Is the gospel just a human idea?

No. In Galatians 1:11-24, the Apostle Paul says the good news he preached did not come from any person and was not something he made up. It came straight from Jesus Christ. In this study, Dr. Toby Holt shows why the source of the gospel changes everything.

Paul’s critics tried to discredit his message by attacking him. They claimed he was a second-rate apostle who learned the gospel secondhand. Paul answers with his own story. After God changed his life, he did not rush off to be trained by the other apostles. He spent years away, and only later met Peter briefly. His deep grasp of the truth could only have come from God. Holt compares it to suddenly being able to lecture on a subject you never studied — the only explanation would be a miracle.

Questions this study answers:

1. Where did Paul’s message come from? Paul says plainly that he did not receive the gospel from any person and was not taught it by men. It came directly from Jesus Christ, which is why no one had the right to change it.

2. Why did people attack Paul instead of his message? When people do not like what is being said, they often attack the speaker. Paul’s opponents called him unqualified so that people would stop listening to the truth.

3. What is “another gospel,” and why is it so serious? “Another gospel” is any message that adds human rules to faith in Jesus. Paul says it is not good news at all, because anything that changes the gospel destroys it.

“But I make known to you, 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 it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” — Galatians 1:11-12 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 2 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[singing] In part two of our study in Galatians, the Apostle Paul is going to remind the Galatians about the danger of rejecting or modifying the gospel. But the Galatians were a hard-headed bunch. Would they listen to him? We'll find out in today's study.

Throughout the Bible, when folks didn't care for the biblical message, throughout scripture, when folks didn't like the biblical message, the message from God, what God was saying, when folks didn't like the message, they rejected the messenger. You see this throughout scripture, and if there's any man who knew this firsthand, it was the Apostle Paul. There is hardly anyone you would find outside of Christ himself who was more persecuted, more hounded, more attacked, more accused than Paul. Now, why is that the case? Paul seems to me to be a pretty straight shooter. He seems like a nice guy. He was out caring for folks, much like Jesus, who went around doing miracles and healings and the like. It seems to me that Paul would not be the sort of guy that would engender as much hate as he got.

If Paul was telling people the truth, why would they persecute him the way that they did throughout his days? You could again ask the same question about Jesus. Why was he persecuted? Why was he killed? You could ask the question about the prophets. Why were the Old Testament prophets slain time and time again? You could ask about the New Testament apostles. How come 10 of the remaining 11 apostles died martyr's deaths? How come? These were nice guys. These were good guys. These were good guys telling people the truth. They had a lot going for them. Why did these messengers of the word of God have such a tough time of it? As we said, the answer is this: because of their message. It's because of what they said when they opened their mouths. Now, as we talked about in last week's introduction to Galatians, the Apostle Paul had a deep and abiding love for the people in Galatia. Paul had lived among them for a period of time. He had taught them the gospel of grace. Unfortunately, the gospel of grace or Paul's gospel, which came from Christ, that was not the only gospel being shared. In our own day, it's not much different. We have a gospel we're preaching this morning from the word of God that points to Jesus Christ and our need for salvation, and yet that's not the only thing that is preached in pews across the land. In Paul's case, he was preaching a certain gospel, and yet there was other gospels that were being shared, other teachings, other theologies, other philosophies that were being spread. And the moment that Paul left Galatia, remember, he wrote to them. He said, "I'm shocked. I'm astonished how soon it was. I left. Other guys came in. They told you something different,

