Paul, as we have seen, is so certain of the gospel of grace being the only gospel for sinful men, that he is prepared to pronounce an anathema on all who preach any other gospel. Lest it might be supposed that he took up this intolerant position rashly, he now proceeds to give us a short autobiography, in which he shows how he had received the gospel, and what a hold it had upon him. Let us notice the salient points in this narrative.

I. HIS LIFE AS A JEW. (Vers. 13, 14.) Paul, before his conversion, was the most zealous persecutor of Christianity. A strict Pharisee, he added to his self-righteousness an uncommon zeal for the old religion, and hesitated not to persecute to the death those who had embraced the new. He was zealous, but not according to knowledge.

II. THE REVELATION OF JESUS TO HIM AND IN HIM. (Vers. 11, 12, 15, 16.) It was Jesus himself who undertook Saul's conversion. There was no intermediate instrument. On the way to Damascus Jesus appeared to him in dazzling, overwhelming radiance, and compelled the persecutor to recognize, not only his existence, but his sovereign authority. That manifestation of Jesus to him revolutionized his life. Henceforth he could have no doubt regarding the reign of Jesus Christ. This was the revelation of Jesus to him - the historic interview which made Paul's career so different and so glorious. But next there was the revelation of Jesus in Paul. This was by the Holy Spirit entering into him and giving him Christ's mind, Christ's heart, Christ's compassions, so that Paul became a revelation of Christ to other men. Henceforward he was a "Christophor," carrying Christ in him, not only as his Hope of glory, but as his animating, regulating, ruling power. Paul was from that hour" possessed," but it was by the Spirit of Christ. His personality became a new centre of spiritual force and power.

III. THUS POSSESSED BY JESUS, HE BECAME INDEPENDENT OF MEN. (Vers. 16, 17.) Now, this independence of Paul had two sides.

1. He became independent of popular opinion "Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood" Now it must have been very trying to surrender all his hopes as a Jew. The fact is, he was the foremost man of his nation just when Jesus converted him. The nation would gladly have followed his leadership. There was no man who had so much weight and force of character as Saul. To renounce all these hopes, and the friendships of his early years, and to face the world a lonely man was trying. Yet he was enabled by God's grace to do so. He made no truce with flesh and blood, but renounced all for Christ.

2. He felt independent of apostolic recognition. He never thought of hurrying off to Jerusalem to stand an examination at the hands of the apostles, and receive their imorimatur. He dealt at first hand with the Fountain of authority. Hence he passed to Arabia soon after his conversion, and in the solitudes of the desert, in the places associated with such master spirits as Moses, Elijah, and Christ, he communed with Christ, and pondered and laid the foundations of his theology. He called no man master; he felt that he had but one Master, and he was Christ. Now, this independence of character is what we should all seek. It can only be secured when we have renounced self-confidence and betaken ourselves to the feet of our Lord. There at the fountain of life and power we can rise up our own masters and his faithful servants, prepared to do battle, if need be, against the world.

IV. PAUL'S INTERVIEW AT JERUSALEM WITH CEPHAS AND JAMES. (Vers. 18, 19.) While Paul was properly independent in spirit, this does not imply that he was in any way morose or unsocial. His internment in Arabia, his earnest study of the whole plan of the gospel, only made him long for an interview with Cephas, the recognized leader at Jerusalem. Hence he passed from solitude to society, and had an interview of fifteen days with the apostle of the circumcision. James, who had ministerial oversight of the Jerusalem Church, shared his society too. It must have been a blessed meeting between the two mighty apostles. The meeting of two generals before some important campaign was never so momentous in its consequences as the meeting of these two humble men, Saul and Cephas. They were set upon the conquest for Christ of the world. Now, we have every reason to believe that the interview was simply one for conference. It was not that Saul might receive any authority from the hands either of Cephas or of James. He had his authority directly from Christ.

V. HIS EVANGELISTIC WORK. (Vers. 20-24.) Perhaps through mutual agreement with Peter, Paul leaves Jerusalem and Judaea and confines himself to the districts beyond. Syria and Cilicia, territories beyond the bounds of Palestine proper, where the apostles were operating, were selected by the apostle to the Gentiles for his first evangelistic efforts. He did not seek the acquaintance of the Churches in Judaea. He kept to his own province. They heard gladly that the arch-persecutor had become a chief preacher of the once despised faith. They accordingly praised God for the monument of his mercy he had raised up in Paul. But his knowledge of the gospel and his authority in proclaiming it were not, he wishes these Galatians to understand, derived from men. We should surely learn from this autobiography of Paul the secret of personal independence and power. It consists in going to the sources themselves. If we refuse to depend upon men and depend on the Lord only, we shall secure a grasp of his holy gospel and an efficiency in proclaiming it which are impossible otherwise. What the world needs now is what it needed then - men pervaded like Paul by the Spirit of Christ, and so radiating the true ideas about Christ all around. - R.M.E.

