The Good News, apart from human effort.
The message Paul summarized in verses 3 and 4 in the previous blog was for him such good news that he abruptly ends his description of it with” Amen.” Paul stated, ‘it is so,’ ‘it will be so forever; therefore, he made it the core of his letter to the Galatians. Paul assures the believers that what he preached to them is not of human origin but from God. “For I did not receive it or learn it from any human source; instead, I received it by a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Galatians 1:12, NET). Paul made it clear to the Galatians that he did not make them believers and children of God. Paul insists that God made the Galatians his children. He accomplished it through his Grace, Jesus Christ, on the cross at Golgotha. Therefore, Paul contends that if Galatians depart from the gospel he preached to them, they will separate themselves from God. A willful and deliberate perversion of the good news is a de facto rejection of Jesus Christ.
Additionally, Paul reminds Galatians that God elected them to be the beneficiaries of salvation procured in Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha. He reminds them that it was not based on their obedience to the law, the ten commandments, but on Grace – Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha, God made our salvation a reality, no strings attached. The human performance could neither be the condition for nor addition to our salvation in Jesus Christ.
Paul reminds the Galatians believers that they became God’s children because of what God did for them, not in response to what they did. The believers did not become worthy of honor to be God’s children through their obedience to the law. They become God’s children by the re-creation in Jesus Christ, the new birth. The new birth is a change of attitude and the way of thinking. In the body of Jesus Christ on the cross at Golgotha, God destroyed our sinful life and replaced it with Jesus’ perfect and eternal life. The new life in Jesus Christ becomes our daily experience by trusting Jesus or having faith in Jesus. It becomes our visible experience when we irrevocably accept that God has accomplished everything we need for our salvation and our qualification for eternity with God. He accomplished it once and for forever on the cross at Golgotha.
What issue burdened the believers in Galatia? Read the next blog.
