Where were you on the night of the 21st of September? That is the sort of question asked by Perry Mason in cross examination. Or Hercule Peroit. Or Sherlock Holmes. As they seek to find out whodunnit.
Now, the answer that you had better have to that question is quite simple. “I was at home with my wife and about 6 other people. And here they all are to testify. That’s called an Alibi. I was in a completely different city at the time, and here are 10 people who saw me."
In Galatians chapter 1 verses 1 to 10, we saw that Paul was not sent by men, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father. And we learnt what his gospel was. It is about Jesus, raised from the dead, who died for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age. And we learnt that this gospel is God’s gospel, not made up by humans.
And last week we saw that Paul declared twice: “My gospel comes from God, not men. And if anyone brings you another gospel, or adds to the true gospel, I want them dead and in hell!”
And now, in chapter 1 verses 11 to 24, Paul gives the evidence to back up his claims. He lays down the origin of his Apostolic authority. He speaks of his Apostolic activities. He gives a little of his autobiography. And he provides an alibi to account for his movements in service of the gospel of which he is a slave.
First of all, Paul reasserts that he received his gospel by revelation.
READ GALATIANS 1:11-12
Paul again says he did not receive the gospel from another person. He did not do ‘Two Ways To Live’ training. He didn’t learn the “Bridge to Life” tract. He didn’t do Evangelism Explosion training, or the first two 7 basic bible studies, or Christianity Explained, or even Introducing God. He didn’t go to the other apostles to hear it. He didn’t go to church to hear it. (Well, he did go to church. But that wasn’t to hear the gospel. That was to relocate the church to a prison in Jerusalem, because he hated Christians and didn’t listen to anything they said.) He didn’t get a crash course in the gospel from the twelve apostles. Peter, James and John didn’t tell him. Nor did any of the others. Barnabas didn’t teach him. James the brother of the Lord didn’t teach him.
Paul says, he received the gospel directly from Jesus. Jesus was revealed to him, appeared to him.
This is the famous ‘Damascus Road’ experience. (Acts 9:1-19; 22:3ff; 26:9ff). Paul was pursuing Christians to Damascus. And a light from heaven flashed around him. He heard a voice saying ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’ (Acts 9:4-6). He saw the righteous one, Jesus, and heard words from his mouth (Acts 22:14). It was a vision from heaven (Acts 26:19). He saw, was blinded, and fell to the ground. He didn’t eat or drink for three days. All he could do was pray. Until Ananias visited him and opened his eyes.
Now, this is not the normal Christian way of receiving the gospel. The normal way of receiving the gospel is the way you are receiving the gospel right now. God uses a weak human to share the simple message of Jesus Christ. This is the normal way God works. That is how Paul himself shared the gospel. And that is how he expected Timothy, for example, to conduct his gospel ministry. The normal way of receiving the gospel is teaching, instructing, declaring, announcing, preaching. In fact, that is what Paul commands Timothy to do:
'The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.’ (2 Timothy 2:2 NIV)
But Paul must establish that the origin of his authority is not men, but God. And so he gives his testimony. Now, we sometimes hear testimonies in church. A ‘Testimony’ is the word we sometimes use to describe each persons Christian story. Your ‘testimony’ is your Christian history. How you became a Christian and what Jesus means for you. We share testimonies at baptisms or confirmations or at evangelistic events.
Who has shared their testimony before? Maybe in a group? Maybe in church? Maybe to a friend?
If you are a Christian, you have a testimony? Sorry, you cannot say ‘I’ve got nothing to say!’ If you trust Jesus, you have a story of God’s dealings with you, what he means for you now, and how he has worked in you and continues to work in you. If you are not a Christian, I’m sorry, you don’t have a testimony. At least, not yet. But don’t worry. It is very easy to get a testimony. All you have to do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you have everything you need. Then again, that is very hard. In fact it is impossible for men. It takes a miracle from God to get a testimony. But that’s OK. God is in the business of miracles. And Paul himself demonstrates that you aren’t the hardest case!
Some people’s Christian history might be full of dates and names. ‘I was at the Billy Graham crusade in 1959, and the second meeting at the Sydney Cricket ground on Saturday…’ And they can tell you their Christian birthday, the day they first repented and believed the gospel. They are the ‘Before and After’ kinds of testimonies.
