Or, That Time When the Grace of God Was Nullified
Scripture: Galatians 1:1-24
Date: October 15, 2017
Speaker: Sean Higgins
The only thing worse than unrighteousness is self-righteousness. Here we are as the church, at an evening service no less, to hear the teaching of God’s Word. We are (ostensibly) not the people that love to have their ears tickled, we want the truth. And we know enough truth to know that God is holy, that God has standards, and that all have sinned against those standards. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).
The rest of Romans 1 presents an ugly picture of unrighteousness descending into disgusting and dishonorable behavior. But there is something worse. Before Paul gets to justification by faith and the righteousness of Christ near the end of chapter 3, he confronts the moral people (2:1-6), and in particular the moral Jewish people (2:17-3:20) who had God’s law and judged everyone else (except themselves) for not obeying it. Self-righteousness is worse than unrighteousness because it not only doesn’t submit to God’s law, it tries to make others submit to God’s law while congratulating itself.
Self-righteousness is a killer. It actually kills other people. Cain killed Abel because of self-righteousness. We usually talk about Cain’s anger, but why was he mad? His hatred boiled because he believed his offering should have been accepted. He did the right thing. God should have accepted his righteousness, at least as Cain defined it. The Jews killed Jesus because of self-righteousness. They believed that they were right and were doing what was right. They thought Jesus was the evil one, claiming things that messed with their system. Saul, who we know more comfortably as Paul, executed Christians because of his self-righteousness. He excelled his brothers in zeal so much that he killed for righteousness’ sake.
And self-righteousness is a figurative killer as well. Self-righteousness kills a man’s peace and joy; how can you ever be comfortable if you always have to perform perfectly? Self-righteousness kills a man’s friendships; it makes everything a competition, there must always be a winner, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. This is about what’s right after all.
And self-righteousness sends men to hell as slaves of guilt. Self-righteousness is the opposite of freedom, it is the enemy of grace, and it is the antithesis of the gospel. Men love it, God damns it.
After Paul planted some churches in the region of Galatia self-righteous men came behind him and questioned how he got the gospel he preached, they questioned whether his gospel of faith and grace was enough to save, and they supposed that such an emphasis on grace leads to unrighteous living. That’s why Paul writes the letter. It is a book of first principles, a book of the gospel, and a book about a truth always in danger of being forgotten or fought against by our self-righteous/legalistic little hearts.
Tonight I want to observe two parts to chapter one and then consider two doctrinal summaries related to the two parts of the chapter.
No other letter opening from Paul is so significant, both in what is said and what isn’t.
What is said is that he was an apostle . This, as we’ll see, is more than filling in the epistle formula; his apostolic authority was being challenged. He will defend his calling starting in verse 10 and will continue through most of chapter 2. In the first words he claims to be an apostle—not from men nor through man . He learned it and was commissioned directly through Jesus Christ and God the Father .
What is also said is that this letter is To the churches of Galatia , which makes it the only letter written to a plurality of congregations in an area rather to a single church. There are historical questions about which “Galatia” Paul means, a northern-historical group or southern-geopolitical Galatia, but it seems to fit best with the southern region through which he’d established churches on his first missionary journey.
The greeting itself foreshadows the rest of the letter.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. (Galatians 1:3–5)
Usually a doxology comes at the end of a letter, or at least the end of a section. But Paul puts sovereign grace and peace first, a work of Christ’s atonement, atonement that changes the sphere we live in without changing our street address. We no longer have to live as slaves to godless fads or to the desires of our flesh. “In these few verses the three major themes of the letter—the source of authority in religion, the doctrine of grace, and the promise of full deliverance from sin’s power—are tied together” (Boice).
What Paul does not say is anything commendable. He usually gives thanks for those he’s writing to. Even to the Corinthians, though he didn’t refer to their faith, hope, or obedience, he still saw signs of gospel fruit among them. In the Galatian churches the gospel itself was under attack.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:6–9)
It wasn’t long after Paul was among them ( so quickly ), and they believed the gospel, that they were persuaded to believe a different gospel—not that there is (really) another one . We’ll see more about what the different gospel contained in the following chapters, but it is a “gospel” that requires works of obedience to the law and rituals such as circumcision for sake of salvation. He’s astonished ; extraordinarily disturbed. This is not good news. Paul doesn’t just describe it, he denounces it. Divisions within a church are inappropriate, but if there is a different gospel, a distorted gospel, then those who preach it are damnable. Twice Paul pronounces this dedication to destruction: let him be accursed . It is the Greek word anathema, “Let him be damned.” No stronger language could be used.
