Paul’s Personal Testimony
July 29, 2024
Commentary
It seems that the Judaizers had called into question Paul’s authority to teach spiritual truths. Paul begins with a testimony of his past conduct as an unconverted Jewish rabbi (vv. 13-17). He tells how he loved religion but hated Christians and persecuted them. In fact it was religion that kept him from Christ for so long. Then something happened to him on the way to Damascus that turned his life completely around. This change did not come gradually, but it all happened suddenly and without warning (Acts 9:1-9). He had been on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians and a few days later he was in Damascus telling the Jews that the Christians were right.
In Paul’s day many Jews had difficulty understanding that God’s message is for Jews and Gentiles alike. They thought of all Gentiles as heathen. Some Jews even thought that Gentiles had to become Jews before they could become Christians. They avoided Gentiles, believing that contact with them would make them spiritually corrupt. He explains to them that he did not invent the gospel, nor did he receive it from men but he received it from Jesus Christ. The gospel Paul preached came directly from God, without the help of human instruction (vv. 11-12). Paul received his instruction from Christ personally, whereas, today God’s message to man is complete and comes to us through the Bible. We need to be on guard to any who may claim to have received direct revelation from God as many cult leaders do today. The guiding principles for our life are found in the Word of God. In order to know His will for our life we must get to know His Word.
Application
It is always great to see someone who once was very hostile to Christianity become a follower of Jesus Christ? No matter how opposed someone may be to the things of Christ, I should not shy away from them but be ready to witness to them and see how “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (II Peter 3:9).
Galatians 1:11– 17 (NET)
11 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 For I did not receive it or learn it from any human source; instead I received it by a revelation of Jesus Christ.
13 For you have heard of my former way of life in Judaism, how I was savagely persecuting the church of God and trying to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my nation, and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors. 15 But when the one who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I could preach him among the Gentiles, I did not go to ask advice from any human being, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me, but right away I departed to Arabia, and then returned to Damascus.
Illustration: IBM Head Blessed by His Dad’s Confidence
Thomas J. Watson, Sr. , died six weeks after naming his son as the new head of IBM, the company the elder Watson had led for more than forty years. The junior Watson said his promotion made him “the most frightened man in America.” But he took the helm and led IBM into the computer era and ten-fold corporate growth. His success was made possible, he said later, by his dad’s confidence in him and his blessing on him during his college years, when he was more interested in flying airplanes than in studying or applying himself. (Today in the Word, February 7, 1997, p. 14).