For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it. I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didn’t immediately confer with flesh and blood,
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Galatians 1:13-16 sits inside this longer paragraph.
But I make known to you, brothers, concerning the Good News which was preached by me, that it is not according to man. For I didn’t receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it. I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didn’t immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia. Then I returned to Damascus.
Parallel Translations
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For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it.
I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace
to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didn’t immediately confer with flesh and blood,
-
For ye have hearde of my conversacion in tyme past in the Iewes wayes how that beyonde measure I persecuted the congregacion of God and spoyled it:
and prevayled in the Iewes laye above many of my companions which were of myne awne nacion and was a moche more fervet mayntener of the tradicions of the elders.
But when it pleased God which seperated me from my mothers wombe and called me by his grace
for to declare his sonne by me that I shuld preache him amonge the hethen: immediatly I comened not of the matter with flesshe and bloud
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For ye haue heard of my conuersation in time past, in the Iewish religion, how that I persecuted the Church of God extremely, and wasted it,
And profited in the Iewish religion aboue many of my companions of mine owne nation, and was much more zealous of the traditions of my fathers.
But when it pleased God (which had separated me from my mothers wombe, and called me by his grace)
To reueile his Sonne in me, that I should preach him among the Gentiles, immediatly I communicated not with flesh and blood:
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Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (80)
- Jeremiah 1:5 (v15) “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.”
- Isaiah 49:5 (v15) Now Yahweh, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, says to bring Jacob again to him, and to gather Israel to him, for I am…
- Isaiah 49:1 (v15) Listen, islands, to me. Listen, you peoples, from afar: Yahweh has called me from the womb; from the inside of my mother, he has mentioned…
- 2 Timothy 1:9 (v15) who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to…
- Ephesians 1:5 (v15) having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire,
Show all 79 cross-references
- 1 Corinthians 1:9 (v15) God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
- 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14 (v15) But we are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation…
- Romans 1:1 (v15) Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Good News of God,
- Acts 9:15 (vv15–16) But the Lord said to him, “Go your way, for he is my chosen vessel to bear my name before the nations and kings, and the children of Israel.
- Matthew 16:17 (v16) Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
- Acts 13:2 (v15) As they served the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them.”
- Colossians 2:8 (v14) Be careful that you don’t let anyone rob you through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the elements of the…
- 1 Samuel 12:22 (v15) For Yahweh will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased Yahweh to make you a people for himself.
- 1 Chronicles 28:4-5 (v15) However Yahweh, the God of Israel, chose me out of all the house of my father to be king over Israel forever. For he has chosen Judah to be…
- Matthew 11:26 (v15) Yes, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in your sight.
- Luke 1:15-16 (v15) For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine nor strong drink. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even…
- Acts 8:3 (v13) But Saul ravaged the assembly, entering into every house and dragged both men and women off to prison.
- Acts 22:3-5 (v13) “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict…
- Acts 26:5 (v14) having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
- Romans 1:5 (v15) through whom we received grace and apostleship for obedience of faith among all the nations for his name’s sake;
- Romans 8:30 (v15) Whom he predestined, those he also called. Whom he called, those he also justified. Whom he justified, those he also glorified.
- 1 Corinthians 15:9 (v13) For I am the least of the apostles, who is not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the assembly of God.
- Deuteronomy 7:7-8 (v15) Yahweh didn’t set his love on you nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples;…
- Luke 10:21 (v15) In that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these…
- Acts 22:3 (v14) “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict…
- Acts 22:14-15 (v15) He said, ‘The God of our fathers has appointed you to know his will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear a voice from his mouth. For…
- Acts 26:4-5 (v13) “Indeed, all the Jews know my way of life from my youth up, which was from the beginning among my own nation and at Jerusalem; having known…
- 1 Corinthians 1:1 (v15) Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
- 1 Corinthians 1:24 (v15) but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God;
- 1 Corinthians 15:10 (v15) But by the grace of God I am what I am. His grace which was given to me was not futile, but I worked more than all of them; yet not I, but…
- Galatians 1:6 (v15) I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different “good news”,
- Ephesians 1:9 (v15) making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him
- Ephesians 3:5-10 (v16) which in other generations was not made known to the children of men, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets in the…
- Ephesians 3:11 (v15) according to the eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Philippians 3:4-6 (v14) though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If any other man thinks that he has confidence in the flesh, I yet more:…
- 1 Peter 5:10 (v15) But may the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a little while, perfect,…
- Matthew 15:6 (v14) he shall not honor his father or mother.’ You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition.
- Acts 9:21 (v13) All who heard him were amazed, and said, “Isn’t this he who in Jerusalem made havoc of those who called on this name? And he had come here…
- Acts 9:26 (v13) When Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a…
- Acts 26:9-11 (v13) “I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. I also did this in Jerusalem. I…
- 1 Timothy 1:13 (v13) although I used to be a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent. However, I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
- Jeremiah 9:14 (v14) but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.”
- Matthew 26:41 (v16) Watch and pray, that you don’t enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
- Acts 8:1 (v13) Saul was consenting to his death. A great persecution arose against the assembly which was in Jerusalem in that day. They were all…
- Acts 9:1-2 (v13) But Saul, still breathing threats and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters from him…
- Acts 9:13-14 (v13) But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he did to your saints at Jerusalem. Here he has authority…
- Acts 26:9 (v14) “I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
- Romans 9:24 (v15) us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?
- Ephesians 1:17-18 (v16) that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him,…
- Ephesians 6:12 (v16) For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the…
- Philippians 3:6 (v13) concerning zeal, persecuting the assembly; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.
- 1 Timothy 1:12-14 (v15) I thank him who enabled me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he counted me faithful, appointing me to service; although I used to be a…
- 1 Peter 1:8 (v14) whom, not having known, you love. In him, though now you don’t see him, yet believing, you rejoice greatly with joy that is unspeakable and…
- Deuteronomy 33:9 (v16) He said of his father, and of his mother, ‘I have not seen him.’ He didn’t acknowledge his brothers, nor did he know his own children; for…
- Isaiah 29:13 (v14) The Lord said, “Because this people draws near with their mouth and honors me with their lips, but they have removed their heart far from…
- Isaiah 57:12 (v14) I will declare your righteousness; and as for your works, they will not benefit you.
- Matthew 15:2-3 (v14) “Why do your disciples disobey the tradition of the elders? For they don’t wash their hands when they eat bread.” He answered them, “Why do…
- Mark 7:3-13 (v14) (For the Pharisees and all the Jews don’t eat unless they wash their hands and forearms, holding to the tradition of the elders. They don’t…
- Luke 9:23-25 (v16) He said to all, “If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save…
- Luke 9:59-62 (v16) He said to another, “Follow me!” But he said, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to…
- Acts 22:21 (v16) “He said to me, ‘Depart, for I will send you out far from here to the Gentiles.’”
- Acts 26:17-20 (v16) delivering you from the people, and from the Gentiles, to whom I send you, to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light…
- Romans 1:13-14 (v16) Now I don’t desire to have you unaware, brothers, that I often planned to come to you, and was hindered so far, that I might have some…
- Romans 11:13 (v16) For I speak to you who are Gentiles. Since then as I am an apostle to Gentiles, I glorify my ministry;
- Romans 15:16-19 (v16) that I should be a servant of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, serving as a priest of the Good News of God, that the offering up of the…
- 1 Corinthians 2:9-13 (v16) But as it is written, “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has…
- 2 Corinthians 4:6 (v16) seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory…
- Galatians 1:11-12 (v16) But I make known to you, brothers, concerning the Good News which was preached by me, that it is not according to man. For I didn’t receive…
- Ephesians 3:1 (v16) For this cause I, Paul, am the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles,
- Jeremiah 15:2 (v14) It will happen, when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go out?’ then you shall tell them, ‘Yahweh says: “Such as are for death, to death; such…
- 1 Corinthians 15:50 (v16) Now I say this, brothers, that flesh and blood can’t inherit God’s Kingdom; neither does the perishable inherit imperishable.
- 2 Corinthians 5:16 (v16) Therefore we know no one after the flesh from now on. Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him so no more.
- Galatians 2:1 (v16) Then after a period of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me.
- Galatians 2:6-9 (v16) But from those who were reputed to be important—whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God doesn’t show partiality to man—they,…
- Colossians 1:25-27 (v16) of which I was made a servant according to the stewardship of God which was given me toward you to fulfill the word of God, the mystery…
- 1 Thessalonians 2:16 (v16) forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they may be saved, to fill up their sins always. But wrath has come on them to the uttermost.
- 1 Timothy 2:7 (v16) to which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle—I am telling the truth in Christ, not lying—a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
- 2 Timothy 1:11 (v16) For this I was appointed as a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.
- Hebrews 2:14 (v16) Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might…
79 distinct cross-references across this passage (80 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (25 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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Martin Luther 1535 · Public Domain On vv13–16 VERSES 13, 14. For ye have heard of my…
VERSES 13, 14. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation.