and you believed it." Now, these men, as we talked about last week, they were called Judaizers. The reason they were called Judaizers, you could probably guess, is because they were trying to take the New Testament gospel and retrofit it within a Jewish context. They were trying to cross-pollinate Christian teachings with Old Testament legalism, specifically involving circumcision. They wanted to add things, or at least one specific thing, on top of faith. If a Gentile wanted to become a Christian in Galatia or elsewhere, the Judaizers would say, "Well, that's well and that's good, but he must first be circumcised." For lack of a better phrase, they were attempting to convert people to Moses before they converted people to Christ. That was the emphasis of the Judaizers. Now, the ones who came to Galatia, they had a particular problem. The Judaizers who came in, Paul had left a footprint. He left an imprint. He had taught the people in Galatia a certain thing. So what do you think the Judaizers needed to do about Paul? Well, what they needed to do was to run him down, to say that, "This Paul guy, he's not all that he's cracked up to be." To say, "This Paul guy, where did he even learn? The apostles were with Jesus. That guy, where did he learn? And what's more, that guy, do you remember his past? That guy killed Christians. This is all a ruse," they were telling people. "That guy, he's a turncoat. That guy is a traitor. That guy never was with the apostles. That guy, if anything, he's a second-rate apostle, and what he's been teaching is a second-rate gospel." That's what the Judaizers did when they came into Galatia. They accused Paul of being a second-rate apostle who had a second-rate message, and that is why we see Paul's response in today's text, explaining his biography and saying, "All right, hold the phone here. I am not what I've been accused of being, and I didn't learn the gospel from some other man or men, but I learned it from Jesus Christ. And if I learned it from Jesus Christ, then it is authoritative and it applies to you." That's going to be the thrust of his words. Let's look at verses 11 and 12, and then we'll again kind of work our way through the balance. Verse 11, "But I make known to you, brethren," which is a term of endearment, "I make known to you, 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 by man, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ." The gospel that I'm preaching, the gospel that I taught you when I was with you, did not come from some other guy I heard it from down the road. The gospel I'm sharing did not come from man. A number of weeks ago, I forget which sermon this was in, but we said this. We said, look, anything that you hear or understand, anything, any truth you hold onto, whether it's truth from scripture, theology, or maybe it's philosophy or ideology or what have you, there's only two sources for anything that you'll ever learn along these lines, and the sources are either God or man. There's only two sources by which you will come to believe any of the things that you believe, especially regarding theology and the like. Either it comes from someone else in the created realm. Either someone else perceives the truths of the cosmos and tells you, or God has revealed it to you. Those are the two sources. That's the only two. Either there's someone in the created realm, some other person of flesh and blood in the created realm told you what they perceive about reality, or the Creator did, or the Creator spoke. That's your options. It's really one of those two. Why does that distinction even matter? Why does it matter where your beliefs originate?Why is that important? I'll let you think that through for a moment. Why does it matter where your beliefs originate? Well, here's the thing. Only the Creator

knows what he's talking about with infallible, inerrant, divine certainty. Meanwhile, everyone else

in the created realm, created beings like you and I, are subject to error and confusion and sin. The Creator is unchanging. The Creator's been around the whole time. He's observed everything since the dawn of man. The Creator's unchanging, and he's reliable, but your fellow man is neither.

Well, that's in verse 11. Paul's highlighting that distinction. He says everything he's been teaching, he didn't learn from someone else in the created realm. If he had, what he had learned would be subject to error, as would be everything that he said and everything he wrote, if he had learned it from a source that was prone to error. But he says that's not the case.

He says, "What I've learned, I learned directly from God, directly from Christ." This is what made him an apostle, even though he was not one of the original 12. He was instructed specifically, personally, by Christ himself. Now, that's a bold claim. If you're having a theological debate, you're having some debate with someone, right? You're working through the issues of the cosmos yourself, and you stop in the middle of the debate or the argument, and you said, "Well, I believe this because God told me so." What does that have the effect of doing? Well, what do you do with that? How do you argue against that? How do you respond against that? You say, "God told me so," that God has said this. That ratchets up the stakes in whatever discussion is being made. So this was a bold claim for Paul to say, "Look, God spoke to me." This was a bold claim. But here's the thing, it was a true claim. Paul had learned his theology from a direct encounter with Jesus Christ. Let's read more about that in verses 13 through 17.

"For you heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure, how I tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." This is when elsewhere he would say, "I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, I was a Jew of the Jews, I was a Pharisee of the Pharisees." This is what he's saying here. "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son to me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went to Arabia and returned again to Damascus."

Once upon a time, the Apostle Paul was quite a villain. Back then, he was known as Saul. We talked about this last week. He was known as Saul of Tarsus, and he was the chief of villains, chief of all sinners. He not only hated the church, he actively persecuted the church. He opposed Christ. He opposed Christians. He did everything he could to see that these Christians were imprisoned or died, either at his hand or the hands of others. He was a villain. Just as Doug Lipscomb earlier read from Daniel about King Nebuchadnezzar. King Nebuchadnezzar, remember, strolls around his garden, he looks at everything, and he says, "Ah, isn't this all done or accomplished by my own hand?" Nebuchadnezzar was a villain. Nebuchadnezzar was a proud man. Nebuchadnezzar had all manner of things that were wrong with his character. He was a notorious villain who persecuted the Jews from his seat in Babylon. Much like Nebuchadnezzar, Paul had been a villain in his own context, but a villain that God would speak to. A villain, just like Nebuchadnezzar, he would separate, and he would teach about himself. Not every villain in the pages of history received that level of treatment or that attention from God. But Nebuchadnezzar's case, he bestowed it, and he bestowed it to Paul as well. And after Paul had been dealt with, he was on the road to Damascus, remember, he's breathing out threats and murder. He's looking to go persecute Christians, and then Christ knocks him from his horse, so to speak. There's a blinding light. The voice of Christ speaks. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" After these events went down, after God changed his heart, after God set him in motion, after God sent him to become a great preacher to the Gentiles, Paul never hid from the reputation that he had earned. He owned up to it.