He might, no doubt, have been the head of the Pharisaic faction in the last expiring struggles of his nation; he might have rallied round him the nobler spirits of his countrymen, and by his courage and prudence have caused Jerusalem to hold out a few months or years more against the army of Titus. Still at best he would have been a Maccabeus or a Gamaliel, and what a difference to the whole subsequent fortunes of the world between a Maccabeus and a Paul, between the Jewish Rabbi and the Apostle to the Gentiles.

(Dean Stanley.)

His natural faculties were by his conversion "not unclothed, but clothed upon"; the glory of Divine grace was shown here as always, not by repressing and weakening the human character, but by bringing it out for the first time in its full vigour. He was still a Jew; the zeal of his ancestral tribe (Genesis 49:27), which had caused him "to ravin as a wolf in the morning" of his life, still glowed in his veins when he "returned in the evening to divide the spoil" of the mightier enemy whom he had defeated and bound; and in the unwearied energy and self.devotion, no less than the peculiar intensity of natural feeling, which mark his whole life and writings, we discern the qualities which the Jewish people alone of all the nations then existing on the earth could have furnished.

(Dean Stanley.)

There are two large divisions of Rabbinic lore which may be classed under the heads of Hagadoth, or unrecorded legends; and Halachoth, or rules and precedents in explanation of dubious or undefined points of legal observance. It is natural that there should be but few traces of the latter in the writings of one whose express object was to deliver the Gentiles from the intolerable burden of legal Judaism. But though there is little trace of them he tells us that he had once been enthusiastic in their observance. And there are abundant signs that with the Hagadoth he was extremely familiar — e.g., Jannes and Jambres (2 Timothy 3:8), the last trumpet (1 Corinthians 15:52), the giving of the law by angels (Galatians 3:19), Satan as god of this world and prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:2), celestial and infernal hierarchies (Ephesians 1:21; Ephesians 3:10; Ephesians 6:12), are all recurrent in Talmudic writings. 1 Corinthians 11:10 refers to the Rabbinic interpretation of Genesis 6:2, which avers that angels fell because of their guilty love of women. The following rock of 1 Corinthians 10:4 is also a tradition.

(F. W. Farrar.)

A false zeal in religion is always, in some respect or other, a misdirected zeal, or a zeal not according to knowledge; a zeal seeking some false end, or, while proposing to itself a good end, seeking its promotion in some unauthorized way. Jehu had a good zeal, which he called zeal for the Lord of Hosts. His fault was not that he was too zealous, but that his zeal was really directed to his own advancement. The Jews, in the days of Christ, had a zeal for God; but it was so misdirected as to fire them with a frenzy to destroy the Son of God, and extinguish the Light of the world. There are countless forms of false zeal now at work; but, in all cases, they sin not by excess, but by misdirection. Some are flaming with a zeal to spread some of the corruption of Christianity, and to carry men away from its great and cardinal truths. Some are equally zealous to build up a sect or a party on other foundations than those which God has laid in Zion; and that which taints their zeal is the purpose to which they employ it, and not any excessive fervour of their zeal itself.

(Dr. Bonar.)

The most remarkable examples of zeal are found in the records of the early itinerant ministers. Richard Nolley, one of these, came upon the fresh trail of an emigrant in the wilderness, and followed it till he overtook the family. When the emigrant saw him, he said, "What, a methodist preacher! I quit Virginia to be out of the way of them; but in my settlement in Georgia I thought I should be beyond. their reach. There they were; and they got my wife and daughter to join them. Then I come here to Chocktaw Corner, find a piece of land, feel sure that I shall have some peace from the preachers; and here is one before I have unloaded my waggon!" The preacher exhorted him to make his peace with God, that he might not be troubled by the everywhere-present methodist preachers.

During the battle of Gettysburg, Chaplain Eastman was so badly injured by a fall of his horse as to be compelled to lie down on the field for the night. As he lay in the darkness, he heard a voice say, "Oh my God!" and thought, "How can I get at him?" Unable to walk, he started to roll to the sufferer, and rolled through blood, among the dead bodies, till he came to the dying man, to whom he preached Christ. This service done, he was sent for to attend a dying officer, to whom he had to be carried by two soldiers. Thus he passed the long night; the soldiers carrying him from one dying man to another, to whom he preached Christ, and with whom he prayed, while compelled to lie on his back beside them.

