(Chap. 1:11-24.)

(Continued from page 209.)

Having pronounced the perverters of the gospel "anathema," the apostle next solemnly assures the Galatians that the gospel he preached was not according to man (ver. n). The element characteristic of every remedy proposed and announced from man as a means of deliverance out of the age of evil was unknown in the gospel proclaimed by the apostle. Every system devised by men to remedy the condition of evil in which men are insists on self-effort. Man is to rise up in the assertion of his so-called better self, cast off his sins, and cultivate his better qualities.

This principle, characteristic of every human scheme for the salvation of men, has no place in Paul's gospel. The announcement he brought to men imposed no toil on them, but declared the toil of a Substitute in their behalf. His message was concerned with a work already accomplished, and accepted by God. He declared the finished work of Christ as a provision of God, a provision of grace, in the behalf of man. He announced a full and free salvation by grace, to be received in faith. Hence the gospel Paul preached was not patterned after any of the humanly-devised schemes.

We must also notice another thing. Man was not the channel through which Paul had received the gospel he proclaimed (verse 12). The risen Lord Jesus Christ commissioned the apostles whom He had chosen to be His witnesses to go among the Gentiles and make disciples (Matt. 28:19). They were thus authorized directly by Himself to preach 'the gospel to all men (Mark 16:15). Receiving the Holy Spirit whom He had promised to give them, they were qualified as well as empowered to be His witnesses, not only in Jerusalem and all Judaea and Samaria, but also in all the world (Acts i:8). Surely they were competent to teach men the gospel -to be the channels of it to men. But Paul did not even receive it from them. They were not his instructors in the grace of Christ. This he learned, as he tells us here, directly from the Lord Himself. Jesus Christ on the throne of God in heaven revealed Himself to him, and thus made known to him His grace, and chose him as His instrument to preach it. It was thus he learned the gospel and received his call. The glorified Lord had taught him and sent him.

Thus the apostle Paul had divine authority for the gospel he preached. He knew its origin, its authenticity. It was an authoritative gospel. The "perverters" of it were preaching what was of man. They had not learned their gospel from God, nor from the twelve. It was as truly a perversion of what the twelve preached as of what Paul preached. It was after the pattern of the humanly-devised schemes for the salvation of men; on the. principle of self-effort; without the authority of God. Thus the apostle could establish both the authenticity of his gospel and the authenticity of his call to preach it. The perverters had neither the one nor the other.

The way in which he does this is not only interesting, it is edifying. There is rich and profitable instruction in it. First, he refers to the time when he was a student in a human school-a school in which instruction was according to man. We know, for he tells us elsewhere (Acts 22:3), that he was instructed by the great Jewish teacher Gamaliel. He was undoubtedly well versed in that system of the interpretation of the Old Testament in which Gamaliel was a great master. He had amazingly developed in "the traditions of his fathers," and "profited beyond many of his contemporaries" in the religious system of the Jews. As proof of his wonderful development in the religious system of which he was a sincere and faithful adherent, he appeals to his zeal in persecuting and wasting the Church of God (vers. 13, 14).

The brief summary of his former manner of life shows how thoroughly he understands the characteristic principle of the system of instruction which these troublers and perverters of the gospel had introduced among the Galatian saints. As he tells us elsewhere (Phil. 3:5, 6), it was his boast that "as touching the law " he was a Pharisee, and as touching the righteousness it required he was "blameless." Acting on the human principle of self-effort, he became a sincere blasphemer. He was a determined enemy of the free, sovereign grace of God. Blinded by the power of the human principle which was governing him, he resisted all testimony to the grace that had provided for men a Saviour.

It was while he was still pursuing his way of determined opposition to the free grace that had been proclaimed among men that the risen and ascended Lord showed Himself to him, revealed the gospel to him, and called him to preach it. It is this sovereign and divine call that he here insists on (vers. 15, 16). He would have the Galatians realize not only that his gospel is a divinely-authoritative gospel, but also that he himself was divinely commissioned to preach it.

But we need to consider more fully the apostle's appeal to his divine call. There is rich instruction in it. He says:"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace." Why does he refer to his natural birth ? Let us consider it for a little.

