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Bible Reading Notes
March 2010
Saturday, March 27th – Galatians 1: 15-17
In these verses, Paul continues to write about his changed life in Christ. He speaks, in vv. 16, 17, of his actions as a new creature in Christ and as one called by God to be an apostle. Yet prior to those actions he writes of the gracious actions of God in the counsels of eternity and in His application of redemption to Paul by His having effectually called the Pharisee who was dead in sin to arise as a new creature to live, move, and have his being in the world of divine grace. By these words of testimony, Paul reminds his readers that their salvation results neither from their own natural worthiness and attainments nor from their deeds done as new creatures in Christ, but rather from the gracious actions of God before they had either their natural or supernatural lives. We are saved by God’s grace, not only by the grace of His effectual calling in time, but also by the grace of His sovereign election and predestination in eternity. How could our poor works of legal obedience contribute anything to such infinite, eternal, and perfect divine grace?
Sunday, March 28th – Galatians 1: 15-17
Paul rightly regards his new life in Christ as well as his office as an apostle to be the fruits of divine election and not of his own endeavor. God does not wait to discover who will seek or strive to attain salvation; for the Lord infallibly and inherently knows that all sinners are unworthy, unwilling, and unable to seek, far less to earn, their salvation (Rom. 3:9-20). Apart from the sovereign and eternal election of God, none would be saved. But God has graciously elected His chosen people to inherit new life in Christ (Eph. 1:4-6). The Lord has also sovereignly determined the calling of His people into their various services and offices, with regard only to His gracious choosing and effectual enabling, not with regard to any soul’s natural abilities or actions.
Monday, March 29th – Galatians 1: 15-17
Paul was what he was, not by his own endeavors but rather by God’s electing grace. The apostle emphasizes this when he speaks of the Lord having set him apart to receive salvation and to serve as an apostle to the Gentiles. This setting apart was done before Paul was born, when he had done nothing good or evil, as was the case when God loved Jacob but hated Esau before either of those twins was born (Rom. 9:10-16). Although Paul was born a sinner who would seek to cover his guilt and shame with the fig-leaves of his formal and external conformity to God’s Law, and although he grew in his Pharisaic pride and zealous hatred of Christ and of Christians, there was something deeper, higher, and more powerful at work throughout Paul’s life than the righteous rage of the proud Pharisee. God’s gracious plans and purposes, determined by the Lord from before the foundation of the world, would prevail. Thanks be to God that for Paul and for those of us who have likewise been elected and effectually called by God to inherit eternal life, those divine purposes have been gracious and the Lord’s plans have been to give us a joyful future and a glorious and certain hope.
Tuesday, March 30th – Galatians 1: 15-17
Paul writes in v.16 that God was graciously pleased, to reveal His Son in me. This phrase speaks volumes of vital theology. It alerts us to the wonderful truth that our God does not save us by His delivering to us merely principles that we must learn and seek to obey. The gospel is ultimately not about principles—even true and exalted principles of right and wrong. Rather, the gospel is about a Person, the unique God/Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom to know is eternal life (Jn. 17:3). That is why when Jesus was asked to articulate the greatest of the Ten Commandments, He summed them up, not in terms of man’s moral obligation to obey a code, but rather in terms of man’s loving God and his fellow man. We love our God through Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us (Gal. 2:20). We may respect and admire a system of truth, but we can love only the Son of God who is the living truth.
Wednesday, March 31st – Galatians 1: 15-17
Our recognition of the sovereign, eternal, and gracious election of God wrought out in the Person and work of Christ, whom God’s Holy Spirit reveals in our minds, hearts, and souls, slays our pride. Yet, it instills in us a humble confidence, not in ourselves, but in God’s holy, good, and loving plans and purposes for us in Christ. Paul testifies to this when in vv.16,17 he speaks of his not having consulted with other believers or even with the other apostles about his faith in and calling by Christ immediately after his conversion. Accordingly, in place of brittle and puffed-up pride, there is in every believer a solid and unshakeable conviction of God’s love and powerful calling.
