1-5
Paul begins his letter by affirming his status as an apostle ordained, not by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father.
From his beginning greeting, Paul stresses God’s gift of grace to us through Jesus death which frees us from sin. It is a foreshadowing of the key theme of his letter – salvation by grace, freedom from sin and the law.
6-10
Here he states the main purpose for his writing. Paul is amazed, “astonished” is the word he uses, that these Galatian people, who were taught the truth of the gospel not long before, were so quick to desert that truth in favor of a lie.
He tells them that he is aware of the false teachers who are trying to muddy the message of Christ, but rebukes them for so easily falling for their distortions. To punctuate the seriousness of the matter, he states that even if an angel were to come down and proclaim to them something contrary to salvation by grace through faith, they should not believe him.
They need to trust God completely and only.
In verse 10, he wants to make sure they know he is not saying these things because he is looking for their acceptance of him.
If I wanted that, he says, I sure wouldn’t be a servant of Christ.
God is the only one that Paul was trying to please.
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11-24
He then reminds them, that the gospel he preaches was not given to him by any mere man, but by Jesus Christ himself.
One of the reasons he wanted to make that clear is because the Judaizers, who were the ones attempting to add to the gospel, received their religious instruction from rabbinic tradition.
That’s why they were so dogmatic about the Gentiles needing to adhere to the traditions of Jewish law, such as circumcision.
Paul is letting the Galatian churches know that the good news he is giving them, salvation by grace through faith plus nothing, is from Jesus Christ himself – not men.
Paul reminds them that if anyone had reason to cling to the law, it was him.
As a young man, he was far advanced in the traditions of Judaism. He was so zealous for the cause that he violently persecuted Christians because he thought they were the enemy.
But God had special plans for me, Paul says. He goes on to say that God chose him by His grace, apart from his own merit.
We see here, how Paul especially emphasizes the grace of God in choosing him for the apostleship as a comparison to how God chooses us for salvation – by His grace, through no merit of our own.
Paul then returns to his earlier subject of proving his claim to the office and character of apostle.
This was largely due to the fact that those Judaizers who were trying to add to the gospel were also attempting to lessen Paul’s reputation among the leaders of the Galatian churches.
He explains to them that after his conversion, he did not consult with any man, but went straight to Arabia where was further instructed by the Lord.
He then returned to nearby Damascus, where his life with Christ first began, and started his ministry there.
That ministry, as handed down by Christ, was to preach the good news to the Gentiles.
Not until three years later did he meet with any of the apostles, and then only Peter and John.
His point – his message was the pure unadulterated gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he was deserving to proclaim it simply because God had set him apart to do so.
Final Thoughts
I mentioned earlier that the theme of the whole book is God’s grace. In this chapter he speaks both of the grace through which he received salvation as well as the grace by which he became an apostle.
What better person than the former Saul of Tarsus, now Paul the Apostle, to show the mighty power of God to change a life!