The purity of that zeal for religion by which we gain worldly wealth is open to suspicion. Well fare their hearts who will not only wear out their shoes, but also their feet, in God's service, even if they should not gain a shoe-latchet thereby.

True zeal is a sweet, heavenly, and gentle flame, which makes us active for God, but always within the sphere of love. It never calls for "fire from heaven," to censure those who differ a little from us in their apprehensions. It is like that kind of lightning which melts the sword within, but singes not the scabbard; it strives to save the soul without hurting the body:

(R. Cudworth.)

Human nature is prone to extremes, sometimes in that which is good. St. Paul did not deem it necessary to underrate Judaism in order to justify his adherence to Christianity, But it is not to undervalue an institution to place it in its true light, and to regard it according to its intrinsic worth. It is not to undervalue a stream, to say of it that it is not the fountain, nor the blossom that it is not fruit, nor a shadow that it is not the substance, nor a taper that it is not the sun. St. Paul knew well that the Jewish ceremonies were valuable not for their own sake merely, but as so many moral conductors to Christ; and that that end being accomplished, their virtue ceased. And he was not the man to tolerate for a moment the egregious absurdity of those who, for sinister purposes, would depose Christ from his high supremacy, and substitute the ancient ritual of Moses for the atonement of the cross, and go back to the dim twilight of the law, while living under the meridian brightness of the gospel day. But it is only when viewed in contrast with the inherent efficacy of the better sacrifice, the better covenant, and the better promises, introduced by the Son of God Himself, that he ever speaks with anything like disparagement of the abrogated institutions of Judaism; which, like the waning orbs of night when the sun is nigh, "have no glory by reason of the glory that excelleth." "YE HAVE HEARD OF MY CONVERSATION IN TIMES PAST IN THE JEWS' RELIGION; BEING MORE EXCEEDINGLY ZEALOUS OF THE TRADITIONS OF MY FATHERS." The general instruction to be derived from this reference to his own past history, and to the errors of the Galatian people, is, that great care is requisite lest objects, good in themselves, be perverted to lead the mind away from Christ.

(The Evangelist.)

I. THE RELIGION OF PAUL BEFORE HIS CONVERSION WAS DISTINGUISHED BY HATRED AND CRUELTY. "He persecuted the Church of God and wasted it."

II. THE RELIGION OF PAUL BEFORE HIS CONVERSION WAS DISTINGUISHED BY GREAT PROFICIENCY IN JEWISH RITES AND CEREMONIES. "He profited in the Jews' religion above many his equals in his own nation."

III. PAUL'S RELIGION BEFORE HIS CONVERSION WAS DISTINGUISHED BY ZEAL FOR THE TRADITIONS OF THE FATHERS. "Being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers." Lessons:

1. Paul exhibited a character in which the desire to excel was ever prominent. His persecution was above measure, his proficiency and zeal in the Jewish religion, were superior to his contemporaries. The same feature of character was observed in Christian work.

2. Paul's history teaches that sincerity is no proof of righteousness. He "thought that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth."

(R. Nicholls.)

I. Is founded on the human in religion;

II. Is bitter and persecuting in its spirit; III Indicates not true religion but the want of it.

(J. Lyth.)

Cephas, Galatians, James, Paul, PeterCilicia, Damascus, Galatia, Jerusalem, Judea, SyriaAbundantly, Advanced, Advancing, Age, Ancestral, Behalf, Beliefs, Beyond, Burning, Contemporaries, Countrymen, Deliverances, Devotion, Doctrines, Equals, Exceedingly, Extremely, Farther, Fathers, Forefathers, Generation, Handed, Interest, Jews, Judaism, Nation, Outstripped, Profited, Race, Religion, Traditions, Zealous1. Paul's greeting to the Galatians;
6. He wonders why they have so soon left him and the gospel;
8. and accurses those who preach any other gospel than he did.
11. He learned the gospel not from men, but from God;
14. and shows what he was before his calling;
17. and what he did immediately after it.