But others of us cannot think of dates and times in that same way. It was more a gradual process where they came to submit to Jesus and rely on him. They are the people who have ‘Always believed’. Like Timothy, they were brought up from the mother’s knee versed in Scripture. For us, it’s those of us who grew up in Christian families and going to bible believing churches. But one thing is sure. Just because you don’t know your birthday doesn’t mean you were never born!
Now, Paul is definitely the classic ‘Before and After’ Testimony.
Paul uncovers for us his life before he trusted Christ. And it wasn’t pretty.
READ GALATIANS 1:13-14
When you think of the Youthful Paul, think of ‘Hitler Youth’. A Brown Shirt! A rabid bigoted zealot whose objective was to wipe out Christians. He tried to force them to blaspheme (Acts 26:11). And when that failed, he kidnapped them, wrongfully imprisoned them and consented to their judicial murder (see Acts 9:1; 22:4-5; 26:10-11). All done nice and legally. Just like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot ‘made it legal’.
How does Paul think of himself at this time, in retrospect, as he looks back? What is his assessment of himself before Christ? We read in First Timothy…
A blasphemer, a persecutor, a violent man (1 Timothy 1:13; compare Philippians 3:6 NIV).
And the memory of his pre-Christian behaviour is always with him. So in First Corinthians he says…
I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1 Corinthians 15:9 NIV)
Again here in Galatians, he intensely persecuted the church of God, he tried to destroy it. What can we learn from Paul’s pre Christian violence?
(a) Sincere sin
First, we see that sin can be sincere. Ignorant people do evil in the name of good. And so we must watch ourselves and our world. Post-moderns judge truth by passion. If you believe it strongly, it is true for you. But that is rubbish. Sin can be sincere.
(b) Serious sin
And second, we see the seriousness of Paul’s sin, though it is sincere. Paul persecuted the church of God. He attacked the church, indeed, Christ himself. And thus, he calls himself the ‘chief of sinners’.
(c) Saved sinner
But third, we see that God saves and uses the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15-16). Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And Paul is the worst. And if Christ saved Paul. He is ready and willing to save you! For he was much worse than you.
But there is an after.
READ GALATIANS 1:15-16
Paul summarises God’s radical re-orientation of his life in three ways…
(a) Set apart from birth
First, set apart from birth. In other words, from cradle to grave, God is sovereign and in control of Paul’s life. Even before Paul became a Christian. It wasn’t as if God set Paul apart from birth, but then abandoned him in his errant and sinful youth, only to bring him back on the Damascus Road. God just didn’t step into his life after he prayed the prayer. God was there through it all, through all the violence, all the hatred. So that while Paul was blaspheming, threatening, kidnapping, and condemning Christians to death, God was patiently putting up with him, allowing it to happen. God could have struck him dead. But he didn’t. For God had already made a decision about Paul. In fact, before the foundation of the world, God had made a decision about Paul, as he does about every believer. And so Paul’s parents, his upbringing, his childhood, his religious background and training, his temprement, his gifts, his weaknesses, all of these God planned to use in his plan of saving the world.
God was even sovereign over Paul’s sin. Sin for which Paul is completely responsible. But which God predestined and allowed and used for God’s own good purposes. Paul did evil. The worst evil anyone can do. To persecute the church of God – Christ’s precious bride and body. But God meant it for good. And even when Paul was out of control, lost to his hatred, God was always in control. So Paul’s bitter opposition to the gospel God now uses. God used it for good.
How about you? Do you look back over your life and see disasters, pain, suffering and sins. Are there tragedies which require healing and sins requiring repentance? And wounds which (like Frodo’s wound from the Morgul blade) may never fully heal this side of glory.
God will and does use them for good. For God works all things after the counsel of his own will (Ephesians 1:11). He will raise good from the ashes of suffering and evil. Even yours. He always and everywhere remains in control. God is sovereign and absolutely in control over everything in your life just as over the life of Paul of Tarsus. Over every life lost in every Tsunami and every Earthquake. Over every bomb detonated in Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere else. Over the things that are going on in your life right now. Humans might mean them for evil, but God means them for good, and will bring good out of them. Paul was set apart from birth.
(b) called by God’s grace
Second, Paul says God called me by his grace… This we might call God’s effectual calling. God was always calling on Paul to submit to Christ in the gospel. From the first time Paul heard the gospel, perhaps even from the mouth of Stephen, of whose death Paul approved, God had been graciously calling him. This is the outward call of the gospel, to all the world.
But it is only when God enables what he commands, by his grace which goes before, his prevenient grace, or his effectual call, by the regeneration granted by the Holy Spirit that must precede every human movement toward God, that sinful Paul obeyed the call to come to Christ.