This passage does not contain doctrine. Paul adduces his own case for an example. "I have," he says, "at one time defended the traditions of the Pharisees more fiercely than any of your false apostles. Now, if the righteousness of the Law had been worth anything I would never have forsaken it. So carefully did I live up to the Law that I excelled many of my companions. So zealous was I in defense of the Law that I wasted the church of God."
Martin Luther — Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), English translation by Theodore Graebner (Zondervan, 1939) — public domain (U.S. copyright not renewed). Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv13, 15, 16 13. For ye have heard of my conversation. The…
13. For ye have heard of my conversation. The whole of this narrative was added as a part of his argument. He relates that, during his whole life, he had such an abhorrence of the gospel, that he was a mortal enemy of it, and a destroyer of the name of Christianity. Hence we infer that his conversion was divine. And indeed he calls them as witnesses of a matter not at all doubtful, so as to place beyond controversy what he is about to say.
His equals were those of his own age; for a comparison with older persons would have been unsuitable. When he speaks of the traditions of the fathers, he means, not those additions by which the law of God had been corrupted, but the law of God itself, in which he had been educated from his childhood, and which he had received through the hands of his parents and ancestors. Having been strongly attached to the customs of his fathers, it would have been no easy matter to tear him from them, had not the Lord drawn him by a miracle.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv13–16 He proveth that he was extraordinarily taught of Christ…
He proveth that he was extraordinarily taught of Christ himself, by the history of his former life, which the Galatians themselves know well enough: for saith he, it is well known in what school I was brought up, even from a child, to wit, amongst the deadly enemies of the Gospel. And no man may cavil and say that I was a scholar of the Pharisees in name only and not in deed, no man is ignorant, how that I excelled in Pharisaism, and was suddenly made of a Pharisee, an Apostle of the Gentiles, so that I had no space to be instructed of men.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv13–16 13 For ye have heard of my conversation in…
13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:
Ver. 13. And wasted it] επορθουν. As an enemy’s country with fire and sword. Mars is styled πτολιπορθος. (Homer.)
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv13–16 It will be no difficult thing for you to…
It will be no difficult thing for you to believe, that I had never preached the gospel without a Divine revelation of the truth of it, if you do but reflect upon my former conversation; for you cannot but have heard, that I was born a Jew, educated in the Jewish religion, and was a zealous defender of it, so as I persecuted the Christians beyond measure. This unmeasurable persecution is expressed by Luke more particularly, Act 8:3; He made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women, committed them to prison; and Act 9:1; He breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, &c. He wasted the church like an enemy that useth fire and sword, and all means to destroy. The word here used is επορθουν, which signifies to make a devastation; the word used in Act 8:3 is ελυμαινετο both words signify the most ruinating hostile actions. And this he saith was his conversation, or constant practice, so as they might reasonably think that something more than human had made a change in him, that he should now be a preacher of that doctrine, which he had before so abominated as that his whole business was to root out those that professed it.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv13, 15 Here the apostle offers several arguments to satisfy the…
Here the apostle offers several arguments to satisfy the Galatians, that both his commission to preach the gospel, and also the gospel which he preached to them, were not from man, but our Lord Jesus Christ. And the first argument to prove it, as a convictive evidence of it, was his bitter enmity against the Christian religion, and his mighty zeal for the Jewish religion, in which he was educated and brought up: All which he mentions as a thing publicly known, leaving them to infer from thence, that so great and sudden a change could not be the effect of human persuasion, but divine revelation; In time past I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it.
Where note, that although our apostle did not shun to make an open confession of his wicked life, before his conversion, that he might thereby make evident, that his conversion was immediately from God, yet he makes an open confession only of his open sins, such as they had heard of in time past, without discovering his secret sins, which had been kept from the knowledge of the world, the divulging whereof would but have multiplied scandals and stumbling-blocks unto others. To confess our secret sins to God, is safe; to confess our open sins to the world, is sufficient.
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Observe farther, the commendable proficiency which St. Paul made in the Jewish religion, wherein he was educated, I profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals. He was also a zealous maintainer of the Jewish customs, and unwritten traditions, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers. From St. Paul’s example we may infer, that it is a special duty incumbent upon all persons to make religion the matter of their choice; and having espoused it, to be the more serious and zealous in it; to labour to advance and grow both in the knowlege and in the practice of it; and that to a degree of eminecy, excelling and outstripping others: I profited in the Jewish religion above many my equals, or contemporaries.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv13–16 For ye have heard of my conversation in time…
For ye have heard of my conversation in time past,.... His manner and course of life, in his state of unregeneracy, how diametrically opposite his education and behaviour, his principles and practices, were to the Gospel; which show that he had not received it, nor was he taught it of men. This they might have heard of, either from himself, when he first preached among them, who was very free to acknowledge his former sins and errors; or from the Jews, who were scattered abroad in the several countries; and it may be, from them, who were forced to fly to strange cities, and perhaps to some in Galatia, on account of his persecution: now his life and conversation, before his conversion, were spent
in the Jews' religion; or "in Judaism". He was born of Jewish parents, had a Jewish education, was brought up under a Jewish doctor, in all the peculiarities of the Jewish religion, and so could have received no hints, not in a notional way, of the truths of the Gospel; which he might have done, had he been born of Christian parents, and had had a Christian education: besides, he was brought up in the religion of the Jews, not as it was founded and established by God, but as it was corrupted by them; who had lost the true sense of the oracles of God committed to them, the true use of sacrifices, and the end of the law; had added to it a load of human traditions; placed all religion in bare doing, and taught that justification and salvation lay in the observance of the law of Moses, and the traditions of the elders: add to this, that he was brought up in the sect of the Jewish religion, Pharisaism, which was the straitest sect of it, and the most averse to Christ and his Gospel; so that he could never receive it, or have any disposition to it from hence; so far from it, that he appeals to the Galatians, as what they must have heard,
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how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God; which he now knew, and believed to be the church of God; though then he did not, but rather a synagogue of Satan; and this he mentions, as an aggravation of his sin, under a sense of which he was humbled all his days: when he is said to persecute it "beyond measure", the meaning is not, as if there were any lawful measure, or due bounds of persecution, but that he persecuted the saints in a most violent and outrageous manner, beyond all others that were concerned with him: the church of God at Jerusalem is particularly designed, and the members of it, the disciples of Christ; whom he hated, and committed to prison, and breathed out threatenings and slaughter against, and destroyed: wherefore it follows, and wasted it; or destroyed it; as much as in him lay, he sought to do it, though he was not able to effect it entirely; he made havoc of it, dispersed its members, caused them to flee to strange cities, persecuted them to death, gave his voice against them to have them punished and put to death: such an aversion had he to the followers of Christ, and the Christian doctrine.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv13–16 I Persecuted the church of God - That is,…
I Persecuted the church of God - That is, the believers in Christ.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv13–16 Verse 13. Ye have heard of my conversation] τηνεμην…
Verse 13. Ye have heard of my conversation] τηνεμην αναστροφην. My manner of life; the mode in which I conducted myself.
Beyond measure I persecuted the Church] For proofs of this the reader is referred to Ac 9:1-2 (note); Ac 22:4 (note), and the notes there. The apostle tells them that they had heard this, because, being Jews, they were acquainted with what had taken place in Judea, relative to these important transactions.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv13, 15 Gal 1:13-14. For ye have heard of my conversation…
Gal 1:13-14. For ye have heard of my conversation in time past — As if he said, To convince you that I received the knowledge of the gospel by immediate revelation from Christ, I appeal to my behaviour, both before and after I was made an apostle; in the Jewish religion — Εν τω Ιουδαισμω, in Judaism. The expression is well chosen; and, as L’Enfant justly observes, is not intended by the apostle of the religion originally taught by Moses, and contained in his writings and those of the prophets, but, as is evident from the latter part of the next verse, of that which was practised among the Jews at this time, and consisted in a great degree in observing the traditions of the fathers, and the commandments of men. How that beyond measure — Καθ’ υπερβολην, exceedingly, and with the most insatiable rage; I persecuted the church of God — Whether considered as individual believers, or as persons united in religious societies and congregations; and wasted it — Ravaged it with all the fury of a beast of prey. So the word επορθουν, here used, signifies. And profited — Made proficiency in the knowledge and practice of Judaism; above many of my equals — Many of the same age with myself; in mine own nation — Or who were of the same standing in the study of the law; being more exceedingly zealous of the unwritten traditions of my fathers — Over and above the doctrines and precepts written in the law. These were what the evangelists and our Lord called the traditions of men, and their own traditions, (Mar 7:8-9,) to show that they were mere human inventions. “It was the characteristic of a Pharisee to hold these traditions as of equal authority with the precepts of the law. Nay, in many cases, they gave them the preference. Hence our Lord told them, Mar 7:9, Full well ye reject the commandments of God, that ye may keep your own traditions. The apostle mentions his knowledge of the traditions of the fathers, and his zeal for them, as things absolutely necessary to salvation, to convince the Galatians that his preaching justification without the works of the law, could be attributed to nothing but the force of truth communicated to him by revelation.” — Macknight.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv13–16 For ye have heard of my conversation - My…
For ye have heard of my conversation - My conduct, my mode of life, my deportment; see the note at 2Co 1:12. Probably Paul had himself made them acquainted with the events of his early years. The reason why he refers to this is, to show them that he had not derived his knowledge of the Christian religion from any instruction which he had received in his early years, or any acquaintance which he had formed with the apostles. At first, Paul had been decidedly opposed to the Lord Jesus, and had been converted only by God’s wonderful grace.