Thursday, April 1st – Galatians 1: 15-17
The consciousness that Paul had of his calling to be an apostle to the Gentiles was founded not upon the counsel of men but rather upon the commissioning of God as it was related first to the disciple Ananias, and then through him to Paul (Acts 9:10-16). No man could add anything to such a clear sense of divine calling. As William Still in his Bible Reading Notes on Galatians wrote:
He who can identify his calling in time and in experience with an ordination beyond his personal consciousness knows himself to be carried forward on a stream of grace so mighty that no human agent or agency can daunt his spirit. This man has something to say to men…(p.12).
Friday, April 2nd – Galatians 1: 15-17
Clearly, from a reading of Acts 9:19, we should understand that when Paul writes that he did not confer with flesh and blood, he is not denying that he had fellowship with other Christians after his regeneration. Rather, Paul denies that he conferred with others, meaning that he neither explained his calling to them nor asked others to help him understand his calling. Those who, like Paul, receive a brilliantly clear calling from the Lord to minister the gospel of Christ, know that there are times when no man can help, but only hinder them in their fulfillment of that ministry. Such men, as under-shepherds, must also grow in their understanding that for the sheep of their flocks there come times when those sheep must grow in their direct fellowship with Christ alone. All faithful pastors should pray for believers to grow in direct fellowship with Christ, unmediated even by faithful pastors. John puts this in terms of believers’ anointing (1 Jn. 2:20), while Paul himself puts it in terms of his presenting every man perfect in Christ (Col. 1:28), being rooted and grounded in love (Eph. 3:17).
Saturday, April 3rd – Galatians 1: 17b, 18
In these verses, Paul gives a brief account of his early contact with the other apostles. Immediately after his conversion and apostolic commissioning by God, Paul spent his first days in Christ in Damascus, where he had intended to persecute Christians but instead had fellowship with them. He also proclaimed Christ for a number of days until he was himself persecuted by the Jews who plotted his death. At that point, Paul left Damascus (Acts 9:19-25). He did not go to Jerusalem to be instructed or even consoled by the other apostles but went to Arabia, where no apostles and few, if any, Christians resided. Paul clearly sought solitude in which he could and obviously did reconsider his Old Testament learning in the light and vital reality of Christ crucified, resurrected, and ascended to His Father in heaven. The apostle Paul was, accordingly, no man’s debtor for what he knew of Christ or His gospel, but he drank in the gospel directly from the fountain of the Lord.
Sunday, April 4th – Galatians 1: 17b-19
Paul spent three years in Arabia, apparently giving himself entirely to prayerful study of God’s Word and edifying meditation. While he did not immediately after his conversion go to Jerusalem, neither did he stay indefinitely away from Jerusalem and the other apostles. After three years in Arabia, where he was thoroughly grounded in the gospel that he was to preach to the Gentiles, Paul went to Jerusalem for a short time to meet Peter and very briefly to encounter James, the brother of Jesus. It is difficult to determine where this brief visit fits in the account in Acts 9:19-30. Possibly this visit is alluded to in Acts 9:26. The point is that once Paul met any of the apostles, he was fully called, commissioned, and equipped as an apostle—all by the direct doing of the Lord. It is no wonder, then, that in the providence of the Lord, this particular apostle should have been the most effective evangelist and the writer of most of the New Testament epistles. By God’s grace and wisdom, the last and least became the first and greatest to the highest blessing of all the Church.
Monday, April 5th – Galatians 1: 20
At this point, Paul inserts a declaration before God of the veracity of his account. By his writing this veritable oath, the apostle demonstrates his understanding sensitivity to those who would be tempted to doubt his assertion that all of his gospel training came to him directly from God and not from any man. Such a course of training would be fraught with such hazards as erroneous, idiosyncratic, and extravagant understandings and interpretations of Scripture, unless his training took place exactly as Paul said, at the hand of God. It is, of course, not only this oath but also the character of Paul’s doctrine that indicate to us the truth of what he writes about how he had received his theological training.