Galatians 1:14

     7551   Pharisees, beliefs
     8774   legalism

Galatians 1:13-14

     7540   Judaism

Galatians 1:13-17

     8820   self-confidence

Our Manifesto
TO ME it is a pitiful sight to see Paul defending himself as an apostle; and doing this, not against the gainsaying world, but against cold-hearted members of the church. They said that he was not truly an apostle, for he had not seen the Lord; and they uttered a great many other things derogatory to him. To maintain his claim to the apostleship, he was driven to commence his epistles with "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ," though his work was a self-evident proof of his call. If, after God has …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 37: 1891

Answer to Mr. W's Fifth Objection.
5. The consideration that none of these raised persons did or could, after the return to their bodies, tell any tales of their separate existence; otherwise the Evangelists had not been silent in this main point, &c. p. 32. None of these persons, Mr. W. says, told any tales of their separate existence. So I suppose with him. As for the two first: How should they? being only, as Mr. W. says, an insignificant boy and girl, of twelve years of age, or thereabouts. Or if they did, the Evangelists were …
Nathaniel Lardner—A Vindication of Three of Our Blessed Saviour's Miracles

The Epistles of St. Paul
WHEN we pass from primitive Christian preaching to the epistles of St. Paul, we are embarrassed not by the scantiness but by the abundance of our materials. It is not possible to argue that the death of Christ has less than a central, or rather than the central and fundamental place, in the apostle's gospel. But before proceeding to investigate more closely the significance he assigns to it, there are some preliminary considerations to which it is necessary to attend. Attempts have often been made, …
James Denney—The Death of Christ

Institutions of Jesus.
That Jesus was never entirely absorbed in his apocalyptic ideas is proved, moreover, by the fact that at the very time he was most preoccupied with them, he laid with rare forethought the foundation of a church destined to endure. It is scarcely possible to doubt that he himself chose from among his disciples those who were pre-eminently called the "apostles," or the "twelve," since on the day after his death we find them forming a distinct body, and filling up by election the vacancies that had …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

Fourth Conversation
The manner of going to God. * Hearty renunciation. * Prayer and praise prevent discouragement. * Sanctification in common business. * Prayer and the presence of God. * The whole substance of religion. * Self-estimation * Further personal experience. He discoursed with me very frequently, and with great openness of heart, concerning his manner of going to GOD, whereof some part is related already. He told me, that all consists in one hearty renunciation of everything which we are sensible does not …
Brother Lawrence—The Practice of the Presence of God

Exposition of St. Paul's Words, Gal. I. 8.
Exposition of St. Paul's Words, Gal. i. 8. [21.] When therefore certain of this sort wandering about provinces and cities, and carrying with them their venal errors, had found their way to Galatia, and when the Galatians, on hearing them, nauseating the truth, and vomiting up the manna of Apostolic and Catholic doctrine, were delighted with the garbage of heretical novelty, the apostle putting in exercise the authority of his office, delivered his sentence with the utmost severity, "Though we," he …
Vincent of Lérins—The COMMONITORY OF Vincent of Lérins

A Reasonable Service
TEXT: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."--Romans 12:1. There is perhaps no chapter in the New Testament, certainly none in this epistle, with which we are more familiar than this one which is introduced by the text; and yet, however familiar we may be with the statements, if we read them carefully and study them honestly they must always come to us not only in the …
J. Wilbur Chapman—And Judas Iscariot

The Praise of Men.
"They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God."--John xii. 43. This is spoken of the chief rulers of the Jews, who, though they believed in Christ's Divine mission, were afraid to confess Him, lest they should incur temporal loss and shame from the Pharisees. The censure passed by St. John on these persons is too often applicable to Christians at the present day; perhaps, indeed, there is no one among us who has not at some time or other fallen under it. We love the good opinion …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII

Sudden Conversions.
"By the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain."--1 Cor. xv. 10. We can hardly conceive that grace, such as that given to the great Apostle who speaks in the text, would have been given in vain; that is, we should not expect that it would have been given, had it been foreseen and designed by the Almighty Giver that it would have been in vain. By which I do not mean, of course, to deny that God's gifts are oftentimes abused and wasted by man, which …
John Henry Newman—Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII

So Great Blindness, Moreover, Hath Occupied Men's Minds...
43. So great blindness, moreover, hath occupied men's minds, that to them it is too little if we pronounce some lies not to be sins; but they must needs pronounce it to be sin in some things if we refuse to lie: and to such a pass have they been brought by defending lying, that even that first kind which is of all the most abominably wicked they pronounce to have been used by the Apostle Paul. For in the Epistle to the Galatians, written as it was, like the rest, for doctrine of religion and piety, …
St. Augustine—On Lying

Travelling in Palestine --Roads, Inns, Hospitality, Custom-House Officers, Taxation, Publicans
It was the very busiest road in Palestine, on which the publican Levi Matthew sat at the receipt of "custom," when our Lord called him to the fellowship of the Gospel, and he then made that great feast to which he invited his fellow-publicans, that they also might see and hear Him in Whom he had found life and peace (Luke 5:29). For, it was the only truly international road of all those which passed through Palestine; indeed, it formed one of the great highways of the world's commerce. At the time …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

