Conclusion: Defection

Galatians chapter 1 verse 10 is our subject today. It's titled conclusion of the section on defection that Bob Eccles started a few weeks ago. So, I'll put up this simple outline that Bob W. forwarded to us. And it's, I like it, it's very simple. It's not like a Chet McCauley outline. His outline is four pages long. And it really makes sense, this outline for Galatians.

It's just an introduction, the first 10 verses, and then Paul needs to defend his apostleship, that's in chapters 1 and 2, and then he defends the gospel of grace, or justification by faith alone. And really, he's also arguing for sanctification by faith alone too, isn't he? In chapters 3 and 4. And then he goes into a section of application for his call to liberty in chapters 5 and 6. And then he concludes the letter to the Galatians in chapter 6, 11 through 18, which we'll get to someday. But yeah, I like keeping this outline in mind because I've been thinking about it a lot, and Galatians is just simply the defense of the gospel, and that's what it is in a nutshell.

But before he defends the gospel of grace against the Judaizers, In point one there, he has to defend himself. He has to defend his apostleship. So he just, he starts out with that. You know, if they accepted him as an apostle, or if they weren't questioning that, you know, chapters 1 and 2 could be truncated from the letter, but it isn't because they're challenging him.

So in the next several weeks, and Bob W. will take this over, is the defense of his apostleship. And we kind of start that today. It's an introduction to that defense. So we'll look at that. So let me read what Bob E. did for the last couple of weeks before Easter in verses 6 through 9 of chapter 1 of Galatians. And this is our problem. He states the subject for Galatians, and this is the occasion for the letter.

He says, I'm amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel or to a different gospel. which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed. And that word is anathema.

So it's a double accursement. So here's verse 10. Here's our verse for today, our singular verse for today. Verse 10, for, am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

And I'm going to be, this morning, Thinking about this, kind of studying this the last few weeks, a while back when I first read it, I was, I understood it, but I couldn't get my mind around the questions he's asking here. Because I knew he was He was using logic, right? And I knew it was some sort of Greek logic, verse 10. And I just, but I couldn't, I said, how am I gonna teach this? So, cause I don't, I didn't go, I went to a public school, a public university. And so I didn't get Greek logic in Homer and Aristotle. But I knew that Paul was doing this, but we'll look at it today. So it's going to be heavily focused on that angle of it, this logic that he's using for this morning.

Here's a couple of commentaries from F.W. Grant. He says, Galatians shows us how little man can be trusted to hold the blessing that he has. And isn't that true? Galatians had this tremendous blessing of a gospel of grace and they're abandoning it. And I also thought a lot about the character of Galatians and a lot of commentators said this too.

It has a character of controversy and its tone is caustic. It's also a polemic, which is an aggressive attack. That's a Greek method of argument, a polemic, an aggressive attack or defense against something. So that's the whole letter is in that way. And that's what I really I was kind of fascinated by that subject.

So you'll see it in today's lesson, maybe not so much in next week's lesson, since I sort of got it in my head. Some other observations from some other commentators from Galatians, and I'm just going through this to kind of warm our minds up. Because we've had a two week break. And so 1st, we have to remember that we were studying Galatians before the Easter break. And now we'll get back into the letter. And we'll pick up where Bob left off.

The tenor of the letter to the Galatians is cold, as I said. And it's urgent. It's a legal brief. in character as opposed to a warm personal letter. I went back and I read the introductions to Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians, and boy, he starts out warm and glowing and loving in those three letters, if you think about it right.

This was amazing. Even in Corinthians, Listen to this opening, to the Church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God, which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom will also confirm you to the end, blameless, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with his son, Christ Jesus, our Lord. Isn't that a wonderful opening? And he calls the Corinthians, he calls them to those sanctified saints. He's, you know, sanctified, double sainthood there. Right. So, boy, but here's the thing that J.B. Stoney brings out.