Have you come to Christ? Then know it is only by a work of the Holy Spirit within you. You could not have done it left to yourself. How could you! You were dead in your transgressions and sins, blindly serving the Prince of the Kingdom of the Air, the devil, and enslaved to your own sinful desires. That is what it means to be ‘totally depraved’. Not that we are as bad as we can be. But that sin has so effected every area of our existence, so enslaved us, that God must go before with effectual calling by his Holy Spirit, that God must regenerate to change our hearts so that we will repent and believe.
As Article 10 of the 39 Articles says, in the back of our Prayer Books:
X. Of Free Will
The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God: Wherefore, we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing (from the Latin, praeveniens, meaning ‘to come or go before’, hence, ‘enabling’[1]) that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
(c) Deep-down revelation of the Son to Paul
Third, Paul says God was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles…
God gave Paul deep-down insight. We might call it inner illumination. Light globes went on in the darkness of Paul’s mind. ‘Jesus is the Son of God’. And this realisation gripped Paul at the very core of his being. Only this inner revelation can explain the change from persecutor to missionary. He believed in his heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, and so he confessed with his mouth to the gentiles ‘Jesus is Lord’. Having believed, he spoke. And speaking, he became a missionary to the Gentiles.
None of us are apostles as Paul was. My guess is that none of us has had a vision of Jesus as Paul did on the Damascus Road. However, God’s work in Paul’s heart also describes God’s work in all his children. God sets apart all his children, every Christian, from birth. Indeed, from before the creation of the world. And God effectually calls them to himself by his grace. He enables what he commands. And God gives inner illumination in his children. Jesus is the Son of God.
Paul’s point in verses 17-22 is to argue that after he became a Christian, he didn’t seek to get ‘human authorisation’, whether from Jerusalem or anywhere else to preach Christ. His authority came from God and Christ, not from head office in Jerusalem. And so Paul presents an alibi defence. That he went from Damascus to Arabia, And then returned to Damascus. And only then, after three years of mission work, did he go to Jerusalem.
Sometimes when a person becomes a Christian, because of who they are almost immediately thrust into Christian leadership. Augustine was one, baptised in 387 and made a presbyter 4 years later. Spurgeon was another, who preached his first sermon at 16 and first pastorate at 18.
And because of who Paul was, trained in the Old Testament Scriptures and having received a revelation from God, after only a few days Paul had taken up his mission to preach Christ. Let me read from Acts chapter 9 last part of verses 19 to 21
Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Christ.
We know he had to leave Damascus. He was lowered down the wall in a basket (Acts 9:25; 1 Cor 11:32). We don’t know exactly why he went to Arabia[2]. He had to leave Damascus because there was a Jewish conspiracy to kill him. But it would fit with both the call of Christ and his conduct in Damascus that he went into Arabia to preach Christ. It is most likely that Paul was from the very first engaged in mission to the Gentiles, preaching the gospel to the Nabatean tribes[3]. After that, he returned to Damascus, no doubt continuing his mission. In other words, for three years he hadn’t even met an apostle, and he was doing the work of mission. And then, when he did go to Jerusalem, he only stayed with Peter for 15 days. He saw James, the Lord’s brother, but none of the others. And Paul swears an oath to affirm the truth of what he says. But he had to leave Jerusalem after only 15 days, again because of a plot against his life (cf Acts 9:29-30). And so he went into Cyria and Cilicia, again we take it, fulfilling the commission God gave him to preach Christ the son of God.
Paul’s about-face is miraculous. Paul’s activities as a persecutor were notorious. But his activities as a Christian missionary became even more widely known. His sin was public. So his repentance was even more public. And the report reached the Judean churches.
READ GALATIANS 1:23
That is the appropriate response when a sinner turns from the sins he commits. Praising God.
Think of the loved ones, or your friends, who give you a hard time for being a Christian. Or just ignore you. Imagine that God gives them the gift of faith in answer to your many prayers. What will be our response? Will it not be thanks and praise for God’s kindness and love.
So in closing, I am going to pray that we experience the joy of praising God for the salvation of those who are opponents of the gospel. Let’s pray.
[1] R A Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms Drawn Principally From Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 243, 132
[2] Lightfoot and Stott argue he went to Damascus for quiet reflection, Fung and Bruce for mission. Mission seems more likely to me.
[3] As argued, inter alios, by Hengel and Schwermer, and by Schnabel.