A Word in Season: Heavenly Truth (Galatians 1:11–12)

The word gospel means good news. We talk about the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the histories of the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and the truth concerning him.

But we can talk about the gospel more widely, the whole deposit of truth concerning the person and work of the

Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, and all his saving accomplishments that he has worked for his people.

That's the good news that is held out to sinners like me and you. But why are we confident in it?

How can we rely upon it? Where does it come from? The apostle

Paul had to answer that question when he was being accused and slandered in the churches of Galatia.

There were other people who were spreading other so -called gospels, and Paul needs to contend for the truth of the message that he preached.

And he goes so far as to say that if anyone, even an angel from heaven, preaches any other gospel, brings any other message apart from the one that he and by extension his fellow apostles brought, then they are no true messengers but are actually under the curse of God.

He made known to the Galatians that the gospel which was preached by him is not according to man.

For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Galatians chapter 1 verses 11 and 12. The good news that Paul preached was not according to man.

It was not after the pattern of human thought. It runs counter to human pride.

It offers something that no human being would have dreamed up. The incarnate son dying in the place of the ungodly.

It contends against human wisdom and our own notions of how we could or should be saved.

Everything in it is heavenly. The truth of it, the substance of it, the demands and the offers that it brings, set it apart from every other religion in the world.

Essentially other religions say do, do, do, but the gospel says it is done, it is done, it is done, and offers a completed salvation to the empty hand of faith reaching out.

And Paul says that that gospel so heavenly in its substance, in its content, in its offer, that that gospel was neither received from man, nor was he taught it.

It didn't come by ordinary human means. No man dreamed it up. No human being concocted this as some wild scream or some fool scheme or some foolish dream.

Rather it was from heaven. No one passed it on to the apostle

Paul himself. He says it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now perhaps the first and most striking of those revelations was when this man, before he was a messenger of Jesus Christ, when he was still usually called

Saul of Tarsus, a persecutor of Christ and Christians, was confronted by the risen

Jesus on the road to Damascus. And we know that there were subsequent revelations that the

Lord Christ continued to make known the truth to the apostle, perhaps by enabling him to understand the word of God written in the

Old Testament, but furthermore by showing him things that he hadn't before seen.

He gave him new revelation. He made clear to him the things that the church of the

New Testament would need to know in those days and in subsequent days. And so this good news that is preached by Paul and this good news that is read then by us in the letter to the

Galatians and other places, this is heavenly truth. This is how preachers are to be assessed.

Are they speaking what Paul and the other apostles spoke? Because if they depart from that, it is no true gospel and it will damn your soul.

It is by this that every other religious claim is to be assessed. It is by this that we come to have confidence, for we know that what we're relying upon is not a human invention, not a human concoction, but the very truth of the living

God, the offer of salvation in Christ Jesus, the perfect, sufficient, saving accomplishments of the incarnate son of God, held out that faith receiving him might know everlasting life.

We do not then trust or rely upon the thoughts of men, but upon the truth of God.