In Corinth, it was a place given to the flesh. They were not crucified. it was not crucified, it was sanctioned, and hence every variety of evil sprang up in Corinth. Divisions, they were reigning as kings, they had internal disunion, they had external self-satisfaction, there's no sense of defilement by contact, no discipline, and what that is in chapter 5 is they The guy who was having an affair with his stepmother, they didn't kick him out of the church, so he had to address that.

Paul had to address that. So they were defiling themselves by associating with that man. There was profane carelessness at the Lord's table. And I remember this from Roger and Mike's study in the main service. And they had a willfulness in the use of gifts. They had problems using their gifts. And they ended up with a denial of the resurrection there in chapter 15. So look at all those massive problems. in Corinth, yet look at that opening, that warm, evocative opening.

But we don't have that in Galatians, do we? We have something totally different Paul is going for. Though both the epistles of the Corinthians and the epistle to the Galatians are corrective, and they are, Hamilton Smith, this is Hamilton Smith speaking, it will be noticed that the Apostle uses a far greater severity of expression in writing to the Galatians.

I like this this sentence from him. He says, this is striking, for though both evils must necessarily be condemned by the Holy Spirit, yet error in doctrine is more severely censured than evil in practice. But with men, how men address things, it's in the reverse. Men address it this way, an easygoing age is very indifferent to what doctrine men teach, as long as their outward conduct is good. I really like that summation of why Galatians is the way it is, this caustic letter. Paul doesn't seem to Well, he's concerned about Corinth and the Corinthians, but he knows they're steeped in grace, but Galatians were leaving that space.

So Hamilton Smith goes on, this reason is plain for, as one has said, nature can take its measure of human conduct. But faith only can estimate the importance of the truth of God. Further, it has been truly remarked, laxity of walk or worldly principle and habits may be corrected by bringing in the light. as 1st John would say, but when the truth is corrupted, when the truth is corrupted, the light becomes darkness and the very instrument by which God is pleased to work is destroyed. And then finally he says, hence this, and so Hamilton Smith sums up what I was thinking, but I can't say as well as Hamilton Smith says it.

So here's how he ends up with this observation. He says, hence the severity of tone with the apostle, in which the apostle writes, for in turning back to the law, we gradually lose all that is vital. Law recognizes man in the flesh and gives him a place in this world. It makes his blessing depend upon man fulfilling his responsibility.

And thus it shuts out God's grace, makes the work of Christ for us of no profit, sets aside the work of the Holy Spirit in us, and that's Galatians 3.2, and changes Christianity into a religion of outward forms and ceremonies. So just a really good way to state that and to give a flavor of this, the tenor of Galatians. I think that, I'm sorry it's a whole page of text, but it's really informative. And it helped me kind of get the whole book in my head as to what Paul was doing, especially with this verse 10, which we go on to now. So in verse 10, he says, for am I now seeking the favor of men or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were striving to please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

So he's arguing for the gospel of grace that the Lord Jesus Christ personally gave to him, versus the Law Works Gospel. I call it Law Works Gospel Edition that these Judaizers were bringing in. And his audience were Greek, steeped in Greek language and culture and customs. So that's why he's Writing the way in much different if he wrote Hebrews and we think that Paul very possibly wrote Hebrews It's written in a very different manner Because Hebrews is addressing Jews and and and Galatians is addressing Greeks and maybe some some Jews in there too, but mainly Greeks here so One of the things that I was struggling with was what kind of argument is he using? So what I did, I committed a, not a sin, but. a cheat. I went to AI. Oh, no, not AI. Yeah. Artificial intelligence. So I said, are you pleasing? I said, I said, I just typed in the verse. I said, hey, what AI?

What kind of what kind of Greek argument is this? Is it Aristotle? Is it Socrates? Because, you know, none of the commentators brought it up. So it came up with this. The method used is a forensic rhetoric, a classical Greek argumentative method focused on accusation and defense to assert the divine authority of Paul's gospel and condemn deviations from it. It aligns with Aristotle's classification of forensic rhetoric. Um, where the speaker defends their position against opposing claims. Often in a judicial context, and isn't that doesn't that make me sound smart. That's what it is.