He said, "In spite of who I've been, and in spite of what I've done, God has given me grace." And that's what he says in verse 13. He says, "You have heard of my former conduct in Judaism." He says, "You all know what I did and who I was. You have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church." But then in verse 15, he says, "Yet God called me through His grace and revealed His Son that I might preach Him." So Paul, again, is alluding to his conversion, and he's not saying he did anything to earn it. He's not saying he did anything to merit it. He's not saying he did anything. In fact, he's saying the exact opposite. He says, "In spite of who I was, in spite of all that I did, God showed me grace that I otherwise couldn't reach out and grab it on my own. God had to pour it out on me." And he says, "He did pour it out on me, but he poured it out on me for a reason, because he wanted to send me to people like you, to the Galatians and others." He says, "God had a reason for what he did. It was so that you would come to him. He sent me to you." And if he can send the most broken instrument, the most broken tool, the most broken messenger, the chief of all sinners to accomplish this, what can't he do? That is incumbent in Paul's words. So in any case, Paul's emphasis here, though, deals with the revelation. He says, "I didn't know this Jesus."

When Jesus says, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Do you remember Saul's answer?

"Who are you, O Lord? Who are you?" He was so far removed, he had no context in which to grasp the Son of God. So the Son of God had to reveal himself to Saul, to Paul, and he did so on more than one occasion.Christ's instruction to Saul was not limited to five minutes after he fell off his horse on the road to Damascus, but thereafter, Christ spoke to Saul. Now, verses 16 and 17, Paul says that after his conversion, he traveled to Arabia, which is interesting. And the next verses will say he was there for up to three years. What's the deal with that? Why Arabia? If God had called Paul to preach, why didn't he immediately go to Jerusalem, sit at the feet of the apostles, learn from the apostles, as others were doing? There were other disciples that God had raised up that went to Jerusalem, that hung out with the apostles, learned what the apostles had seen and heard, and then went and shared it.

Why didn't Paul go to Jerusalem to learn from the apostles? Why did he go to Arabia, in fact, which was outside of the kingdom? Well, this was part and parcel of God's call to Paul. He was sent to people like those in Arabia or to those in Galatia and the like. Now, some believe that when he went to Arabia that he went out into the wilderness. He could have gone near the region of Sinai. This could have been like Moses. Remember, God clearly has his hand on Moses, but he sends Moses for a period of time into Midian to hang out there and to grow in his understanding and the like. Possibly that's what's going on here, that Saul or Paul went out into Arabia, perhaps near Sinai, and it's at that window that he was instructed. It's certainly possible, even plausible, that God was instructing Paul during this time. But I think he also had an active ministry, as we see in some of his other letters, in Arabia and Damascus. Whatever the case, scripture doesn't overtly declare what he was doing, but we can be sure that these years were spent in his own sanctification and growth. Let's look at verses 18 through 20 to see what would happen next. "Then after three years I went to Jerusalem to see Peter, and I remained with him for 15 days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother. Now concerning the things that I write to you, indeed before God, I do not lie."

