Here we may notice the great human objection to the gospel, as revealed by Christ to His servant Paul. Whoever preaches the same gospel is invariably charged with antinomianism, that is, the setting aside of the law in the sense of liberty to break it. Paul speaks of this, “(as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just” (Rom. 3:8). And again, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” Read his answer (Rom. 6:1-15).
But what an answer to this insane charge against the gospel taught to Paul by Christ, in our chapter (Gal. 1:15-16): “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood,” etc. No one can read the conversion of Saul but must admit that it was by pure, unmerited favor. It was “by His grace,” or free favor. But he says, “it pleased God... to reveal His Son in me.” Not only what He had done for him, but in him Yes; God took up in free grace that mad persecutor against Christ, and said, My Son shall be revealed in him The radiance of the glory shone into the earthen vessel. Even Christ, as the beloved Son, shone in him, and like Gideon’s broken pitchers, the radiance of the glory of Christ shone out of him Yes; he could say, “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also, Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.” There is something worthy of God in this, to take up the mad hater of the rejected Christ, and say, as it were, My rejected Son shall be seen in you, and be reproduced in you. Was this that he might break the law? Did not Christ far more than fulfill it? Paul was not dead to the law that he might break it; but for Christ that he might bring forth fruit unto God. Yes; thus it pleased God. And does it not still please God that each believer should be a reproduction of Christ? What a vocation! May we each walk worthy of such a calling. And, note, it was not to preach mere doctrines, but “that I might preach Him among the heathen.” Yes, Christ takes the place of law. Christ is the gospel.
So distinct and certain was the revelation of Christ to Paul, that he needed no conference with men. He takes pains to show us that he did not go up to Jerusalem to be ordained by the other apostles. As we have seen, he derived no authority from them, and he knew absolutely nothing about apostolic succession. Three years after, he went up to Jerusalem to see Peter. He was with him fifteen days; yet, though he was there over two Lord’s days, he saw none of the other apostles, only James, the Lord’s brother. What a complete setting aside of all mere human authority.
Paul had to do directly with the Lord. One might have thought, in reading Acts 15, that he went up to Jerusalem about the law and circumcision, by circumstances: here it tells us it was by revelation. It was thus the will of God that the question should be settled, not at Antioch, but at Jerusalem, the very seat of Judaism, so that there should be no division. But that conference, he tells us, added nothing to him Who, however, would have thought that the first principal person Paul would have to withstand in the defense of the gospel would be Peter himself? But so it was. He says, “I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed.” What was he to be blamed for? He treated the believers of Antioch, who were not under law, as if they were not fit to eat with — fearing those who had the law and Christ, and separating from those who had only Christ. This was not upright, but dissimulation. If they of the law were better than the believers without the law, then the gospel Christ had taught Paul was not true: plainly then Paul must rebuke Peter. Ah! if Paul were here now, how many Peters would he have to rebuke? Is there not a growing determination to despise and shun all, or rather the few, that hold the doctrine of Paul? There are millions who are seeking to attain to righteousness and fitness for heaven by keeping the law in addition to the salvation they hope they have or may have in Christ. Every one of these are in uncertainty, and if sincere, in bondage and misery. For these we write.