I'm convinced that there's nothing wrong with AI as long as you ask the right questions. It's like when computers first came out, they had the old saying, G-I-G-O, Garbage In, Garbage Out. AI? Yeah. Exactly. If you ask AI, is God real? They'll say no. Right. You got to ask the right questions. Right. Right. And if you ask it in the way I did, all it does is it takes this verse and then it goes out and it comes and you can tell it's okay. Yeah, this is This is academic, but it's, it's, I think it's, it's correct because.

I'm not looking at doctrine here yet. I'm looking at the argument, the structure of the argument. So the accusation which Bob covered in the last few weeks, six through nine, is that the Galatians had abandoned and removed themselves from the gospel of grace. So that's the accusation that he's bringing forth. And again, this is telling me from what I found in AI.

And the verdict, or the legal remedy, is stated in verse 9, and that's the two curses, or that double curse, the anathemas. So Paul says, if you have abandoned the gospel of grace, if that is so, then the one doing it must be accursed as a legal remedy. And Paul says, he even puts himself under that curse, as he says in verse 8, but even if we, or an angel from heaven, we are to be accursed. So it's an accusation and a legal remedy.

What AI was doing is it was bringing up this Donald Francois told me he wrote a dissertation. On Galatians, I don't think from a. from a doctrinal point, he approached it from, he was writing ancient Greek analysis of what he was doing. So he was looking at the forensics of Galatians, and he says that chapter one, six through 10, is a forensic method of expressing disgust at events in the Galatian churches in order to force them to reconsider their position. So that's the sort of argument that Paul is making.

And then if we look at other places in Paul's writings or his epistles, he uses Greek arguments from other Greek scholars quite often. In Acts 17, 28, he quotes Eratos. And I don't know who that is, but he quotes Eratos when he says, in him we live and move and have our being. So that's an ancient Greek quote. In Titus 112, he cites Epimenides when he says, Cretans are always liars. That's an established Greek quote. And in 1 Corinthians 15, it's Menander when he paraphrases Menander's bad company corrupts good morals. Or if you think about when Paul went to Athens in Acts 17, and he does that dissertation, he says, men of Athens, you know, and he uses this Greek method of arguing for the existence of God and Jesus Christ.

Did I hear a comment out there? Well, Andrew, Bob and I and Heidi were just nodding at one another. We're right there in Acts right now in our study, so we're getting ready to take it to Athens right now. Yeah, right. And yeah, there I have the... So this whole page is like an AI page, but it helped me get around. I'm like, oh, okay, I can I see what he's doing here, Paul, because it's just it's different from that warm.

Kind of a lyrical. way that he writes like Philippians, when we studied Philippians. He's not making an argument in Philippians. So it was just easier for me to get my head around that than this Greek argument stuff that he was going for in Galatians. So I'm going to turn this slide, I'm going to turn into Roger. We're going to look at verse 10 as Roger would look at it. And so the subject is, I, Paul. He's defending himself and his ministry in court. Like Perry Mason, and I don't know what a modern court TV show is, but. All I can think of is Perry Mason.

It's the best because yeah, the Judaizers have tarnished his God given authority as an apostle. And a latter apostle who had been given the gospel of grace, and it was commissioned directly to him by God the Father and Jesus Christ, this gospel of grace, or the gospel of the church. So he's defending his apostleship. And that's what we're seeing with this question today in verse 10. And then in the next few weeks, as Bob W. goes into that, and Paul recounts his personal history, how he received it. So here's my homage to Roger.

The sentence diagram. All right. Hey, and I did. So, and another confession. I got this from. Yeah, because I don't I don't know how to. I'll learn because now I'm interested in diagram sentences from your father diagramming all the time. Andrew, at least two or three brothers have diagrammed the entire New Testament.

It's available. It's there for your scrutiny. Your source disappoints us. Yeah, I've seen that. I'll have to talk to you, Roger, about accessing that diagram. Because I tried to do one, and I couldn't get into it. I was locked out. But anyway, so somewhere in the internet universes came up. But it's very informative, and it made my life easier. So you see the parallel statements.