God conferred on man, His creature, the power to propagate himself (Gen. i:28); but if the creature propagate itself by power conferred on it by God, then that power is, not intrinsically, or essentially, in the creature. It is intrinsically, and essentially, in God, the creator of all things. It is dependently in the creature. It is by the power of God that men beget; that women conceive, and bring forth. All the so-called forces of nature are of God. The operation of every force in the material creation is by His power.

The apostle's point is that the same God who brought him into being according to His sovereign will, of His own will wrought in him when he was in the blindness of unbelief. Another apostle says (James i:18), "Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth." That is what Paul is here affirming as to himself. By the power of divine grace God had laid hold of his soul. He had spoken, not simply to him, but effectually in his soul. There had been thus a deposit in his soul of a word of truth-a saying of God. As he had been born naturally by the power of God, so also by the power of God had he been new-born, "not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible," by means of the living and enduring word of God (i Peter i:23).

In his new birth he was the pattern of every new birth. His new birth was a sample case. It was a new creation in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:10). But while this is true, God had a special purpose in selecting him "to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth" (2 Thess. a:13). He had "beforehand" (Acts 22:14, Greek) "chosen" him to "know His will," to "see that Just One," and "hear His voice." He had selected him to be the vessel of His grace to men; to be, as a personal witness of the risen and exalted Jesus, the bearer of His name, first "before the Gentiles and kings," but also "the children of Israel" (Acts 9:15). God, in the exercise of His sovereign rights, had purposed him to be a herald of the gospel of the glory of His Son-a preacher of this gospel among the Gentiles.

What man of himself knows this marvelous glory ? It is a glory the eye of the natural man has never seen. The report of it his ear never hears. The reality and blessedness of it never enters the natural man's heart (i Cor. 2:9). If then Saul, the unbelieving Saul, of his own will a hater of the name of Jesus, and an insolent persecutor of His followers, is to be transformed into His bond-slave and the devoted proclaimer of His glory, the apprehension of Him-of the glory that is His-must be wrought in his soul. It was not there naturally. The God who gave him his being, calling him by the power of His grace, effected in his soul this inward realization of the super excellent glory of His Son. It was a work of God in his soul; it was believing Him whom God had sent, and whom, on His rejection, He had glorified in the highest heaven.

He had, then, been divinely called to be a preacher of the gospel. He had been divinely qualified for preaching it by a divine deposit in his soul of the reality, blessedness and power of the gospel he had been called to preach. He had been preaching it (and was still) by divine authority. In insisting on his divine authorization he is exposing the culpability of the Galatians in giving up the gospel he had preached among them for a "different" gospel which the "perverters of the gospel of Christ" had since proclaimed among them.

But he carries his argument still further. He says, " Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." We read in Acts 9:20, "And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God." He did this without consulting with man, and without his sanction. Nor was there any comparing of the gospel he had received from the Lord with what others preached. In vers. 17-19 he shows that the development of the gospel in his own mind was entirely without reference to others. In Phil. 3:7, 8 he tells us that when God wrought in his soul "the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" he counted as refuse what hitherto had been gain to him. This surely included the interpretation of the Old Testament Scriptures he had learnt at Gamaliel's feet. How useless he must have felt it all to be as he preached Christ in the synagogues of Damascus! How fully aware he must have been that his knowledge of them, his understanding of them, having left Christ and His sufferings out, had been altogether wrong!

Perhaps it was his consciousness of this that decided him to go into Arabia. There, alone in the school of God, he would, one cannot but think, be unlearning the interpretations of Gamaliel, and view afresh the Old Testament in the new light which the rejected but risen and glorified Christ, now in divine power in his soul, gave to it. As he thus read _and studied the Old Testament, how his soul must have been ravished in everywhere finding that blessed face before him! How plainly he saw now that "Moses in the law and the prophets" wrote of Him! How the gospel he had heard and learned from that super excellent Man in the glory of God expanded in his soul while thus alone with God in the desert! There he became familiar with the one only true and divinely-authorized interpretation of the Scriptures.

