. Paul continued to preach and teach in and around Tarsus, a major metropolitan trade city, remaining physically and geographically distant from Judea and Jerusalem, all the while developing such a positive reputation that they were hearing about him and what he was doing for the cause of Christ, so that they could only glorify God because of it down in Jerusalem and say, ‘He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.’
Meanwhile, Luke explains that despite the continued Jewish persecution of Jesus’ followers, the gospel continued to spread. But the Jewish followers of Jesus only shared the gospel with other Jews until one day when some believers from Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean south of Tarsus, and Cyrene, a Roman colony west of Egypt in what’s today Libya, came to Syrian Antioch, preached to the Hellenists there—the Gentiles—and they began to come to faith in Jesus Christ.
So the apostles sent Barnabas up to find out exactly what was going on. And when Barnabas arrived, he discovered Gentile believers, and he praised God for it. And then he went off to find the one man, the one guy he knew to be the expert on teaching these Gentiles about Jesus: Saul of Tarsus, the Apostle Paul.
And so he went up and fetched Paul from Tarsus, brought him down to Syrian Antioch, where they began to experience such a revival of faith among the Gentiles that here the followers of Jesus became the first folks to be called Christians because the Greek translation of Messiah is Christos, Christ.
Then, after a year of ministering together in Antioch, a prophet speaking by the Holy Spirit came there from Jerusalem warning them of an impending great famine. They believed him, and so the disciples decided to send funds to their Christian brothers and the elders down in Jerusalem—to the presbyteros, to the pastors, to the apostles—by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
And so now Paul embarked on his second trip to Jerusalem. After his conversion, Paul begins the second chapter of Galatians with, ‘Then after 14 years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.’ So it was 14 years after his conversion, after only a year ministering in Antioch, after about 10 years ministering in Tarsus and preaching there, and after about three years out in Arabia, then Paul returned to Jerusalem because of a revelation—the prophetic warning of famine by Agabus.
And now, since he was there in Jerusalem, he set before them, the apostles, the gospel that he proclaims among the Gentiles in order to make sure he was not running or had not run in vain. Paul did not now return to the apostles for an advanced ministerial degree after only having a Bible college diploma before. He did not return to them for ordination after only having been previously licensed to preach, but to simply have a conference and confirm what he was already teaching; to affirm that his ministry was the same as theirs and to gain assurance for himself that he truly was doing what Christ had called him to do.
And from those who seemed to be influential added nothing to me. This meeting with the apostles added no new or additional authority to his teaching. They added no alternative or additional teachings of Christ to what he was already preaching. They did not add, subtract, or alter the gospel which Paul had been preaching for 14 years already.
And this is especially significant because, unlike the Jewish apostles—excepting Peter with Cornelius—Paul’s ministry already was directed to the pagan Gentiles and not the lost sheep of Israel.
Paul continues telling the Galatians, ‘On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised; and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.’
So it was that the first Christian elders, the apostles—presumably Paul with the Twelve along with Barnabas and James the brother of Jesus—divided up their missional responsibility. Paul and his cohort would preach to the Gentiles, with Peter and the other early disciples preaching to the Jewish people.
Then Paul and Barnabas returned home to Antioch with John Mark, which brings us up to the eve of Paul’s first missionary journey and his introductory travels through Galatia, where we’ll continue next time, Lord willing.
But now, through this point in his argument to the Galatians, Paul has shown that he was an expert in Judaism, meaning he was intimately familiar with the scriptures—with both Torah and its application to life and with the prophets concerning everything expected of the Jewish Messiah.
So now he is an expert concerning what Christ has done for us. His world was so drastically, suddenly, and undesirably changed from a focus on Torah and temple for his life to a new focus on Jesus Christ as the author, creator, sustainer, and giver of life and salvation that it could only have happened by divine fiat and power.
That he was commissioned as an apostle by Jesus Christ directly when Christ chose to reveal himself to him on the road to Damascus, and not coming from the other apostles; that his apostleship and teaching were never denied or refuted by the other apostles, but was tacitly affirmed at first and later fully affirmed and celebrated by the three pillars and core leaders of the faith—James, Peter, and John.
And lastly, that his apostolic ministry was directed to the Gentile pagans while the other apostles’ ministerial efforts were directed towards the Jews.
This argument demonstrates to the Galatians and to us that the gospel which Paul preached, which they had received and believed, is the one and only true gospel; therefore, anything else is anathema.
Next, Paul will demonstrate how he has been defending Christ’s gospel of grace from any and all who would attempt to corrupt it—whether it be by evil intent or error. Like the Galatians, we should take comfort in this apologetic defense of Paul’s ministry because it strengthens the confidence we have in the gospel that we have been taught and believe, because of whom and what we have learned: it from the divinely inspired and preserved words of scripture, from Saul of Tarsus, Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles, who was sent by Jesus Christ himself to preach our salvation by God’s divine grace through a divinely given faith alone in Christ alone. Amen.