All right, so Paul is converted. Paul is converted, then he goes to Arabia. He heads out of town, and he's there for a period of three years. Then verse 18 says that he returns. He returns to Jerusalem. Now, why? Why did he return to Jerusalem? Well, verse 18 gives us the answer, and it was to see Peter. This was his intention. Paul, for reasons we don't totally know, at this point, determined it was appropriate to interact with Peter and potentially some of the other apostles as well, but that wasn't going to be so easy. And the reason it wasn't going to be so easy is because, remember, Paul had that reputation. In Galatia, it was probably less a thing. In Arabia, it was probably less a thing. In Jerusalem, it was a big deal. The reputation he had among his Jewish contemporaries, the reputation he had amongst the Christian church, all of it was significant. He was not persona non grata when he was in Jerusalem. This was significant for him to be there, and this reputation preceded him wherever he went. In Acts 9, we read that his reputation was freaking people out when he came back. We read this, that when he came 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. You see, years of persecuting Christians meant that it wasn't so easy for him to suddenly start preaching Christ and be believed. Some undoubtedly said, "This is his most clever trap yet. This is a ruse designed to take us all in. It's a trap. He can't be trusted. After all, do you know what he did to such and such an individual or such and such a church?" See, the apostles needed to be cautious, and they were. And evidently, he only met with Peter and James briefly. Now, we don't have a record of their conversation. He was only there for 15 days. This is not a substantial amount of time. They probably didn't talk about the weather. It was probably more substantial. They probably talked about the personal work of Jesus Christ. Now, 15 days is enough to get to know someone somewhat. Fifteen days is enough to become familiar with someone, but it's not enough to give Paul a seminary education. Wherever he learned all that he learned, and he is the greatest theologian outside of Christ in the New Testament. Wherever he learned what he learned, it wasn't in 15 days with one of the apostles. We know this. Even if Peter and James, even if you had all the other apostles, and they all tried for 15 days to teach Paul, assuming that he needed it, that wouldn't have been sufficient amount of time. And that fits with Paul's words to the Galatians. He's trying to explain to them. He's saying, "Look,

after I was converted, I went three years into Arabia. Where do you think I learned the gospel there? Then, yes, I did go to Jerusalem, where everyone avoided me like the plague. I went in. I could meet with one and a half apostles. I could meet with Peter and a little bit of James. I visited with them. It was only for 15 days. How much of the gospel do you think seeped into my pores at that point? Where do you think I learned this stuff?" He's writing to the Galatians and saying, "Look, I didn't learn it in Arabia. There was no one out there. There's no churches stationed that far at that time. And when I came to Jerusalem, everyone avoided me, and I barely had any interaction at all with the apostles. So where did I learn it from? Where did I learn it from? And when?"

Remember, he's trying to press the point upon the Galatians that the only answer to that question is he learned it from God, that God must have taught him, that God must have instructed him. If I came in this morning, if I came in the pulpit, and I started to hold forth on a topic, I don't know, nuclear fission, something you all know I'm not capable of speaking to or not capable of addressing, something you all know I've got no basis of understanding in. But if I came in and started to speak and talk eloquently and wax on about nuclear fission and the like and all the parameters thereof, if I did that, the question you would have is where did he learn that? Well, given that I have no formal training in these things, given I don't know anyone engaged in these things, given that I've never read anything on it, if I suddenly started speaking about these things credibly, the only answer that you would have is a miracle. A miracle, because clearly, this guy doesn't have the ability to do it, and clearly, this guy doesn't have any background in it.God must have instructed. Well, that's Paul's point. Paul's point is, "Look, I didn't get this any other way except from on high." Let's build on that point as we look at our final verses, verses 21 through 24. "Afterward I went in the regions of Syria and Cecilia, and I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ." Nobody knew me. Nobody knew who I was. Nobody recognized me in this context. My face alone. He had a reputation that went before him, but no one knew him by face. "But they were hearing only this, that he who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith which he once tried to destroy. And they glorified God in me." I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea.

Again, this is a significant statement. He's reminding the Galatians that the leaders of the local churches in Judea didn't know him by face. They've heard about him. Everyone knew about him by reputation, but they didn't know him personally. There was no Google you could pop in a name and see what they looked like. So the churches weren't familiar with exactly who he was by face, even if they had heard about him. This suggests that it's not like he learned the gospel by sitting in church pews in Judea for years, taking notes or something like that. They didn't even know who he was. So again, what options remained? What options in terms of how he learned the gospel remained? Well, that brings us full circle to what he said at the outset of today's reading. "I made known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to men." That's not according to men. "I neither received it from men, nor was I taught it by men,

but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ."

That's his biggest point in verses 11 through 24 of chapter one of Galatians. But it's important for this reason.

If God instructed, if God revealed himself through Christ directly to the heart and mind and soul of Paul, if that's the conduit by which information flowed, then what Saul repeated, to the degree he repeated what God had said, was accurate, and it was authoritative. It was accurate, and it's authoritative. Remember, the Judaizers were trying to undermine Paul by saying that this guy, he's second rate.

He's a guy, he has this bad past, this sketchy track record, didn't even interact with the apostles. At best, he's a second-rate apostle.

