Sermon Text: Galatians 1:11-24
Theme: Paul’s testimony of his miraculous conversion to faith through God’s gracious revelation of Jesus convinces the church that the gospel he preached was given to him by God apart from any human mediation.
Structure/points: Even in the earliest days of the Church, opponents of the gospel were pitting Jesus against the Apostles. Throughout Galatia, the Judaizing heretics had been claiming that Paul had received his gospel from man, not Christ, so his teaching should be ignored. Paul must defend the validity of his apostolic call and the gospel he had brought to the Galatians and the rest of the church. To that end, he reminds the Galatians of the miracles that had been done to bring him to faith in Jesus and to make him a preacher of the gospel of Jesus. In doing so, he upholds the divine origin of the gospel against skeptics.
- Paul’s fanaticism
- Paul’s conversion
- Paul’s independence