10Am 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.
Paul Called by God
11I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
13For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased 16to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult any man, 17nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and later returned to Damascus.
Dig Deeper
When I was in college, I spent one summer giving tours at an historical mansion in my hometown. One morning I went to turn the lights on in the house, which was extremely secure, soundproof when on the inside, and locked. I was the only one on the grounds at the time and as I was going from the second floor to the third floor, I clearly heard a man’s voice yell out "Nellie" twice (which happened to be the name of one of the residents of the house in the 1850’s). To this day, I don’t know if what I heard was demonic or not, but there didn’t seem to be any rational explanation for what I experienced. What was ironic was, at the time, I was extremely skeptical of any type of ghostly or demonic encounters. Yet, I had experienced something that couldn’t be explained. When I did try to tell people about it, I made it clear that I wasn’t the sort of person that just naturally believed in that type of stuff, but I had heard what I heard. I went to great lengths to demonstrate that my motivation did not come from the fact that I was a nutjob that had ‘experiences’ like that all of the time. If people thought that, they thought wrongly.
Paul’s opponents evidently accused him of ‘being all things to all men,’ but doing so as a way to curry favor with different groups of people, not unlike the way politicians will tell different groups of people different things so as to please them all. In essence, they were claiming that he was a people pleaser who was offering an easy and user-friendly gospel. Paul uses the first nine verses of Galatians to make it clear that this is not at all the case. In his opening verses he has already denounced his detractors, known as the Judaizers, and has sternly rebuked the churches in Galatia. If he was trying to please people, he isn’t doing a very good job. Verse 10 makes it clear that Paul has intentionally taken this tone. Regardless of what it may seem he is not trying to win the approval of men. If people thought that, they thought wrongly. The only thing Paul cares about is doing what pleases God. Paul, then, lays out a principle that can be applied to all areas of life. If you are trying to please men, you cannot please God nor call yourself a servant of Christ. We should note that Paul asks if he was still trying to please men, implying that he clearly believed that when he was a Pharisee, he was ultimately pleasing men even though he that at the time that he was pleasing God. He also makes the implication that the Judaizers are, in fact, the ones that are trying to please man because they are certainly not pleasing God.
As Paul often does, though, he doesn’t merely offer up rebukes to those who have mischaracterized or challenged him. He doesn’t arrogantly dismiss any charges against him and challenge people to blindly accept his authority and authenticity. He takes the time to calmly explain his position and demonstrate why he claims he is who he says he is.
For starters, he informs his readers that the gospel that he preached was not something that was passed to him by the brothers in Jerusalem or any other man. No one taught it to him, rather he received it directly from Jesus Christ. We know that one of the criterion for being a disciple was an experience with the risen Christ, and Paul definitely believed himself to be a legitimate apostle. This means that he believed that his experience with Jesus, particularly on the road to Damascus was as real as any other resurrection experience.
Whether they heard of Paul’s previous way of life from him or from someone else is not clear, but he obviously trusts that they know about it. They know that he persecuted the church. Paul uses the same word for persecute here, ediokon, that is used in Acts 9:4 which says, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" It should not be missed that Paul was persecuting the church, but when it comes to Christ, what is true of His people is true of Him. Thus, Paul realizes that in his zeal, he wasn’t just persecuting the people of God but the God of the people. His point in reminding them of this is that he was no people pleaser. Even at that time, he did what he thought was pleasing to God with unparalleled zeal. He held tightly to the traditions that the Judaizers were purporting to be so vital, so something drastic must have happened to make him change his mind.
What was it that changed his mind? The fact that God had called him by his grace. In the Old Testament times it was the prophets that were called by God and not man. The prophet had a word from God that he could not keep from speaking (see Jeremiah 20:9 for an example). They spoke the words of God regardless of how unhappy it made men (Jer. 26:10-11; 1 Ki. 19:2). Paul makes it very clear that this is how he sees himself. The apostles are the prophets of the new covenant and Paul clearly ties himself in this passage to the prophets of the Old Testament. He says that God had set me apart from birth. This is language reminiscent of the prophet who was (in language that would probably best be understood as a figure of speech) set apart in the womb by God (Jer. 1:5).
He also says that when he was confronted with the risen from Christ, he went to Arabia. Why would he do that? Paul tells us in v. 14 that he belonged to the tradition of zeal for the law which included violence to uphold the law if need be, something he was more than capable of. The two great heroes of this tradition were Phinehas (Num. 25) and Elijah who slayed the prophets of Ba’al (1 Ki. 18). Yet, in chapter 19 of 1 Kings, Elijah was stopped in his tracks by the threats of Ahab and Jezebel. He responds by going to Horeb (another name for Mt. Sinai) apparently to resign his commission as prophet but he is met by God. While there he was given a new mission from god (1 Ki. 19:15-18). Paul was no doubt quite aware of the Phinehas-Elijah tradition and was more than ready to resort to physical violence against those whom he saw as compromisers (see Acts 22:3-5). When he was stopped in his tracks by his encounter with the risen Christ, he did what Elijah did. He went to Mt. Sinai, which is in Arabia. Paul did what a puzzled prophet would do; he went to the mountain of God to resign what he saw as his commission and perhaps receive a new mission from God. Paul is basically informing us that when he heard God’s voice telling him that the messianic victory over evil had already been won in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, he had to realize that the true remnant of God’s people were the Christians who had been saved by grace and marked out by faith, apart from ethnic identity and the works of the law. Out of his fear and devotion to God, he had no choice but to renounce his former zeal and announce the Messiah to the world. Thus, Paul is clear that he has never been a man that worried about intentionally pleasing men. For Paul it had always been about pleasing God, regardless of the personal cost.
Devotional Thought
Paul believed that it was the message not the person of the messenger that validated what someone was preaching. Do you rely more on your reputation and what others think of you or do you stand alone on the foundation of your message? Paul was confident that his message and his life matched up, would he say the same thing about you?
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