In the Jews’ religion - In the belief and practice of Judaism; that is, as it was understood in the time when he was educated. It was not merely in the religion of Moses, but it was in that religion as understood and practiced by the Jews in his time, when opposition to Christianity constituted a very material part of it. In that religion Paul proceeds to show that he had been more distinguished than most persons of his time.
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How that beyond measure - In the highest possible degree; beyond all limits or bounds; exceedingly. The phrase which Paul uses here (καθ ̓ ὑπερβολὴν kath' huperbolēn), by hyperbole, is one which he frequently employs to denote anything that is excessive, or that cannot be expressed by ordinary language; see the Greek text in Rom 7:13; 1Co 12:31; 2Co 1:8; 2Co 4:7, 2Co 4:17.
I persecuted the church - See Act 8:3; Act 9:1 ff.
And wasted it - Destroyed it. The word which is used here, means properly to waste or destroy, as when a city or country is ravaged by an army or by wild beasts. His purpose was utterly to root out and destroy the Christian religion.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv14, 16 He here alludes to his being a Pharisee, as…
He here alludes to his being a Pharisee, as he himself mentions more openly in Acts xxiii. 6. A Pharisee, and son of Pharisees. This sect always distinguished itself by its zeal for ancient traditions, which shews evidently that he was very far from being instructed in a religion of which he was the sworn enemy; nor since his conversion did he apply for instruction. What he delivered, he learned not of man, but of God. See below.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv13–16 heard--even before I came among you.
heard--even before I came among you.
conversation--"my former way of life."
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Jews' religion--The term, "Hebrew," expresses the language; "Jew," the nationality, as distinguished from the Gentiles; "Israelite," the highest title, the religious privileges, as a member of the theocracy.
the church--Here singular, marking its unity, though constituted of many particular churches, under the one Head, Christ.
of God--added to mark the greatness of his sinful alienation from God (Co1 15:19).
wasted--laid it waste: the opposite of "building it up."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv13–16 13. Ye have heard—Rather, ye heard; that is, ye…
13. Ye have heard—Rather, ye heard; that is, ye heard it from me, narrated in my preaching to you. See note, Act_22:1. Paul, by showing how he was converted, and from what deep anti-Christianity, shows men how they are to be converted. This is experimental religion.
Conversation—The word implies the entire mode of life.
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Jews’ religion—Literally, Judaism.
Persecuted—Pursued as a chasing warrior.
Wasted—Devastated, usually spoken of ravaging or devastating a country or city. He paints his own sin in vivid words, prompted by deep penitence.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv13–16 13. Nothing short of a miracle could account for…
13. Nothing short of a miracle could account for the change which had taken place in the life and aims of St Paul (comp. Php_3:4-10). It was not likely that a man with such antecedents should have accepted the Gospel with its consequences on merely human testimony.
ye have heard] Rather, Ye heard from myself when I was with you, and (perhaps) from my colleagues.
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my conversation] i.e. my manner of life, as Eph_4:22; Heb_13:7; Jas_3:13, &c. In Php_1:27; Php_3:20 the same English word represents a different word in the original, and refers to civil and political duties and privileges, rather than those which are personal and social.
the Jews’ religion] One word in the original, which does not occur elsewhere in the N. T. except in Gal_1:14. From the use of the corresponding verb, we may regard it as referring not to the religion revealed to the Jews in the writings of Moses and the prophets, but that which was its actual development in St Paul’s day, when the word of God had been overlaid and ‘made of none effect’ by the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees, and the puerile conceits of the Rabbinic expositors.
I persecuted the church of God] The same sad confession is made 1Co_15:9. There is solemnity in the addition of the words “of God”. The identical expression occurs in the Sept. version of Neh_13:1.
wasted it] was laying waste, was sweeping it away, exterminating it.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv13–16 (13) Ye have heard.—Rather, ye heard. It was indeed…
(13) Ye have heard.—Rather, ye heard. It was indeed notorious; but the Apostle may be referring to the fact that he himself usually (see Act_22:3-21; Act_26:4-20; 1Co_15:8-10) brought his own career and experiences into his preaching, so that they may have heard it from his own lips.
My conversation . . . in the Jews’ religion.—How I behaved in the days of my Judaism. The phrase “Jews’ religion” (literally, Judaism) is not used with any sense of disparagement.
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Wasted it.—The same word is translated “destroyed” in Act_9:21 : “Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name?”
(13, 14) Proof that the doctrine of the Apostle is derived from God and not from man, in that it could not be accounted for by his antecedents and education, all of which told against, rather than for, a Christian belief of any kind.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv13–16 For ye have heard (hjkousate gar). This "for" introduces…
For ye have heard (hjkousate gar). This "for" introduces the whole statement which follows down to the end of the chapter; for the entire section is written with the view of substantiating the assertion in ver. 12, that he had not received the gospel which he preached from man, but solely through illumination imparted immediately from heaven. "Ye have heard," i.e. have been told; as Act_11:1; Joh_4:1, and often. "I amonly stating what ye have already been apprised of, when I tell you of," etc. That the aorist tense of the Greek word does not limit the expression to any one communication, such e.g. as one made by the apostle himself, is shown by the use of this very aorist in blurt, 5:21, 33, etc.; Luk_4:23; Joh_12:34; Eph_3:2 Eph_4:21; 2Ti_1:13; Jam_5:11. The apostle appears to have been himself in the habit of frequentlytelling the wondrous story of what he once had been and of the change wrought upon him. We have instances of his doing this in fill detail in his speech from the stairs, and in his defence before Agrippa, (Act_22:1-16 Act_22:26) and with less fulness in Php_3:4-8; 1Co_15:8, 1Co_15:9. It is therefore quite supposable that he had himself said as much also in Galatia. We observe, however, that the apostle does not say, "heard from me," as he might have done if he had himself been their informant: and, further, that the effect of the words, "ye have heard," does not, in point of construction at least, of necessity extend beyond the fourteenth verse. We are therefore at liberty to surmise that what he here refers to as having been told them relates simply to his life before his conversion; and that tile accounts which they had received of it bad come through unfriendly informants. These may have been either unbelieving Jews or Judaizing Christians, who wished by these statements to disparage the apostle"s character as one who, if he really was not dishonest, was at all events capable of passing from one extreme of sentiments to their direct opposite with the utmost suddenness and levity, and therefore was not a man entitled to be regarded with confidence. Of my conversation in time past in the Jews" religion (thn ejmhn pote ejn tw jIoudai"smw) of my manner of life formerly in Judaism. "The manner in which I once behaved myself as devoted to Judaism." The pote belongs to the action denoted in the verbal noun ajnastrofhn, like hJ thv Troiav alwsiv toteron, cited by Meyer from Plato ("Legg.," 3:685, D). jAnastrofh, conversatio, which occurs repeatedly in the New Testament, is generally rendered "conversation" in Authorized Version (1Pe_1:18 1Pe_4:12; Heb_13:7) "Judaism" means "the religious life of a Jew," which distinctively was Mosaism. It occurs in RAPC 2Ma 2:21 14:38 4Ma 4:16. Ignatius ("Ad Magn.," 8) speaks of "not living according to Judaism," as in ibid., 10, he uses the word "Christianism." St. Paul has the verb "Judaize" below, lion Gal_2:14. On the objective accusative ajnastrofhn as defined by the following clause, "how that," etc., see note on eujagge in ver. 11. How that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God (oti kaq uJperbolhwkon than tou Qeou); how that beyond measure I was persecuting the Church of God. The imperfect "was persecuting," as well as the following, "was making havoc and was advancing," points to what he was doing when God interposed in the manner described in vers. 15, 16. Compare the use of the aorist ejdiwxa in 1Co_15:9, Where no such simultaneity required to be indicated. "Beyond measure" or "superlatively" (kaq" uJperbolhn) was, at least about this time, a favorite phrase with St. Paul. A less eager pen might have written "exceedingly" (sfodra). Cf. Rom_7:13; 1Co_12:31; 2Co_1:8 2Co_4:7, 17 12:7. "Of God." This is added to the Chinch" with pathos of strong self-condemnation, as it is also in 1Co_15:9. The apostle feels now that his violence against the Church was a kindof sacrilege. The sentiment is an echo of Christ"s words to him," Why persecutest thou me?" And wasted it (kairqoun aujthn); and making havoc of it. The Greek verb (porqein) used again in this relation below, ver. 23, is similarly employed also in Act_9:21, "made havoc of those who called upon this Name." The verb properly denotes "devastate," "harry;" and in classical Greek is used with reference to towns, countries, and the like, being applied to persons only in the poetical style (Liddell and Scott) In the New Testament it is used only in relation to Soul"s persecution, apparently marking its deadly effectiveness as well as Saul"s determination if possible to extirpate the faith and its adherents. The expugnabam of the Vulgate would seem a fair equivalent.
