18Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days. 19I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother. 20I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. 21Later I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23They only heard the report: "The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy." 24And they praised God because of me.
Dig Deeper
As Christians we usually think of being independent as a negative quality, yet depending on the circumstances, it is not always that way. I once knew a young man who grew up in a very tough neighborhood. Both of his parents struggled with dependency on drugs and alcohol and were not very reliable or trustworthy on a regular basis. The vast majority of his siblings and cousins either were in and out of jail or involved in activities that would soon land them there. There were also precious few role models for him to look at and admire while growing up in his neighborhood. Normally the deck would have seemed stacked against a young man growing up in circumstances like that but he was extremely independent and stubborn. Normally, neither of those are well-thought-of qualities, yet they served him well. He was determined to not be influenced by the people and things around him and he succeeded precisely because of his independence.
Although Paul was certainly in different circumstances than this young man, they did have one thing in common. The trait of independence, which is so often a negative, proved to be an advantageous quality in certain circumstances. Paul’s critics from Jerusalem that have gone to Galatia have accused him of being nothing more than a pawn of the Christians in Judea, especially the apostles. He is nothing, they claimed, but an apprentice teacher to the real apostles, one who had completely mucked up the message of the gospel that they were actually preaching. He was, according to these teachers, distorting the gospel to make it easier for Gentiles in order to please men and gain a larger following. So these men went to Galatia, claiming that they were the ones who truly knew the sort of gospel that the real apostles and Christians in Judea were teaching. They should be listened to, not this confused wannabe apostle.
Paul’s whole point in these opening passages is that he is independent. In claiming this, though, Paul must walk a fine line because Christianity is a religion of unity. He must show that, on one hand, he received his calling and his mandate to preach the gospel independently of the apostles and the Judea Christians, yet his message was not independent or different. He had arrived at the same gospel, but through independent means. He never sat at the feet of Peter, James, John or any other apostles. His gospel message came directly from Christ and the Scriptures, but Paul will also carefully show that it was the same gospel that any other of the apostles were preaching, and that he was unified with them.
When we remember the case that Paul is trying to make for his own independence in receiving the message of the gospel, we begin to see his incredible character and integrity. Paul candidly tells the truth here even though it could provide damaging fodder for his critics. It would have made his case appear much stronger to simply say that he never had early contact with Peter or James, but Paul knows that would be lying, so he tells the truth, even if it appears to make his case weaker. He did eventually go up to Jerusalem and even stayed with Peter for fifteen days (a trip that is apparently described in Acts 9:26-28. While he stayed with Peter for fifteen days, he also saw James, but none of the other twelve apostles (although James was an apostle, he wasn’t one of the twelve) We can’t ever be sure of the purpose for his trip other than knowing that it wasn’t to learn the gospel from Peter or James. It is possible, though, that the one ting that Paul would have liked to learn from Peter is some of the details of the life and ministry of Jesus. It is a fairly safe assumption that Paul knew the Old Testament Scriptures well and was able to have his entire theological world shifted once it was revealed to him that Jesus was, in fact, the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. He would have been able to recalibrate his interpretive understanding of the many Messianic passages of the Old Testament based on this new understanding, but it is doubtful that he was anymore knowledgeable about the specific details of the life of Christ than anyone else. This he could learn from Peter and may have but the details of the life and ministry of Jesus were not one-in-the-same with what Paul meant when he referred to the gospel, which was the announcement of the unveiling of the kingdom of god.
Paul realizes that his claim that he did see Peter after three years but did not receive his understanding of the gospel or his commission from him is a fact that will be attacked by his opponents, so he affirms that it is no lie. That wouldn’t be necessary unless Paul understood the risk of him being accused of lying.
Paul gives us some very important but easily missed details as this chapter comes to a close. He was personally unknown to the churches of Judea (literally, it says the congregations in Galatia that are in Christ) and yet, what was their response when they heard the report? Before we get to that, don’t miss the point that Paul has made another subtle point here. He was already preaching the gospel before he was known to the churches in Judea. We might expect though, that the response from the churches would be "that horrible Paul is now preaching some fake gospel, a watered-down version of the real thing." Yet, that was not at all there response. There certainly was some fear that it might all be a trick, and that Paul was trying to win their confidence only to further persecute and destroy the church. What was never in question for them, however, was the fact that he was preaching the true gospel. He hadn’t received it from any of them, he had received it independently. Despite that, here he was, preaching the same gospel that they knew as the true gospel. He was preaching the faith that he once tried to destroy. There was never any charge that he was preaching a different faith until these men came from Jerusalem and started making these claims. Their response, then, was to praise God because he was preaching the true gospel. For Paul it always comes down to a matter of God’s glory. Rather than being a cause for fear or more problems for the church in Judea to deal with, Paul’s independently gained but completely unified message of the gospel was a cause for them to give glory to the one, true God.
Devotional Thought
Certainly none of us could claim that we were given the message of the gospel as a direct result of a revelation from Jesus Christ and free from any human influence. Yet, would the message of the gospel that we proclaim cause other Christians to praise God? Do you regularly proclaim the gospel at all?
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