“Look What Happened To Me”
“LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME”
GALATIANS 1:10-17
Paul writes about the great U-turn in his life.
Verse 10 is the first of the many personal utterances in this letter. Paul is on the defensive. He has been accused of offering a gospel which is incomplete and unheard-of. Now he repels the attack by taking his stand on the sincerity of his motives. Where else does he do this? (see 2 Corinthians 2:17).
1:11-17 are perhaps the clearest statement of where Paul’s gospel came from, and it is set in the framework of his autobiography in miniature. His message is not earth-born, man-made, or the product of his own fertile imagination (1:11-12). Who gave it to him? Why, the same Person who changed his life and set it on a new course.
So Paul retells the story of his conversion (literally, a turning round). First, what he was before Christ met him, summed up in the phrase “my former life in Judaism” (1:13). See also Philippians 3:3-16 and 1 Timothy 1:13-16. That old life was marked by bigotry (1:13) which made him the church’s enemy number one, singlemindedness to succeed as a Jew by really trying hard (1:14a), a zeal which made him an excellent pupil in rabbinical school, marked out for promotion (Acts 22:3).
This retelling of his preChristian ambition is broken into by one of Scripture’s tremendous “buts” (1:15). Paul’s life was from that point reoriented in a new direction as a result of God’s choice (1:15), Christ’s appearing to him and appointing him to his service (1:16). From then on he was a changed man—a new man in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). Saul had died; Paul was alive to God through Christ (Galatians 2:20; Romans 7:9; 8:13).
Notes 1:13: see Acts 8:3. 1:14: “traditions of my fathers”—these were the rabbis’ additions to the explanations of the Mosaic law, making life so hard for the average Jew, who gave up in despair. Saul accepted the challenge and was determined to excel. 1:15: Israel’s prophets traced God’s hand in their early preparation (Isaiah 49:1; Jeremiah 1:5). 1:16: Paul’s mission in life was to preach (Ephesians 3:7-9) and to carry the gospel to the Gentiles (1 Timothy 2:7).
Thought Christians are those who have been “brought from death to life” (Romans 6:13).