Vers. 13, 14.
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A retrospect of his career as a Jew.
This would be the best proof that he had not received his gospel from man.
I HIS ENMITY TO THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. "I was beyond measure persecuting the Church of God, and destroying it." His past career was notorious. "He persecuted unto death", (Act_22:4) "beyond measure by no feeble or spasmodic effort, limited to one spot, but by a persistent scheme of violence wrought with a fierce energy that knew no weariness. He could not then have been learning the gospel of the very saints he was hunting to death; there could he no possible association between the persecutor and his victims that would allow of his learning the gospel. On the contrary, at this time he cherished the strongest prejudices and the fiercest hatred against Christianity.
II HIS INTENSE ZEAL FOR THE JEWISH RELIGION. He could appeal to the Galatians themselves as having once heard "of his conversation in time past in Judaism," and how he "was making progress in Judaism above many of his contemporaries in his own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of his fathers.
1. His zeal was manifest in his earnest study of Judaism. He studied it under Gamaliel, with the best advantages of instruction, and he excelled many of the young Pharisees of his own age in the ardour and in the results of his studies. He could not have made progress without study.
2. It was still more manifest in his extraordinary devotion to the traditions of his fathers. This was the natural token of an enthusiastic Pharisaism. "He was a Pharisee, and the son of a Pharisee". (Act_23:6)
(1) The traditions in question were not the Mosaic Law, but the interpretations of that Law, which found their true place afterwards in the Mishna. They were, in a word, "the traditions of the elders," which our Lord so severely condemned. They were traditions, strong in the letter, weak in the spirit, strict in trifles, lax in weighty matters. They made void the Law on some of the plainest questions of duty. So is it with Roman Catholics in the matter of their traditions, which are either opposed to Scripture or unnecessary additions to it.
(2) It is not unnatural to find unconverted men very zealous for ancestral traditions; more concerned, in fact, that they should be found to come from the Fathers than from God. Zeal of this sort is often strong in proportion to its ignorance of the truth. The zeal of his countrymen the apostle readily concedes, but charges it with being "a zeal not according to knowledge". (Rom_10:2) It is in such an atmosphere that the persecutor is bred.
(3) Zeal is not religion: Good intentions will never make anything really good with God. Zeal can never make the false true, nor justify any in persecuting the truth. Christians ought to imitate the zeal of false teachers, and to manifest its pureness by jealousy for God"s honour, by abundance of labours, and by ardent love to Christ.
III A BELIEVER OUGHT NOT TO BE ASHAMED TO CONFESS HIS SINS. The apostle makes an almost remorseful confession of his crimes against the Church of God. Once and again the dark recollection of ", his mad violence against the saints comes up in the midst of his grateful remembrances of God"s forgiving mercy. But all that wild persecution only too clearly proved how little he was indebted to apostle or saint for the gospel he gave to the Galatians.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv13–15 For ye have heard of my conversation in time…
Gal_1:13
For ye have heard of my conversation in time past.
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My conversation in time past
I. An humbling and painful recollection. We should study the true uses of the past. The past is rightly used when it--
1. Deepens our sense of guilt.
2. Illustrates the greatness of Divine mercy.
3. Inspires us with courage in relation to the future.
II. An humbling and painful recollection relieved by the highest consideration.
1. Not a self-recovery or development,
2. but the inward revelation of Christ.
III. An humbling and painful recollection succeeded by a holy and sublime vocation. The fact that God calls converted sinners to preach His gospel.
1. Pats the minister into moral sympathy with his hearers.
2. Exemplifies the power of God to execute His purposes.
3. Stimulates the study of Divine things.
Application: The text--
1. Appeals to the worst of men.
2. Explains the vehemence and urgency of an earnest ministry.
3. Exalts and illustrates the gospel of Christ. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Pauls former life
I. As a persecutor. Consider--
1. The wasting.
(1) How can the Church be wasted? Not in its inward estate, which stands in election, faith, justification; glory; but in respect of mens bodies, public assemblies, religious exercises.
(2) Why does God suffer it to be wasted? Judgment begins at the house of God. Painful operations are often needful to health.
2. The waster.
(1) Sin, when it takes place, gives a man no rest till it has brought him to a height of wickedness.
(2) Therefore avoid the beginning of evil.
II. As a religionist.
1. He profited exceedingly. Observe
(1) that there should be holy emulation in religion,
(2) but modest pretensions an excellence.
2. He was exceedingly jealous
(1) about the law and unwritten traditions,
(2) but not according to knowledge.
III. Whence learn--
1. To addict and set ourselves earnestly to maintain the truth.
2. To be angry when God is dishonoured and His Word disobeyed.
3. Not to give liberty to the best of our natural affections, as zeal, but to rule them.
4. To estimate unwritten traditions at their proper worth. (W. Perkins.)
Persecutor and minister
A minister once preaching a charity sermon in the west of England, began as follows: Many years have elapsed since I was within these walls. On that occasion there came three young men with the intention not only of scoffing at the minister, but with stones in their pockets for the purpose of assaulting him. After a few words one of them said with an oath, Let us be at him now; but the second replied, No; stop till we hear what he makes of this point. The minister went on, when the second said, We have heard enough; now throw, But the third interfered, remarking, He is not so foolish as I expected; let us hear him out. The preacher concluded without having been interrupted. Now mark me--of these three young men one was executed for forgery; the second lies under sentence of death for murder; the third, through the infinite mercy of God, now addresses you. Listen to him.
The value in controversy of practical experience of the opposite side
Paul knew the joints in his opponents armour, and shows at the outset that he knew not only the opinions of the Judaisers, but the spiritual atmosphere in which they had been educated. Such a controversialist the enemy cannot afford to despise, for the battle is half won before it has commenced. It is often very annoying to a young man to be told by a mature Christian, I thought as sceptically as you do, and spoke as rashly, believing that I was going to turn the orthodox world upside down; but I have got beyond those days, and am now a wiser man, as I trust you will be. Yet this is frequently the only way of meeting the case. The young man retires within himself, looks at rash utterances in the light of cool reflection, finds that truth and novelty are not synonymous, and is at least silent, which is a great gain to himself and to those around him. (S. Pearson, M. A.)
Pauls antecedents a qualification for his work
It has often happened that the destroyer of a creed or system has been bred and trained in the bosom of the system which he was destined to shake or destroy. Sakya Mouni had been brought up in Brahminism; Luther had taken the vows of an Augustinian; Pascal had been trained as a Jesuit; Spinoza was a Jew; Wesley and Whitefield were clergymen of the Church of England. It was not otherwise with St. Paul. The victorious enemy of heathen philosophy and worship had passed his boyhood amid the heathen surroundings of a philosophic city. The deadly antagonist of Judaic exclusiveness was by birth a Hebrew of the Hebrews. The dealer of the death-wound to the spirit of Pharisaism was a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, a scholar of Gamaliel, had been taught according to the perfect manner of the law of his fathers, and had lived after the most straightest sect of the Jewish service. (F. W. Farrar.)
