Southern Hills
Church of Christ
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THEIR ETERNAL WELFARE
Paul also knew that if they continued to ride down the track they had chosen, they would be lost. That's why his words sound so extreme in verse 8 and 9
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
He was not dealing with something as insignificant as the amount of respect various Christians had for the law of Moses. This was a life and death situation. Eternal salvation was on the line.
But that's the negative side. Paul wanted to make sure they understood the validity of his teachings, so he talked with them about certification.
THE CERTIFIED GOSPEL
It is one thing to claim that your message is from God; it's another thing to say it with credibility. In verse 11, Paul claimed certification, but anybody can claim anything they want to. There are people who are confined behind locked doors in mental institutions who claim to be divinely appointed spokespersons for God. What we need to consider is Paul's defense of his claim for certification.
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The Rhetorical Question
In verse 10, he employed a device of logic sometimes known as a rhetorical question.
He said,
Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Think about the force of that question. Following Christ was not the popular thing to do in Paul's day. Paul had proven his courage in the face of persecution among the Galatian churches. While Paul and Barnabas were preaching at Lystra " . . . some Jews came from Antioch and Iconium and won the crowd over. They stoned Paul and dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead" (Acts 14:19). That's the kind of treatment people got when he professed to follow Christ. Was Paul following Christ to win fan approval? Obviously not. There were easier ways to make a name for himself.
His Personal History.
Beginning in verse 13 he references his personal history in support of his certification.
"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." The word translated "destroy" means to "waste, to obliterate." He wanted to erase every trace of the church, so that it wouldn't even be retained in the memory of people. In Acts 9:1, Luke gave us a graphic description of Paul's "modus operandi." " Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples." Paul was a terrorist. If you can imagine Yasser Arafat switching sides and defending the Israelis or Saddam Hussein becoming a Christian, then you can visualize the huge change that took place in Paul. How do you explain that 180° turnaround? The answer is, Paul heard the gospel, the good news, the same good news which the Galatians were deserting.
His Jewish Credentials
In verse 14, he said, "I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers." You couldn't be more fanatically devoted to the Hebrew cause than Paul was. If an opponent thought he could get one-up on Paul by parading his genealogy, he couldn't win that contest. In Philippians 3:5 Paul recalled his Jewish credentials. " . . . circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee." In James Moffatt's translation of Galatians 1:14, he pictured Paul as saying, "I outstripped many of my own age and race." Why did he make that point? He was saying, "I climbed to the very top of the ladder you're trying to climb and I gave it all up for Christ."