He's a guy who's got this hand-me-down gospel. It's like a guy who takes a self-help seminar at a hotel near the airport. That's the equivalent of what this guy is. Don't listen to him. That's what was passed on. And if they were right, if that were true, then Paul's words wouldn't have any authority. But Paul's point in the entire chapter one of Galatians is to remind the Galatians of his authority, because what he learned came from Christ, and therefore the people needed to listen. All right, as we come to the close of chapter one of Galatians, today wraps up chapter one. We got a number of chapters left to go. We'll do this for eight more weeks. But as we come to the close of chapter one of Galatians, because we're doing this as a series, let's refresh a little bit what we've learned so far. Specifically, we learned that Paul had once ministered in Galatia, that he loved the people there. Because of that love, he was surprised to learn that they had drifted and latched onto a different gospel. And if Paul had just been one voice among many, that would have been understandable. But Paul says in today's reading that because what he learned came from Christ himself, that those who rejected this gospel, those who rejected Christ's gospel, it was tantamount to rejecting Christ's salvation. And remember, that's why he said before in chapter one that those who do this, this isn't just two people not seeing eye to eye. Those who do this and latch onto a different gospel, he says even if an angel were to do it, let him be anathema. Let him be accursed. And that was a significant statement, and it was not one that anyone would have liked to hear. The Judaizers, as we said a few moments ago, they were attempting to minimize Paul's influence because they didn't like the consequences of what he was saying. If all Paul had done was preach a gospel that tickled the ears of the people, they probably would have been just fine with that. If all Paul had done was preach something that fit with their existing belief systems or presuppositions or worldview, they would have been just fine about that. They would have thought that's A-OK.

But Paul's teaching, much like Christ's teaching before him,

it comforted the afflicted and it afflicted the comfortable.

It prompted people like the Pharisees to become agitated because they saw themselves in the crosshairs of much of what he was saying. Folks didn't like the gospel because it offended them and their sense of their own autonomy, and it called them out in ways that they didn't want to be called out. In our own day, not much has changed. People, when they think back to Paul or Jesus, they like these guys if you think of just generic things they did. If you talk about Jesus, the Jesus who heals, the Jesus who does miracles, the Jesus who turns water into wine, the Jesus who provides fish and bread, Jesus who cures lepers. If you talk about Jesus in terms of just what he did, no one outside our doors back then or now gets that offended because that all sounds pretty good, right? Jesus, the miracle guy, sounds pretty good. People like that Jesus. They like Paul when he was just being the nice guy Paul, the tent maker out helping people and ministering gently to people. The problem is that the minute that whether it's Paul or Christ or the apostles or prophets or any of these guys, the minute that they open their mouth to speak,

that's when the opposition started. Christ, if all he did was heal people and provide fish and bread, everyone would have loved him, including the Pharisees. But he did more than that. He spoke, and what he said upset the apple cart, upset their presuppositions. And the moment he started speaking, the chants, the uproar began, "Crucify him." That's ultimately where all their opposition led. So the hard part of Paul's ministry, the hard part of Jesus' ministry, the hard part of the apostles' ministry, the hard part of the prophets' ministry was that when they spoke, they were opposed. In our own day, people tend to like the parts of scripture that conform to the worldview that they already have, a worldview that's been fashioned in a secular society. If you tell people God loves them, if you tell people, "God loves you, and God has a great plan for your life," no one will get upset about that. But the minute that this same God starts giving them rules to obey,

suddenly it's something different. The minute this God starts to box them in in ways that their autonomy rejects, they'll reject him, and that's what's been done throughout the centuries. Whatever the case is, people will either overtly reject truth or they'll redefine it.

Or they'll redefine truth, and that's what was going on in Galatia. Redefinition. The Judaizers had their own points of emphasis, but others have had points of emphasis across the centuries as well. Turning to another gospel. Well, as Paul said in the first part of Galatians, that's dangerous, that's deadly, to turn to something else, to turn to something other than we have been given, to turn to a source in the created realm and take what the Creator has said and has put that on the shelf, that's dangerous, that's deadly. And that was the basis of his warning. If anyone does this, let him be anathema. Let him be accursed. The Galatians were risking that curse.

The Galatians were risking that curse. And again, they're not the only one. Every generation, including our own, is tempted to turn to another gospel, one that has just enough Christ in it to call it Christian,

but not enough Christ to save anyone who believes in it. This morning, the question is, what do we believe?

What do you believe? At the end of the day, there's only one gospel. It was summarized elsewhere in these words as we close. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever should believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life."

Full stop.

Nothing added to it.

"For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son, that whoever should believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life." This is the gospel. Let's pray for the grace to trust in it more in the time yet to come. Let's pray.