Thus furnished with light and knowledge, realized to be, not from man, but from God Himself, he returned to Damascus. His testimony as to Christ aroused the hatred of his fellow-countrymen, who sought to kill him. The disciples helping him to escape, "letting him down by the wall in a basket" (Acts 9:25; i Cor. 11:33), he went to Jerusalem for the first time since his conversion. He tells us it was three years after, and that the object of his visit at^this time was " to see Peter." But as he was now well established and confirmed in the gospel of the grace of God, as we have seen, this visit was not for the purpose of having the gospel authenticated by Peter. No human confirmation or authorization of it was needed. He possessed this already from God Himself. The fifteen days spent with Peter were days of communion with a kindred soul. It was a blessed time of fellowship of heart with heart; and how their hearts must have burned within them as they communed one with another! We may surmise what the great theme of their communion was -the man-rejected, but God-exalted, Christ.

It was on this occasion, as he tells us in Acts 22:17, that the glorified Lord again revealed Himself to him. At the time of his conversion he was told (Acts 26:16), "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." At the time of his conversion he was informed that the special sphere of his testimony was to be among the Gentiles. It would seem that at the time of his visit to Jerusalem to see Peter a strong desire possessed him to testify among the Jews. When the Lord appears to him, while he is praying in the temple, commanding him to depart " quickly out of Jerusalem," he reasons with the Lord against it; but he is told, "Depart:for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles" (Acts 22:17-21).

Now during his fifteen days' visit at Jerusalem, besides Peter, he saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother (ver. 19). Evidently his opportunities for conference with those who were apostles before him were very limited. But if his authority to preach the gospel depended on apostolic sanction, this would have been a suited occasion for a conference of the apostles in regard to the matter. There was no such conference. There was no apostolic hand laid on his head, not even Peter's.

In verse 20 he solemnly assures the Galatians that his statement of the way in which he received the
gospel, and of the authority by which he preached it, was in no particular false, but in every way the truth. The apostle was not writing as lifted up with pride, or as boasting of his authority, but as being consciously before the face of God, soberly realizing the importance of what he is insisting upon, and the seriousness of the spiritual state in which the saints of Galatia were-a state which, alas, was henceforth to be a continual plague and menace to Christianity. In the remaining verses of the chapter (vers. 21-24) he completes his statement as to the Source from which he received his gospel, and the authority by which he proclaimed it, in entire independence of man, without human sanction altogether. We notice that after his visit to Peter he went "into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (verse 21). In Acts 9:30 we read of his being in '' Caesarea " and '' Tarsus." It was at Tarsus that Barnabas found him some years after, and induced him to go to Antioch to take part in the work of God going on there. During this period of his stay in "the regions of Syria and Cilicia" there was no interference with his preaching the gospel in the way in which he had preached it from the first. It is true we have no records of his labors during these years. It is probable that he was quietly witnessing for Christ while waiting for the Spirit's time for him to embark on the special mission for which he had been called. He knew what this mission was, for twice at least he had already been divinely told. But as yet he had not received the authoritative word to go. He furnishes us with an interesting example of not running before being sent. It was not until at least ten years after his conversion that the Spirit said, "Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them" (Acts 13:2).

During these years of waiting for the special call of the Spirit he is acquiring experience, gaining wisdom, and establishing his character. It is as one having an established character as a servant of the Lord that Barnabas seeks for him and brings him to Antioch (Acts 12:25, 26). He went to Antioch entirely untrammeled, free to preach and teach under the divine authority by which already, up to this time, he had proclaimed the gospel. All these years he was "unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea," though they well knew that he who formerly persecuted them was preaching the "faith which once he destroyed" (verses 22, 23).

He was preaching it with the authority received from the glorified Lord, without the authorization of man, and with the knowledge both of those who were apostles before him and of the churches of Judaea. No objection had been offered to it, either by the apostles or the churches. They had raised no question as to the authenticity of his gospel or the authority by which he proclaimed it.

Doubtless the "troublers" and "perverters" to whom the Galatian saints had given ear, and whose spurious gospel they were receiving, questioned both, and sought to represent that they had the sympathy and encouragement of the leaders of reputation at Jerusalem. The apostle's declarations, in this first chapter of his epistle to the churches of Galatia, definitely dispose of their representations, and expose the guilt of the saints in allowing themselves to be affected by them.

The churches of Judaea, instead of opposing him and resisting his work in entire independence of those who were leaders among them, "glorified God in him " (verse 24). There had thus been hearty fellowship with him in his work. C. Crain

(To be continued.)
" LIFT UP YOUR HEADS "