Early persecution of Christians
Oh! said Caesar, we will soon root up this Christianity. Off with their heads! The different governors hastened one after another of the disciples to death; but, the more they persecuted them, the more they multiplied. The pro-consuls had orders to destroy Christians; the more they hunted them, the more Christians there were, until, at last, men pressed to the judgment-seat, and asked to be permitted to die for Christ. They invented torments; they dragged saints at the heels of wild horses; they laid them upon red-hot gridirons; they pulled off the skin from their flesh piece by piece; they were sawn asunder; they were wrapped up in skins, and daubed with pitch, and set in Neros gardens at night to burn; they were left to rot in dungeons; they were made a spectacle to all men in the amphitheatre; the bears hugged them to death; the lions tore them to pieces; the wild bulls tossed them upon their horns: and yet Christianity spread. All the swords of the legionaries which had put to rout the armies of all nations, and had overcome the invincible Gaul and the savage Briton, could not withstand the feebleness of Christianity; for the weakness of God is mightier than men. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The two parts of St. Pauls life
There are questions which it is interesting to suggest, even when they can never receive a perfect and satisfactory answer. One of these questions may be asked respecting St. Paul: What was the relation in which his former life stood to the great fact of his conversion? He himself, in looking back upon the times in which he persecuted the Church of God, thought of them chiefly as an increasing evidence of the mercy of God, which was afterwards extended to him. It Seemed so strange to have been what he had been, and to be what he was. Nor does our own conception of him, in relation to his former self, commonly reach beyond this contrast of the old and new man; the persecutor and the preacher of the gospel; the young man at whose feet the witnesses against Stephen laid down their clothes; and the same Paul disputing against the Grecians, full of visions and revelations of the Lord, on whom in later life came daily the care of all the Churches. Yet we cannot but admit also the possibility, or rather the probable truth, of another point of view. If there were any among the contemporaries of St. Paul who had known him in youth and in age, they would have seen similarities such as escape us in the character of the apostle at different periods of his life. The zealot against the gospel might have seemed to them transfigured into the opponent of the law; they would have found something in common in the Pharisee of the Pharisees, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and the man who had a vow on his last journey to Jerusalem. And when they heard the narrative of his conversion from his own lips, they might have remarked that to one of his temperament only could such an event have happened, and would have noted many superficial resemblances which showed him to be the same man, while the great inward change which had overflowed upon the world was hid from their eyes. The gifts of God to man have ever some reference to natural disposition. He who becomes the servant of God does not thereby cease to be himself. Often the transition is greater in appearance than in reality, from its very suddenness. There is a kind of rebellion against self and nature and God, which, through the mercy of God to the soul, seems almost necessarily to lead to reaction. Persons have been worse than their fellow-men in outward appearance, and yet there was within them the spirit of a child waiting to return home to their fathers house. A change passes over them which we may figure to ourselves, not only as the new man taking the place of the old, but as the inner man taking the place of the outer. So fearfully and wonderfully are we made, that the very contrast to what we are has often an inexpressible power over us. It seems sometimes as if the same religious education had tended to contrary results; in one case to a devout life, in another to a reaction against it; sometimes to one form of faith, at other times to another … Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in concluding, that those who have undergone great religious changes have been of a fervid, imaginative cast of mind; looking for more in this world than it was capable of yielding; easily touched by the remembrance of the past, or inspired by some ideal of the future. When with this has been combined a zeal for the good of their fellow-men, they have become the heralds and champions of the religious movements of the world. The change has begun within, but has overflowed without them, When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren, is the order of nature and of grace. In secret they brood over their own state; weary and profitless, their soul fainteth within them. The religion they profess is a religion not of life to them, but of death; they lose their interest in the world, and are cut off from the communion of their fellow-men. While they are musing, the fire kindles, and at the last--they speak with their tongue. Then pours forth irrepressibly the pent-up stream--unto all and upon all their fellow-men; the intense flame of inward enthusiasm warms and lights up the world. First, they are the evidence to others; then, again, others are the evidence to them. All religious leaders cannot be reduced to a single type of character; yet in all, perhaps, two characteristics may be observed;
(1) great self-reflection;
(2) intense sympathy with other men.
Such men have generally appeared at favourable conjunctures of circumstances, when the old was about to vanish away, and the new to appear. The world has yearned towards them, and they towards the world. They have uttered what all men were feeling; they have interpreted the age to itself. Often such men have been brought up in the faith which they afterwards oppose, and a part of their power has consisted in their acquaintance with the enemy. They see other men like themselves formerly, wandering out of the way in the idols temple, amid a burdensome ceremonial, with prayers and sacrifices unable to free the soul. They lead them by the way themselves came to the home of Christ … Great men are sometimes said to possess the power of command, but not the power of entering into the feelings of others. They have no fear of their fellows, but neither are they always capable of immediately impressing them or of perceiving the impression which their words or actions make upon them. Often they live in a kind of solitude on which other men do not venture to intrude; putting forth their strength on particular occasions, careless or abstracted about the daily concerns of life. Such was not the greatness of St. Paul; not only in the sense in which he says that he could do all things through Christ, but in a more earthly and human one was it true, that his strength was his weakness, and his weakness his strength. His dependence on others was in part, also, the source of his influence over them. His natural character was the type of that communion of the Spirit which he preached; the meanness of appearance which he attributes to himself, the image of that contrast which the gospel presents to human greatness. Glorying and humiliation, life and death, a vision of angels strengthening him, the thorn in the flesh rebuking him, the greatest tenderness not without sternness, sorrows above measure, consolations above measure, are some of the contradictions which were reconciled in the same man. The centre in which things so strange met and moved was the Cross of Christ, whose marks in his body he bore; what was behind of whose afflictions he rejoiced to fill up. Let us look once more, a little closer, at that visage marred in his Masters service. A poor decrepit being, afflicted, perhaps, with palsy, certainly with some bodily defect,--led out of prison between Roman soldiers, probably at times faltering in his speech, the creature, as he seemed to spectators, of nervous sensibility; yearning, almost with a sort of fondness, to save the souls of those whom he saw around him,--spoke a few eloquent words in the cause of Christian truth, at which kings were awed, telling the tale of his own conversion with such simple pathos, that after ages have hardly heard the like. (B. Jowett, M. A.)
Early life of St. Paul
The Apostle Paul was probably born in the later years of Herod, or early in the short reign of Archelaus, when, under the sway of the emperor Augustus, the Roman world was at peace, and when the wickedness of the imperial despotism had not yet fully developed itself. The pirates who had infested the Eastern Mediterranean had been sternly suppressed. The Jewish people were still enjoying everywhere ample toleration under the Roman rule, and a Jewish family like St. Pauls, settled at Tarsus in Cilicia, would have been in sufficiently comfortable circumstances. For Tarsus was a free city of the Empire; that is to say, it was governed by its own magistrates, and was exempted from the annoyance of a Roman garrison; but it was not a colony like Philippi in Macedonia, and the freedom of Rome, which St. Paul says he had at his birth, would probably have been earned by some services rendered by his father during the civil wars to some one of the contending parties in the State. It is at least probable from the expression, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, which he applies ¢o himself, that his parents were originally emigrants from Palestine. We know that they were of the tribe of Benjamin, and that they were strict members of the Pharisee sect. Probably his father was engaged in the Mediterranean trade. To his mother, it is a remarkable circumstance, there is not one reference in his writings, He had a sister whose son lived in later years at Jerusalem, and who would have been his playmate at Tarsus. The Talmud says that s fathers duty toward his boy is to circumcise him, to teach him the law, and to teach him a trade. We know from the Epistle to the Philippians that the first of these precepts was accurately complied with on the eighth day after the childs birth. The second would probably have been obeyed by sending the boy, not to one of the Greek schools in which Tarsus abounded, but to a Jewish school attached to one of the synagogues, where, after the age of five, he would have learnt the Hebrew Scriptures,--at ten those floating maxims of the great Jewish doctors which were afterwards collected in the Mishna, so as, at thirteen, to become what was called a Subject of the Precept, after a ceremony which was a kind of shadow of Christian confirmation. The third requirement was complied with by setting him to make tents out of the hair-cloth supplied by the goats which abounded on the slopes of the neighbouring mountains of the Taurus, and which was a chief article in the trade of the port--tents which to this day, according to Beaufort, are used largely by the peasantry of south-eastern Asia Minor during the harvesttime. At or soon after thirteen the little Saul would have been sent from home, probably in a trading vessel bound from the port of Tarsus for Caesarea, on his way to Jerusalem. Already, as a boy, the Holy City must have possessed for him an interest surpassing any which could be raised by any other place on earth. Every great festival would have been followed by the return of one or more of his countrymen to Tarsus, full of the inspiration of the sacred sights, full of the splendour of the new temple, full of the fame and learning of the great doctors of the law. Especially he would have heard much of the two rival schools of Hillel and Shammai, of which the former exalted tradition above the letter of the law, while the latter preferred the law to tradition when they clashed. Of these the school of Hillel was much the more influential, and when St. Paul was a boy or a young man its one great ornament was Gamaliel, who was evidently one of those men whose candour, wisdom, and consistent elevation of character would have secured him influence in any society, or in any age of the world. It was at the feet of Gamaliel, St. Paul tells us, he was brought up; and this expression at the feet of Gamaliel exactly recalls to us the manner in which the Rabbinical Assemblies of the Wise, as they were termed, were held. The teacher sat on a raised platform,--the pupils on low seats, or on the floor beneath. At this period of St. Pauls life we are, to a certain extent, in the region of conjecture; but it is, upon the whole, scarcely doubtful that he would have returned to Tarsus in the prime of manhood, before he reappeared in Jerusalem as a member of the synagogue which was connected with, or maintained by, the Jews in Cilicia. This visit would have completed his acquaintance with the language, and to a certain limited extent with the literature, of Greece. At this time in his life, too, St. Paul would probably have become familiar with that large section of the Jews of the dispersion whose centre was Alexandria, who in everything but religion were nearly Greeks, whose religion was taking more and more of the Greek dress every day This education was moulding and developing a character which may be described by one single word--intensity. There was much besides. There was sensitiveness; there was impetuosity; there was courage; there was independence; but, in all that he did, Paul of Tarsus, before his conversion as well as after it, threw his whole energy, whether of thought or resolution, into his work. (Canon Liddon.)
Confession of former wrongdoing
I man may make his past sins known out of pride, but also out of humility. Whoever does not boast himself of the same, but humbles himself therefore before God, and willingly bears the shame of them before men, not relying upon himself, makes a good confession, but one not needful to be uttered before every man, as sometimes it would bring more scandal than benefit. (Quesnel.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v15 Chapter 5
Chapter 5
PAULS DIVINE COMMISSION.
