2 Corinthians 1

The Gospel of Christ is not something that man made up. Apart from Judaism and Christianity, the other religions of the world are derived from the philosophy and ideas of men. But the Gospel of Christ is not like that. It is the good news of what God Himself has done. It is the full and final truth about God and about the way to obtain salvation.

Usually we Christians first receive the Gospel from hearing the preaching of other men or from reading the Bible. Sometimes we receive teaching directly from Christ through His Holy Spirit. Whenever we receive direct teaching through the Holy Spirit, it is never a new or different teaching. The Holy Spirit always agrees with what is written in the Bible.¹ Paul, however, received the Gospel from Christ Himself, before the New Testament was written. If Paul had received the Gospel from some other man, he would have in a way been “lower” than that man. He would have been a “student apostle,” or an “under-apostle.” But Paul is fully equal with the other apostles like Peter (Cephas), John, and James (verse 9). No man has taught him the Gospel. He is a true apostle, and he teaches the true Gospel. Let the Galatians not doubt that!

And let us who study this letter of Paul not doubt it either. In the world today there are many doubters and agnostics. They say: “How can man know the truth? He can’t.” They also say: “All religions are good and beneficial, and all lead men to heaven.” But such people think wrongly. The Gospel of Christ is the one and only true Gospel. Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

13-14 Paul here reminds the Galatians of the great change that had taken place in his life. With such great severity and violence he had persecuted the church of Christ in the beginning! (Acts 8:3; 9:1-2; 22:4). How strictly and zealously he had followed Judaism,² the religion of the JEWS (Acts 22:3; Philippians 3:4-6). The Jews believed that only through obeying the Jewish law could man be saved, and Paul had shared completely in this belief. But now Paul’s main message is that man is saved only by grace through faith in Christ—this same Christ whose followers he had initially persecuted so intensely. Only God Himself could have brought about such a great change in Paul’s life.

15 God had appointed Paul to be His apostle before he was even born. In the same way, God appoints each one of us from birth—indeed, from before birth (Psalm 139:13-16). In fact, He has chosen us from before the creation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). God does not choose us according to our own works or worthiness, but only according to His grace. Paul says here: God called me by his grace (see 1 Corinthians 15:9-10). We do not earn or merit our calling; God calls us before we are born.

For what does God call us? First, He calls us to be saved. Second, together with being saved, He calls us to be His adopted children (Ephesians 1:5), to be co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17). Third, God calls us to some task or service that He has prepared for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Paul’s special service was to preach the Gospel to the GENTILES (verse 16).

16 Paul writes here: God was pleased to reveal His Son in me.³ It is not enough that Christ be revealed “to” us; He must also be revealed in us. Christ—that is, Christ’s Holy Spirit—must dwell in us, or else our religion will be but a hollow form and our lives will have no spiritual power.

17 For three years after his conversion, Paul did not meet with the other apostles such as Peter and James, the Lord’s brother. He did not receive teaching from any other man. He was taught directly by God and by Christ.

After his conversion, Paul went away into Arabia for a period, but it is not known what he did there. Perhaps he spent the time in prayer and in meditation on the Old Testament Scriptures, in the course of which he learned further about the work God had called him to do.

After his time in Arabia, Paul returned to Damascus,⁴ which is where he had first gone after his conversion. Then, after three years in Damascus, Paul finally went up to Jerusalem⁵ (verse 18).

We see from this that for Paul a time of preparation was needed. This is surely true for all of us. We do not immediately become mature Christians. God wants to prepare each one of us, and that takes time. For Moses, the great Old Testament leader of the Jews, the special time of preparation lasted forty years. In fact, it wasn’t until Moses was eighty years old that he was ready to do the work that God had called him to do (Exodus 7:7; Acts 7:23,30). Let us not think, therefore, that we can be ready immediately!

By God’s grace we are called. By God’s grace we are prepared. Each of us is being prepared continually day by day, and so we shall continue to be prepared until we die. All of us need to learn more and more of the depths and the glory of God’s grace.

All is by grace. By God’s grace the stars and planets are held in their courses. By God’s grace the right distance is preserved between earth and sun, so that we neither melt with heat nor freeze with cold. By God’s grace we breathe, we eat, we laugh, we live. God does not need man’s puny efforts to accomplish His purposes. All is accomplished by His grace. Neither does God’s love for us depend on what we do for Him. He doesn’t love us because of what we do; He loves us because of what we are—that is, His own children. And we are His children purely through His grace. Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us seek to live our whole lives to the praise of his glorious grace (Ephesians 1:6).

18 Three years after his conversion Paul finally met Peter.⁶ Paul did not learn to be an apostle from Peter. Paul and Peter were equal in apostolic authority. But why does Paul feel the need to write this? The reason is because Paul’s enemies in Galatia were saying that Peter was a genuine apostle, but that Paul was not.

This first visit of Paul to meet Peter is also described in Acts 9:26-30.

19-20 The other apostles mentioned here are mainly the original twelve disciples of Jesus (minus Judas Iscariot). But in addition to the Twelve, there were other apostles also, among whom was James, the brother of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:7). At the time Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians, James was the main leader of the “mother church” in Jerusalem (Acts 21:18; Galatians 2:9). Here Paul says that on that visit he did not meet with any of the other apostles except James.

21 Paul stayed in Jerusalem for only fifteen days (verse 18). He did not preach in the surrounding province of Judea. Instead, he left the area and went to preach to the Gentiles in Syria and Cilicia.⁷

22-24 The churches of Judea, the southern province of Israel, remembered Paul (or Saul) as a persecutor. They had heard all about his evil deeds. But because Paul did not preach in Judea, the Judean Christians did not get the chance to become acquainted with the new Paul, the apostle of Christ. Nevertheless, they heard about Paul’s preaching in Syria and Cilicia, and they praised God because of him. Those whom Paul had once persecuted were now thanking God for him. But the new Galatian Christians, whom Paul had never persecuted, were turning away from him. Those whom he had loved like a father from the beginning had begun to reject him.