Yeah, Heidi just asked me, are we sure you really, you are, are you an AI? Yeah, yeah, no, this is me. I'll let, you know, when I phone in the lesson by AI, totally like, and I have a, what are those called? No, yeah, the avatar. Yeah, avatar. So I'm not an avatar. I'm really here. But I, for this, these two slides, as I relied on AI, but next week, I don't rely on AI. I'll send you the diagrams of both.

Oh, yeah. But yeah, it's, AI is, it's kind of, it's cool when you need to like... No, I don't disagree. I don't disagree. It's only as good as man's knowledge is. Yeah. It can be good, it can be bad. Yeah. So, oh, maybe Paul should write a letter about using AI, you know. It's all worth the hassle.

So you see the bottom statement, if I were trying to please men, it's a conditional, and it's a subordinated conditional statement. If I were trying to please men, then I would not be a bondservant of Christ. But you see how it's structured, where there's a dominant question, am I seeking the favor of men or God? And then there's a second verb clause, as you see there on the left, and it's like a subordinated verb clause. Am I striving to please men?

So that's how it kind of maps out this question. And it's a rhetorical question. It's a legal question. So I was having trouble with it. But looking at it, it makes a lot of sense now when you see a diagram like that. So that's that slide. That's all I wanted to show about that.

So what I came up with from just my observation, Paul is saying, if I, and he's speaking hypothetically, if I were seeking the favor or the approbation of men, then I would find myself in favor of the Judaizers. I would enjoy their company. I would be in good standing with them. They would be singing my praises, let's say, and I'm just sort of making things up here as an example. I would be living in comfort. They would invite me to their cocktail parties.

But the fact is, Paul is saying, I'm not doing that. I'm striving to be pleasing to God and seeking His glory and being true to the gospel that Christ himself personally delivered to me. as evidenced by, I'm a bondservant of Christ. So up in verse 10, he states it in the negative, but what he's really saying is he's a bondservant of Christ. So his CV for bondservanthood, we'll look at this a little. And this is from 2 Corinthians 11, 23 through 27. Paul says, are they servants of Christ?

I know I sound like a madman, But I have served him far more. I've worked harder, been in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews, 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods at one side of a stone. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I spent in the deep.

I've been on frequent journeys, dangers in the rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from Gentiles, dangers from the cities, dangers from wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren. I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. So there's his CV. CV means curriculum vitae in Latin or course of life. And that's certainly a course of life.

And that describes how Paul is a bondservant and he's making this case. Acts 14, which is the narrative of where we are in Galatians right now, in 14, 19 through 23, Paul says, but Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. So there, and it goes on, but there you have him stoned for his faith. And if that's not a bondservant of Christ, I don't know what is.

In 2 Corinthians 1.6, but if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. Or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings, which we all suffer. Colossians 124, now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do share on behalf of this body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions.

In 1 Thessalonians 2.14, and you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews. So there's more suffering he did there. 2 Timothy 3, he's telling Timothy in verses 11 and 12, persecutions and sufferings such as happened to me at Antioch, and at Iconium and Lystra, what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, he says, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

So you can see how He doesn't, you can see all that evidence of what the question he's asking up in verse 10. And he's saying, am I not a bondservant? If I wasn't a bondservant, I'd be pleasing to men. But the fact is, I am a bondservant, and I'm on the opposite side of men. And so we see in all of his writings, how much he proved that in his epistles all over the New Testament. Let me see, how are we doing, Tom? Yeah, pretty good.

You see up in verse 19 through 23 in Acts 14, I have up there, when he stoned, they stoned Paul and they dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. I came across this little file my dad had, and he had this little comment about that. And this is not really related to the lesson, but see what you think of it. My dad had thought that that episode, when they stoned him, um that was the time where paul remember in second corinthians i think it's chapter 12 maybe verses two and three um he says i know a man in christ i don't know if he was in the body or out of the body but he and he was transported to heaven and he saw all these things my dad thinks that That incident is when he went up to heaven and had that experience. So he was stoned to the point of death so much that his spirit and his soul left his body and had that experience. and saw unspeakable things in heaven. I think he says the third heaven. And then he came back. So he's kind of revived from the dead.