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Gal_1:15-17
IT pleased God to reveal His Son in me: this is after all the essential matter in Pauls conversion, as in that of every Christian. The outward manifestation of Jesus Christ served in his case to bring about this result, and was necessary to qualify him for his extraordinary vocation. But of itself the supernatural vision had no redeeming virtue, and gave Saul of Tarsus no message of salvation for the world. Its glory blinded and prostrated the persecutor; his heart might notwithstanding have remained rebellious and unchanged. "I am Jesus," said the heavenly Form, - "Go, and it shall be told thee what thou shalt do"; - that was all! And that was not salvation. "Even though one rose from the dead," still it is possible not to believe. And faith is possible in its highest degree, and is exercised today by multitudes, with no celestial light to illumine, no audible voice from beyond the grave to awaken. The sixteenth verse gives us the inward counterpart of that exterior revelation in which Pauls knowledge of Christ had its beginning, - but only its beginning.
The Apostle does not surely mean by "in me," in my case, through me (to others). This gives a sense true in itself, and expressed by Paul elsewhere (Gal_1:24; 1Ti_1:16), but unsuitable to the word "reveal," and out of place at this point of the narrative. In the next clause-"that I might preach Him among the Gentiles"-we learn what was to be the issue of this revelation for the world. But in the first place it was a Divine certainty within the breast of Paul himself. His Gentile Apostleship rested upon the most assured basis of inward conviction, upon a spiritual apprehension of the Redeemers person. He says, laying emphasis on the last two words, "to reveal His Son within me." So Chrysostom: Why did he not say to me, but in me? Showing that not by words alone he learned the things concerning faith; but that he was also filled with the abundance of the Spirit, the revelation shining through his very soul; and that he had Christ speaking in himself.
1. The substance of Pauls gospel was, therefore, given him by the unveiling of the Redeemer to his heart.
The "revelation" of Gal_1:16 takes up and completes that of Gal_1:12. The dazzling appearance of Christ before his eyes and the summons of His voice addressed to Sauls bodily ears formed the special mode in which it pleased God to "call him by His grace." But "whom He called, He also justified." In this further act of grace salvation is first personally realised, and the gospel becomes the mans individual possession. This experience ensued upon the acceptance of the fact that the crucified Jesus was the Christ. But this was by no means all. As the revelation penetrated further into the Apostles soul, he began to apprehend its deeper significance. He knew already that the Nazarene had claimed to be the Son of God, and on that ground had been sentenced to death by the Sanhedrim. His resurrection, now a demonstrated fact, showed that this awful claim, instead of being condemned, was acknowledged by God Himself. The Celestial majesty in which He appeared, the sublime authority with which He spoke, witnessed to His Divinity. To Paul equally with the first Apostles, He "was declared Son of God in power, by the resurrection of the dead." But this persuasion was borne in upon him in his after-reflections, and could not be adequately realised in the first shock of his great discovery. The language of this verse throws no sort of suspicion on the reality of the vision before Damascus. Quite the opposite. The inward presupposes the outward. Understanding follows sight. The subjective illumination, the inward conviction of Christs Divinity, in Pauls case as in that of the first disciples, was brought about by the appearance of the risen, Divine Jesus. That appearance furnishes in both instances the explanation of the astounding change that took place in the men. The heart full of blasphemy against His name has learnt to own Him as "the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Through the bodily eyes of Saul of Tarsus the revelation of Jesus Christ had entered and transformed his spirit.
Of this interior revelation the Holy Spirit, according to the Apostles doctrine, had been the organ. The Lord, on first meeting the gathered Apostles after His insurrection, "breathed upon them, saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost". {Joh_20:22} This influence was in truth "the powerof His resurrection"; it was the inspiring breath of the new life of humanity issuing from the open grave of Christ. The baptism of Pentecost, with its "mighty rushing wind," was but the fuller effusion of the power whose earnest the Church received in that gentle breathing of peace on the day of the resurrection. By His Spirit Christ made Himself a dwelling in the hearts of His disciples, raised at last to a true apprehension of His nature. All this was recapitulated in the experience of Paul. In his case the common experience was the more sharply defined because of the suddenness of his conversion, and the startling effect with which this new consciousness projected itself upon the background of his earlier Pharisaic life. Paul had his Resurrection-vision on the road to Damascus. He received his Pentecostal baptism in the days that followed.
It is not necessary to fix the precise occasion of the second revelation, or to connect it specifically with the visit of Ananias to Saul in Damascus, much less with his later "ecstasy" in the temple. {Act_9:10-19; Act_22:12-21} When Ananias, sent by Christ, brought him the assurance of forgiveness from the injured Church, and bade him "recover his sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost," this message greatly comforted his heart, and pointed out to him more clearly the way of salvation along which he was groping. But it is the office of the Spirit of God to reveal the Son of God; so Paul teaches everywhere in his Epistles, taught first by his own experience. Not from Ananias nor from any man had he received this knowledge; God revealed His Son in the soul of the Apostle" sent forth the Spirit of His Son into his heart". {Gal_4:6} The language of 2Co_3:12-18; 2Co_4:1-6 is the best commentary on this verse. A veil rested on the heart of Saul the Pharisee. He read the Old Covenant only in the condemning letter. Not yet did he know "the Lord" who is "the spirit." This veil was done away in Christ. "The glory of the Lord" that burst upon him in his Damascus journey, rent it once and for ever from his eyes. God, the Light-giver, had "shined in his heart, in the face of Jesus Christ." Such was the further scope of the revelation which effected Pauls conversion. As he writes afterwards to Ephesus, "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, had given him a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ; eyes of the heart enlightened to know the hope of His calling, and his exceeding power to us-ward, according to that He wrought in Christ when he raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand". {Eph_1:17-21} In these words we hear an echo of the thoughts that passed through the Apostles mind when first "it pleased God in him to reveal His Son."
2. In the light of this inner revelation Paul received his Gentile mission.
He speedily perceived that this was the purpose with which the revelation was made: "that I should preach Him among the Gentiles." The three accounts of his conversion furnished by the Acts witness to the same effect. Whether we should suppose that the Lord Jesus gave Saul this commission directly, at His first appearance, as seems to be implied in Acts 26, or infer from the more detailed narrative of chaps. 9 and 22, that the announcement was sent by Ananias and afterwards more urgently repeated in the vision at the Temple, in either case the fact remains the same; from the beginning Paul knew that he was appointed to be Christs witness to the Gentiles. This destination was included in the Divine call which brought him to faith in Jesus. His Judaic prejudices were swept away. He was ready to embrace the universalism of the Gospel. With his fine logical instinct, sharpened by hatred, he had while yet a Pharisee discerned more clearly than many Jewish Christians the bearing of the doctrine of the cross upon the legal system. He saw that the struggle was one of life and death. The vehemence with which he flung himself into the contest was due to this perception. But it followed from this, that, once convinced of the Messiahship of Jesus, Pauls faith at a bound overleaped all Jewish barriers. "Judaism-or the religion of the Crucified," was the alternative with which his stern logic pursued the Nazarenes. Judaism and Christianity-this was a compromise intolerable to his nature. Before Sauls conversion he had left that halting-place behind; he apprehended already, in some sense, the truth up to which the elder Apostles had to be educated, that "in Christ Jesus there is neither Greek nor Jew." He passed at a step from the one camp to the other. In this there was consistency. The enlightened, conscientious persecutor, who had debated with Stephen and helped to stone him, was sure, if he became a Christian, to become a Christian of Stephens school. When he entered the Church, Paul left the Synagogue. He was ripe for his world-wide commission. There was no surprise, no unpreparedness in his mind when the charge was given him, "Go; for I will send thee far hence among the Gentiles."
In the Apostles view, his personal salvation and that of the race were objects united from the first. Not as a privileged Jew, but as a sinful man, the Divine grace had found him out. The righteousness of God was revealed to him on terms which brought it within the reach of every human being. The Son of God whom he now beheld was a personage vastly greater than his national Messiah, the "Christ after the flesh" of his Jewish dreams, and His gospel was correspondingly loftier and larger in its scope. "God was in Christ, reconciling," not a nation, but "a world unto Himself." The "grace" conferred on him was given that he might "preach among the Gentiles Christs unsearchable riches, and make all men see the mystery" of the counsel of redeeming love. {Eph_3:1-11} It was the worlds redemption of which Paul partook; and it was his business to let the world know it. He had fathomed the depths of sin and self-despair; he had tasted the uttermost of pardoning grace. God and the world met in his single soul, and were reconciled. He felt from the first what he expresses in his latest Epistles, that "the grace of God which appeared" to him, was "for the salvation of all men". {Tit_2:11} "Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief". {1Ti_1:15} The same revelation that made Paul a Christian, made him the Apostle of mankind.
3. For this vocation the Apostle had been destined by God from the beginning. "It pleased God to do this," he says, "who had marked me out from my mothers womb, and called me by His grace."