The Early History of Particular Churches.
A.D. 67-A.D. 500 Section 1. The Church of England. [Sidenote: St. Paul's visit to England.] The CHURCH OF ENGLAND is believed, with good reason, to owe its foundation to the Apostle St. Paul, who probably came to this country after his first imprisonment at Rome. The writings of Tertullian, and others in the second and third centuries speak of Christianity as having spread as far as the islands of Britain, and a British king named Lucius is known to have embraced the Faith about the middle of …
John Henry Blunt—A Key to the Knowledge of Church History

It is Also Written, "But I Say unto You...
28. It is also written, "But I say unto you, Swear not at all." But the Apostle himself has used oaths in his Epistles. [2342] And so he shows how that is to be taken which is said, "I say unto you, Swear not at all:" that is, lest by swearing one come to a facility in swearing, from facility to a custom, and so from a custom there be a downfall into perjury. And therefore he is not found to have sworn except in writing, where there is more wary forethought, and no precipitate tongue withal. And …
St. Augustine—On Lying

Easter Monday
Text: Acts 10, 34-43. 34 And Peter opened his mouth, and said: Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: 35 but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him. 36 The word which he sent unto the children of Israel, preaching good tidings of peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all)--37 that saying ye yourselves know, which was published throughout all Judaea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; 38 even Jesus of Nazareth, …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. II

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Text: Colossians 3, 12-17. 12 Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; 13 forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye: 14 and above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to the which also ye were called in one body; and be ye thankful. 16 Let the Word …
Martin Luther—Epistle Sermons, Vol. II

Extracts No. vii.
[In this number the objector gives the whole ground of his objections, and the reasons for his doubts: which he states as follows, viz. "1. Mankind, in all ages of the world, have been, and still are prone to superstition. "2. It cannot be denied, but that a part of mankind at least, have believed, and still are believing in miracles and revelation, which are spurious. "3. The facts on which religion is predicated are unlike every thing of which we have any positive knowledge." Under the first …
Hosea Ballou—A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation

Chrysostom Evades Election to a Bishopric, and Writes his Work on the Priesthood.
About this time several bishoprics were vacant in Syria, and frequent depositions took place with the changing fortunes of orthodoxy and Arianism, and the interference of the court. The attention of the clergy and the people turned to Chrysostom and his friend Basil as suitable candidates for the episcopal office, although they had not the canonical age of thirty. Chrysostom shrunk from the responsibilities and avoided an election by a pious fraud. He apparently assented to an agreement with Basil …
St. Chrysostom—On the Priesthood

The Apostle's Position and Circumstances
PHILIPPIANS i. 12-20 Disloyal "brethren"--Interest of the paragraph--The victory of patience--The Praetorian sentinel--Separatism, and how it was met--St Paul's secret--His "earnest expectation"--"Christ magnified"--"In my body" St Paul has spoken his affectionate greeting to the Philippians, and has opened to them the warm depths of his friendship with them in the Lord. What he feels towards them "in the heart of Christ Jesus," what he prays for them in regard of the growth and fruit of their …
Handley C. G. Moule—Philippian Studies

Epistle Xlv. To Theoctista, Patrician .
To Theoctista, Patrician [153] . Gregory to Theoctista, &c. We ought to give great thanks to Almighty God, that our most pious and most benignant Emperors have near them kinsfolk of their race, whose life and conversation is such as to give us all great joy. Hence too we should continually pray for these our lords, that their life, with that of all who belong to them, may by the protection of heavenly grace be preserved through long and tranquil times. I have to inform you, however, that I have …
Saint Gregory the Great—the Epistles of Saint Gregory the Great

Jesus' First Residence at Capernaum.
^D John II. 12. ^d 12 After this he went down to Capernaum [The site of Capernaum is generally conceded to be marked by the ruins now called Tel-Hum. Jesus is said to have gone "down" because Cana is among the hills, and Capernaum was by the Lake of Galilee, about six hundred feet below sea level], he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples [There is much dispute as to what the New Testament writers mean by the phrase the "brethren of the Lord." This phrase, found in any other than a …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Indeed in all Spiritual Delights, which Unmarried Women Enjoy...
27. Indeed in all spiritual delights, which unmarried women enjoy, their holy conversation ought also to be with caution; lest haply, though their life be not evil through haughtiness, their report be evil through negligence. Nor are they to be listened to, whether they be holy men or women, when (upon occasion of their neglect in some matter being blamed, through which it comes to pass that they fall into evil suspicion, from which they know that their life is far removed) they say that it is enough …
St. Augustine—On the Good of Widowhood.

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