One of the tactics used by the “troublers” (1:7; 5:10) was to discredit Paul’s apostleship. They had come from Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish world, where all the other apostles got their start. Paul was a late-comer. He had not traveled with Jesus. Though he now preached Jesus, certainly his message wasn’t approved by the R.P.: the Right Persons.
Paul begins a defense of his apostolic authority. I’ve heard so many times that Christians are not supposed to defend themselves, only to hear preachers turn around and point out how many times Paul does it. Rather than make an indiscriminate rule, we ought to ask Why is the defense necessary? and How is the defense made? These are the questions that need answering; it takes no wisdom to make a rule. Paul does defend himself here and he does it because the faith of the Galatians depended on the gospel Paul preached.
Paul begins by saying that he is not trying to please man (verse 10), something which the false teachers were trying to do, and I want to come back to that essential point about how men would be pleased. Then he describes how he got the gospel: I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it but received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ . This was on the road to Damascus, and the light of the Lord knocked him down.
From verse 13 through the end of the chapter, and spilling over into chapter two, he gives a timeline of his testimony not to show that he was saved but to show that his reception of the gospel and of the calling to preach the gospel were directly from God. He used to be known for his self-righteousness, advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers , which was what caused him to persecute Christians and try to destroy the church (verses 13-14). But God interrupted his path and saved him by grace (verse 15), electing him to know Jesus and to preach Him (verse 16). He didn’t go to school to learn how to do it, he went into the Arabian desert.
After three years he did go up to meet Peter, called by his Aramaic name, Cephas , and James the Lord’s brother , but even now it wasn’t to get their approval as much as it was to make their acquaintance. Otherwise he was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ . They had heard about this guy, but now they rejoiced in his conversion.
We will see more about his testimony in chapter 2.
For 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. (Galatians 1:11–12)
The troublers acted as if Paul didn’t graduate from the right seminary, he didn’t have approval through the Right People.
This is still true for us, though it is applied differently. We do not receive direct revelation from God, we receive what has been written. Paul appeals to his testimony of God’s work, we appeal to the text of God’s Word. There was nothing that men—or angels—could add to the gospel Paul preached, and there is nothing that men—or angels—can add to the letters that Paul wrote (and the other men who wrote Scripture).
Paul’s example of defending himself means mostly that we should listen to him, and there is really no need to follow his example on this point because all our authority comes from God’s Word, already revealed and received. If as a pastor or a Christian what I say is denied, I should keep pointing back to the Bible.
We are originalist readers. We appreciate the work of those who help us to understand the revelation, but we do not give anyone or anything else the same authority as God’s revelation. We are not concerned about credentials of teachers as we are that they teach what is in the Bible. I am not a “No creed but the Bible” guy, but I am a “No creed gets more attention than the Bible.”
How will we know when it is God’s revelation? I’m not talking about textual criticism and the process of recognizing the canon, let alone transmission and translation. We will identify God’s Word, among other things, in that it will never allow, let alone exalt, man’s efforts to augment grace. And this is exactly what makes men so mad. They do not get to be the hero, they must be humbled.
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. (Galatians 1:10)
God and grace are above the law. The law points to the need for God’s grace, and therefore there is no place for self-righteousness.
Paul refused to please men by pampering or pandering to their self-righteousness, which they define for themselves and measure for themselves and congratulate themselves. This is exactly what enabled these troublers to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:12). Jews loved self-righteousness, of course they would approve of these extras.
As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. (Galatians 6:12)
The two doctrinal points belong together. Though it may claim the words, self-righteousness does not want to submit to God’s revelation. Self-righteousness wants to use, or manipulate, parts of the revelation to prop itself up higher.
I chose Galatians as my epistle to study during this Sunday evening series because of Jew/Gentile, New Covenant questions. It’s been argued that this letter confounds Dispies, and I’m willing to drag my Dispensationalism through it and see what comes out. Based on the current schedule, we won’t get to chapter 6 and the phrase “Israel of God” until the first Sunday of September 2018, so we’ll have to be patient. Galatians is also more than appropriate for our study as a letter loved by Martin Luther (he called it his Catherine von Bora; “I am wedded to it.” Boice), championing sola fide, a doctrine well-remembered in this 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
But this is an important letter because we are a church more tempted toward the ditch of self-righteousness than unrighteousness. We are like those who want to make a good showing in the flesh (Galatians 6:12), those who are tempted to please men not by worldly compromise but by meeting external, community-agreed upon lower standards in order to feel good about our spirituality. But that is not the gospel. There is no freedom of conscience or experience of grace in that. Law, sin, death, devil, flesh, world are ALL defeated by faith in Christ. Satan will do anything to keep the guilt on us, including make us give wrong attention to the law. It is like a tomato plant boasting about the stake it’s tied to rather than the soil it’s rooted in. But the stake is completely powerless to make the plant produce any fruit.