While "Saul was yet breathing out threatening and slaughter" against the disciples of Jesus, how different a future was being prepared for him! How little can we forecast the issue of our own plans, or of those we form for others. His Hebrew birth, his rabbinical proficiency, the thoroughness with which he had mastered the tenets of Legalism, had fitted him like no other to be the bearer of the Gospel to the Gentiles. This Epistle proves the fact. Only a graduate of the best Jewish schools could have written it. Pauls master, Gamaliel, if he had read the letter, must perforce have been proud of his scholar; he would have feared more than ever that those who opposed the Nazarene might haply be found fighting against God. The Apostle foils the Judaists with their own weapons. He knows every inch of the ground on which the battle is waged. At the same time, he was a born Hellenist and a citizen of the Empire, native "of no mean city." Tarsus, his birthplace, was the capital of an important Roman province, and a centre of Greek culture and refinement. In spite of the Hebraic conservatism of Sauls family, the genial atmosphere of such a town could not but affect the early development of so sensitive a nature. He had Sufficient tincture of Greek letters and conversance with Roman law to make him a true cosmopolitan, qualified to be "all things to all men." He presents an admirable example of that versatility and suppleness of genius which have distinguished for so many ages the sons of Jacob, and enable them to find a home and a market for their talents in every quarter of the world. Paul was "a chosen vessel, to bear the name of Jesus before Gentiles and kings, and the sons of Israel."
But his mission was concealed till the appointed hour. Thinking of his personal election, he reminds himself of the words spoken to Jeremiah touching his prophetic call. "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb I sanctified thee. I appointed thee a prophet unto the nations". {Jer_1:5} Or like the Servant of theLord in Isaiah he might say, "The Lord hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath He made mention of my name. And He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of His hand hath He hid me! and He hath made me a polished shaft, in His quiver hath He kept me close". {Isa_49:1-2} This belief in a fore-ordaining Providence, preparing in secret its chosen instruments, so deeply rooted in the Old Testament faith, was not wanting to Paul. His career is a signal illustration of its truth. He applies it, in his doctrine of Election, to the history of every child of grace. "Whom He foreknew, He did predestinate. Whom He did predestinate, He called." Once more we see how the Apostles theology was moulded by his experience.
The manner in which Saul of Tarsus had been prepared all his life long for the service of Christ, magnified to his eyes the sovereign grace of God. "He called me through His grace." The call came at precisely the fit time; it came at a time and in a manner calculated to display the Divine compassion in the highest possible degree. This lesson Paul could never forget. To the last he dwells upon it with deep emotion, "In me," he writes to Timothy, "Jesus Christ first showed forth all His longsuffering. I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, insolent and injurious; but I obtained mercy." {1Ti_1:13-16} He was so dealt with from the beginning, he had been called to the knowledge of Christ under such circumstances, that he felt he had a right to say, above other men, "By the grace of God I am what I am." The predestination under which his life was conducted "from his mothers womb," had for its chief purpose to exhibit Gods mercy to mankind, "that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus". {Eph_2:7} To this purpose, so soon as he discerned it, he humbly yielded himself. The Son of God, whose followers he had hunted to death, whom in his madness he would have crucified afresh, had appeared to him to save and to forgive. The grace of it, the infinite kindness and compassion such an act revealed in the Divine nature, excited new wonder in the Apostles soul till his latest hour. Henceforth he was the bondman of grace, the celebrant of grace. His life was one act of thanksgiving "to the praise of the glory of His grace."
4. From Jesus Christ in person Paul had received his knowledge of the Gospel, without human intervention. In the revelation of Christ to his soul he possessed the substance of the truth he was afterwards to teach; and with the revelation there came the commission to proclaim it to all men. His gospel-message was in its essence complete; the Apostleship was already his. Such are the assertions the Apostle makes in reply to his gainsayers. And he goes on to show that the course he took after his conversion sustains these lofty claims "When God had been pleased to reveal His Son in me, immediately (right from the first) I took no counsel with flesh and blood. I avoided repairing to Jerusalem, to the elder Apostles; I went away into Arabia, and back again to Damascus. It was three years before I set foot in Jerusalem."
If that were so, how could Paul have received his doctrine or his commission from the Church of Jerusalem, as his traducers alleged? He acted from the outset under the sense of a unique Divine call, that allowed no human validation or supplement. Had the case been otherwise, had Paul come to his knowledge of Christ by ordinary channels, his first impulse would have been to go up to the mother city to report himself there, and to gain further instruction. Above all, if he intended to be a minister of Christ, it would have been proper to secure the approval of the Twelve, and to be accredited from Jerusalem. This was the course which "flesh and blood" dictated, which Sauls new friends at Damascus probably urged upon him. It was insinuated that he had actually proceeded in this way, and put himself under the direction of Peter and the Judean Church. But he says, "I did nothing of the sort. I kept clear of Jerusalem for three years; and then I only went there to make private acquaintance with Peter, and stayed in the city but a fortnight." Although Paul did not for many years make public claim to rank with the Twelve, from the commencement he acted in conscious independence of them. He calls them "Apostles before me," by this phrase assuming the matter in dispute. He tacitly asserts his equality in official status with the Apostles of Jesus, assigning to the others precedence only in point of time. And he speaks of this equality in terms implying that it was already present to his mind at this former period. Under this conviction he held aloof from human guidance and approbation. Instead of "going up to Jerusalem," the centre of publicity, the headquarters of the rising Church, Paul "went off into Arabia."
There were, no doubt, other reasons for this step. Why did he choose Arabia for his sojourn? and what, pray, was he doing there? The Apostle leaves us to our own conjectures. Solitude, we imagine, was his principal object. His Arabian retreat reminds us of the Arabian exile of Moses, of the wilderness discipline of John the Baptist, and the "forty days" of Jesus in the wilderness. In each of these instances, the desert retirement followed upon a great inward crisis, and was preparatory to the entrance of the Lords servant on his mission to the world. Elijah, at a later period of his course, sought the wilderness under motives not dissimilar. After such a convulsion as Paul had passed through, with a whole world of new ideas and emotions pouring in upon him, he felt that he must be alone; he must get away from the Voices of men. There are such times in the history of every earnest soul. In the silence of the Arabian desert, wandering amid the grandest scenes of ancient revelation, and communing in stillness with God and with his own heart, the young Apostle will think out the questions that press upon him; he will be able to take a calmer survey of the new world into which he has been ushered, and will learn to see clearly and walk steadily in the heavenly light that at first bewildered him. So "the Spirit immediately driveth him out into the wilderness." In Arabia one confers, not with flesh and blood, but with the mountains and with God. From Arabia Saul returned in possession of himself, and of his gospel.
The Acts of the Apostles omits this Arabian episode. {Act_9:19-25} But for what Paul tells us here, we should have gathered that he began at once after his baptism to preach Christ in Damascus, his preaching after no long time exciting Jewish enmity to such a pitch that his life was imperilled, and the Christian brethren compelled him to seek safety by flight to Jerusalem. The reader of Luke is certainly surprised to find a period of three years, with a prolonged residence in Arabia, interpolated between Pauls conversion and his reception in Jerusalem. Lukes silence, we judge, is intentional. The Arabian retreat formed no part of the Apostles public life, and had no place in the narrative of the Acts. Paul only mentions it here in the briefest terms, and because the reference was necessary to put his relations to the first Apostles in their proper light. For the time the converted Saul had dropped out of sight; and the historian of the Acts respects his privacy.
The place of the Arabian journey seems to us to lie between vv. 21 and 22 of Acts 9 (Act_9:21-22). That passage gives a twofold description of Pauls preaching in Damascus, in its earlier and later stages, with a double note of time (Act_9:19; Act_9:23). Sauls first testimony, taking place "straightway," was, one would presume, a mere declaration of faith in Jesus: "In the synagogues he proclaimed Jesus, (saying) that He is the Son of God" (R. V), language in striking harmony with that of the Apostle in the text (Act_9:12; Act_9:16). Naturally this recantation caused extreme astonishment in Damascus, where Sauls reputation was well-known both to Jews and Christians, and his arrival was expected in the character of Jewish inquisitor-in-chief. Act_9:22 presents a different situation. Paul is now preaching in his established and characteristic style; as we read it, we might fancy we hear him debating in the synagogues of Pisidian Antioch or Corinth or Thessalonica: "He was confounding the Jews, proving that this is the Christ." Neither Saul himself nor his Jewish hearers in the first days after his conversion would be in the mood for the sustained argumentation and Scriptural dialectic thus described. The explanation of the change lies behind the opening words of the verse: "But Saul increased in strength"-a growth due not only to the prolonged opposition he had to encounter, but still more, as we conjecture from this hint of the Apostle, to the period of rest and reflection which he enjoyed in his Arabian seclusion. The two marks of time given us in Act_9:19; Act_9:23 of Lukes narrative, may be fairly distinguished from each other-"certain days," and "sufficient days" (or "a considerable time")-as denoting a briefer and a longer season respectively: the former so short that the excitement caused by Sauls declaration of his new faith had not yet subsided when he withdrew from the city into the desert-in which case Lukes note of time does not really conflict with Pauls "immediately"; the latter affording a lapse of time sufficient for Saul to develop his argument for the Messiahship of Jesus, and to provoke the Jews, worsted in logic, to resort to other weapons. From Lukes point of view the sojourn in Arabia, however extended, was simply an incident, of no public importance, in Pauls early ministry in Damascus.