What do you guys think of that? I've heard that 1 before. Yeah, I've heard that too. Oh, really? Okay. Okay. So he wasn't crazy. You think that could be misinterpreted today about people who have died and learn and come back? I don't know. Yeah. Right.

Well, I would doubt it from people today, but with Paul, I would say, yeah, Paul, because Paul wrote about it. And he was up there. And he had that experience that, you know, John in Revelation had, and also Ezekiel, right? So Andrew, couldn't that be just as easily applied to when Paul was in Damascus and went out into the desert. Yeah. Oh, he could have had that experience there in the desert. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I would think he could have had it there, too. It's just an interesting little side note when he had that experience for a year. Yeah. Well, he was he was taught directly by Christ. Yeah. It's something three years. I don't I don't think his other books. inspiration of scripture isn't the same as what Paul learned in the desert. Writers can be inspired to write scripture, but Paul was actually taught directly by Christ in the desert. Right, yeah.

And I thought about this because I'm talking a lot about Paul writing and using this forensic argumentative method and things like that. But I think of what Roy often says. You know my mind gets kind of wrapped up on paul, but who it really is is the spirit right the holy spirit writing these things to the galatians and it's it's it's god himself writing these And just using paul to convey it in the way that paul Would do it because paul and it's something you said bob In one of your early introduction to Galatians, you had the statement that, you know, Paul, God used Paul has a certain skill set.

He went to the University of Athens, and he was a Greek expert. And he studied Homer and all this Socrates. He was an expert at that. And then he was also an expert in the Jewish law under Gamaliel, right? So he had these both. He had expertise in both worlds, and that God just used, or God filled him with that knowledge. And it's his personality set that God used.

You said something to that effect, Bob W., about Paul, many weeks ago, that I liked. that God raised up Paul to be who he was so he could write something tremendous like the book of Galatians, you know, and argue it the way he does. From a human point of view, God looked down at Paul before he would say, And he said, this guy is a go-getter. He is zealous. When he wants to do something, he goes out, he gets it done, he goes overboard.

And God probably said, now, this is from a human viewpoint. God says, I can take that, and I can use him in the furtherance of the gospel. Yeah, you said something exactly like that, and that kind of latched on to me in my study. So that's a good statement.

And he uses all of our personality sets to, he uses it for how he needs it. To come out, I think, you know, um, so, and Paul was tenacious. He was. He was, and you can tell he was opinionated and he, he just, he was like, uh, yeah, I guess he was a honey badger is what he was. And God use that, um. To further the gospel, I think so. In conclusion here. The question to verse 10, am I now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond servant of Christ. The answer is found in a couple places later on in the epistle.

In 511, Paul says, but I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, Then why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross has been abolished. And all these verses that I mentioned on the other slide that I pulled out from Timothy and Acts about him suffering is him proving himself to be on the suffering side with Christ and not on the conciliatory side with men who are preaching this popular gospel. And in 612 of Galatians he says, those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. So what he's saying is these Judaizers are not preaching the gospel of grace because they would be persecuted for it. They're living the easy life and we saw from that passage about The shipwrecks and the things from 2nd Corinthians that Paul certainly wasn't living that comfortable life.

And then lastly. Christ himself says, Paul is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for my name's sake. So, the Lord Jesus Christ had a purpose in his life. Told Paul that he was going to suffer and suffer as Donald Trump would say hugely for his for his for his adherence to the gospel here. So. So, yeah, that's that's 1 verse, but it's a, it's a lot there, but I think. Paul has proved himself to be a bond servant of Christ here. Okay, any, oh, we better wrap up here. I'll pray.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this study, and we thank you for Paul and the word that you have given us through him, and the gospel, the wonderful gospel of grace, pure grace, and that we're not under the law, but we're under grace, and we thank you for that. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.