Gal. 1:16-24, Things That Accompany Salvation

Remember the context.  Paul speaks of his conversion in the process of making the point that his gospel was not the product of men but of God.  God separated him and called him through His grace, so that He might reveal His Son in him.  Notice the wonderful thought: God did this when it pleased Him.  Saving sinners pleases God.  Do not forget this.  Don’t consider yourself, or your loved ones or your neighbor as too much of a sinner for God’s taste.  God delights in saving sinners.

But there is more to the story of God’s work in Paul.  The work of Paul’s conversion was performed that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.  In Gal. 1-2 we will see the fruit of Paul’s conversion.  But all the fruit has some connection with the point: the gospel which is preached by me is not according to man (1:11).

·       The fruit of a changed life, 1:16b-24.

There are some details of Paul’s life in this passage that are not totally clear, as we don’t have a record of them in Acts.  When you read Acts 9:19-25 it seems things move faster than in Gal. 1.  But the words “some days” (9:19) and “after many days” (9:23) there is plenty of room to fit a trip to Arabia and three years total time before Paul returned to Jerusalem.  Arabia actually extended to an area near Damascus.  Some wonder if this was the time when Jesus spoke with Paul, as recorded in 2 Cor. 12:1-6.  Paul does not tell us.

Here are the definite points however.  First, Paul did not  confer with flesh and blood.  Ananias went to him, to restore Paul’s sight and baptize him (Ac. 9:17-18).  Paul also spent significant time with the disciples in Damascus, those he had come to persecute.  But neither Ananias nor the disciples seem to have had a role in Paul’s developing doctrine.  We are told instead that, immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues(of Damascus), that He is the Son of God (9:20). 

The same can be said of the brief time in Jerusalem.  By now three years has passed.  Paul’s fifteen days with Peter undoubtedly involved much discussion.  But, as Gal. 2 will substantiate, Peter and Paul were on the same page.  And why not, after Peter’s lessons learned in Acts 10 through the vision that led him to go to the house of Cornelius.  Paul also says he saw James, the Lord’s brother.  The point is that Paul didn’t get his gospel from those men.  Both Peter and James were in agreement with Paul at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), though both had a leaning from the Lord to ministry among the Jews.  If some apostle had given Paul his gospel, if would not be these two and they were the only ones with whom he had discussions in his time in Jerusalem.  He then made his way to Syrian Antioch and then to his hometown of Tarsus in Cilicia.

God, who had begun the work in Paul, was continuing His work in the training of the great “apostle to the Gentiles.”  If that sounds familiar, check out Phil. 1:6.