The disappearance of Saul during this interval helps, however, as we think, to explain a subsequent statement in Lukes narrative that is certainly perplexing. {Act_9:26-27} When Saul, after his escape from Damascus, "was come to Jerusalem," and "essayed to join himself to the disciples," they, we are told, "were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple!" For while the Church at Jerusalem had doubtless heard at the time of Sauls marvellous conversion three years before, his long retirement and avoidance of Jerusalem threw an air of mystery and suspicion about his proceedings, and revived the fears of the Judean brethren; and his reappearance created a panic. In consequence of his sudden departure from Damascus, it is likely that no public report had as yet reached Judea of Sauls return to that city and his renewed ministry there. Barnabas now came forward to act as sponsor for the suspected convert: What induced him to do this-whether it was that his largeness of heart enabled him to read Sauls character better than others, or whether he had some earlier private acquaintance with the Tarsian-we cannot tell. The account that Barnabas was able to give of his friends conversion and of his bold confession in Damascus, won for Paul the place in the confidence of Peter and the leaders of the Church at Jerusalem which he never afterwards lost.
The two narratives-the history of Luke and the letter of Paul-relate the same series of events, but from almost opposite standpoints. Luke dwells upon Pauls connection with the Church at Jerusalem and its Apostles. Paul is maintaining his independence of them. There is no contradiction; but there is just such discrepancy as will arise where two honest and competent witnesses are relating identical facts in a different connection.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv13–16 13, 14. Ye have heard of my manner of…
13, 14. Ye have heard of my manner of life. While he was still a Jew. In order to show that his gospel did not come from man, he cites his history, of which they knew something. I persecuted the church of God. See Acts 9:21. He made a determined effort to destroy Christianity. Compare Acts 22:4; 26:10, 11.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv13, 15 Gal_1:14. Exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.—St.…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Gal_1:14. Exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.—St. Paul seems to have belonged to the extreme party of the Pharisees (Act_22:3; Act_23:7; Act_26:5; Php_3:5-6), whose pride it was to call themselves “zealots of the law, zealots of God.” A portion of these extreme partisans, forming into a separate sect under Judas of Galilee, took the name of zealots par excellence, and distinguished themselves by their furious opposition to the Romans.
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MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gal_1:13-14
A Zealous Ritualist—
I. Is conspicuous for his adherence to religious formalities.—“For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion” (Gal_1:13)—of my manner of life formerly in Judaism. Saul of Tarsus was a full-blown ritualist, and a master-leader in the art, setting the pattern to all his contemporaries. He did not play at forms and ceremonies. Their observance was to him a matter of life and death. An intense nature like his could do nothing by halves. The listlessness and pictorial parade of modern ritualism he would have denounced with withering scorn. Religious formality has for some minds an irresistible fascination. It appeals to the instinct of worship which is latent in all, and to the love of æstheticism which is shared by most in varying degrees. The votary deludes himself into the belief that signs and symbols represent certain great truths; but the truths soon fade away into the background, and he is in turn deluded in regarding the outward ceremonies as everything. Formality is the tendency of the mind to rest in the mere externals of religion to the neglect of the inner life of religion itself. It is the folly of valuing a tree for its bark instead of its goodly timber, of choosing a book for its ornate binding irrespective of its literary genius, of admiring the finished architecture of a building regardless of its accommodation or the character of its inmates. “There are two ways of destroying Christianity,” says D’Aubigné; “one is to deny it, the other is to displace it.” Formality seeks to displace it. Ritualism may be of use in the infantile stage, either of the world or the individual. It is a reversion to the petrifaction of ancient crudities. A robust and growing spiritual manhood is superior to its aids.
II. Violently opposes the representatives of genuine piety.—“How that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it” (Gal_1:13). Animated by extravagant zeal for the religion of his forefathers, the bigoted Pharisee became the deadliest enemy of the Church of Christ in its infant days. Indifferent to personal peril or to the feelings of the oppressed, he prosecuted his work of destruction with savage energy. He was a type of the Jewish fanatics who afterwards thirsted and plotted for his life, and the forerunner of the cruel zealots of the Inquisition and the Star Chamber in later times. The curse of ritualism is excessive intolerance. Blinded and puffed up with its unwarrantable assumptions, it loses sight of the essential elements of true religion. It sees nothing good in any other system but its own, and employs all methods that it dare, to compel universal conformity. It admits no rival. It alone is right; everything else is wrong, and all kinds of means are justifiable in crushing the heresy that presumes to deny its supreme claims. “Christ and Ritualism,” says Horatius Bonar, “are opposed to each other, as light is to darkness. The cross and the crucifix cannot agree. Either ritualism will banish Christ or Christ will banish ritualism.”
III. Is distinguished by his ardent study and defence of traditional religionism.—“And profited in the Jews’ religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers” (Gal_1:14). The apostle had studied the Mosaic law under the ablest tutors of his day. He knew Judaism by heart, and won a distinguished reputation for learning and for his strict adherence to the minutest details of traditional legalism. He was one of the ablest champions of the Mosaic system. The zealous ritualist spends his days and nights in studying, not the word of God, but the sayings of men and the rules of the Church handed down by the traditions of past generations. Divine revelation is ignored, and human authority unduly exalted. His studies are misdirected, and his zeal misspent. He is wasting his energy in defending a lifeless organism. No man can honestly and prayerfully study God’s word and catch its meaning, and remain a mere ritualist.
Lessons.—
1. Ritualism, is the worship of external forms.
2. It breeds a spirit of intolerance and persecution.
3. It supplants true religion.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Gal_1:13-14. Mistaken Zeal—
I. May create a reputation for religious devotion.—“Ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion” (Gal_1:13).
II. Breeds the spirit of violent persecution.—“How that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it” (Gal_1:13).
III. Makes one ambitious for superiority.—“Profited … above many my equals, … being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers” (Gal_1:14).
IV. Is neither good nor wise.
V. Stores up a retrospect of bitter and humiliating regret.
Review of a Misspent Life.—
1. A sincere convert will not shun to make confession of his wicked life, not omitting anything which may tend to a just aggravation of it, not in a boasting manner, but that the freedom of God’s grace may be commended.
2. That the Scriptures were indited by the Spirit of God, and the penmen not actuated with human policy, appears from this, with other evidences in the Scripture itself, that they concealed not their own faults, but blazed them to the world when the glory of God did so require.
3. Though the Church of God, as to the inward estate, cannot be utterly wasted, neither can the outward state be so far decayed as to cease to be, yet the Lord may so far give way to the rage of persecutors that the outward face and beauty of the Church may be totally marred, the members partly killed, partly scattered, the public ordinances suppressed, and the public assemblies interrupted.
4. The life and way of some engaged in a false religion may be so blameless and, according to the dictates of their deluded conscience, so strict, as that it may be a copy unto those who profess the true religion and a reproof for their palpable negligence.
5. As our affections of love, joy, hatred, anger, and grief are by nature so corrupt that even the choicest of them, if not brought in subjection to the word by the Spirit, will lay forth themselves upon forbidden and unlawful objects, so our zeal and fervency of spirit will bend itself more toward the maintenance of error than of truth. Error is the birth of our own invention; so is not truth.—Fergusson.
True and False Zeal.
I. Zeal is a certain fervency of spirit arising out of a mixture of love and anger, causing men earnestly to maintain the worship of God and all things pertaining thereto, and moving them to grief and anger when God is in any way dishonoured.
II. Paul was zealous for the outward observance of the law and for Pharisaical unwritten traditions.
III. He himself condemns his zeal because it was against the word, and tended to maintain unwritten traditions, and justification by the works of the law, out of Christ. What Paul did in his religion we are to do in the profession of the gospel.
1. We are to addict and set ourselves earnestly to maintain the truth of the gospel.
2. We are to be angry in ourselves and grieved when God is dishonoured and His word disobeyed.
3. We are not to give liberty to the best of our natural affections as to zeal, but mortify and rule them by the word.—Perkins.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv13–16 For ye have heard of my manner of life…
For ye have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it:
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv13–14 Jews’ religion
Jews’ religion
The new dispensation of grace having come in, the Mosaic system, if still persisted in, becomes a mere "Jews’ religion."
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv13, 15 former life
former life
"behavior at one time" or "prior life" or "earlier life"
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I advanced
This metaphor pictures Paul as being ahead of other Jews his age in their goal to be perfect Jews.
those who were my own age
"the Jewish people who are the same age as I am"
my fathers
"my ancestors"
translationWords
Judaism
persecute
church
zeal
tradition
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv13–16 1:13-14 To prove that his message did not come…
1:13-14 To prove that his message did not come from human reason (1:11), Paul describes what he was like before he encountered Christ: He was a highly successful Jew (see Acts 8:1-3; 22:1-5; 26:4-5; Phil 3:4-7). His antagonism to God’s church and strict adherence to Judaism demonstrated his faith in the law before Christ confronted him (Gal 1:15-16).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.