Tuesday, April 6th – Galatians 1: 21-24
Paul’s movement from Jerusalem to Syria and Cilicia seems to be alluded to in Acts 9:30. Tarsus, in Syria, was Paul’s home town, and while he may have been known there by many, he was unknown to the churches throughout Judea except for the report they repeatedly heard that their greatest enemy had been transformed by God into the greatest apostle of Christ and champion of the churches of the Lord. The overtones of this amazing report spread extensively and rapidly from the one man whose life had been drastically and forever changed on the Damascus road. Rightly did those hearing it attribute the cause of this astonishing effect to God, and they glorified the Lord accordingly. May many see our lives changed by the gospel Paul preached and consequently glorify the God who has transformed us.
Wednesday, April 7th – Galatians 1: 21-24
Paul refers to the churches that were in and spreading out from Judea as being in Christ. In v.16, the apostle referred to Christ being in him. Both are true for all who have been made new creatures by the effectual calling of God in Christ. We are in Christ (Rom. 6:11; 8:1:2; Cor. 5:17), and Christ is in us (Rom. 8:10; Col. 1:27). Before his conversion, Paul had regarded Christ as a hated threat to his life and to his Jewish traditions. At and after his conversion, the apostle saw Christ to be no hated enemy but rather the true helper, Savior, and lover of his soul. He saw Christ as taking precedence over all that is natural and he saw his election in Christ to be the work of no foreign invader, alienating him from all he knew and loved, but rather the work of his loving God who delivered him from his sin and brought him into his true home in Christ and into the world of His grace. This is how Paul preached Christ and how we have accepted Him.
Thursday, April 8th – Galatians 1: 21-24
It was not only the titanic transformation in Paul’s life that struck the believers with awe and prompted them to glorify the God who alone changes sinners by His saving grace and almighty power. It was also the fact that Paul had demonstrated that he had been thoroughly mastered by the faith, meaning the system of doctrine that comprised the gospel of Christ. It was that faith that Paul, with masterful skill and loving passion, preached to others and of which he wrote in his richly edifying epistles. We who have benefitted from those epistles should join our ancient brethren in giving glory to our God who has so marvelously blessed His Church through this man whose life and career He so radically changed.
Friday, April 9th – Galatians 2: 1
Paul writes that he returned to Jerusalem after an interval of fourteen years. This interval could be counted from his conversion or from his first visit to Jerusalem mentioned in Gal. 1:18, that took place three years after his conversion. The starting point is immaterial. The point is that for nearly a decade and a half the apostle learned and taught the faith with no influence from the other apostles. His second visit to Jerusalem could be referred to in Acts 11:27-30, or Acts 15:1-4ff, or not referred to at all in Acts. The point of this second visit is that while Paul was not indebted to the other apostles for his office, commissioning, or equipping, he was not aloof from them either. We who are in Christ must pursue our Lord’s calling in our lives but not without consideration of and loving cooperation with our brethren in Christ.
Saturday, April 10th – Galatians 2: 1, 2
The long interval of time that passed before Paul made this second visit to Jerusalem is significant in that it shows Paul’s established self-sufficiency in Christ. The significance of the termination of this interval indicates that although Paul served for a time independent of the other apostles, he was not working in isolation from or competition against them, but rather in a divinely directed cooperation that facilitated the massive shift of the center of gravity of God’s redemptive dealings from the Jews to the Gentiles—a shift that has remained to our day. Paul, the unique and superlative apostle of God’s choosing and making, was the point man effecting this shift, but he had the full affirmation and support of all the other apostles of Christ. How wonderfully wise and efficient is the working of our God through His servants.
Sunday, April 11th – Galatians 2: 1, 2
As God had revealed His Son in Paul at the apostle’s conversion (Gal. 1:16), and had led him to a training course of solitary contemplation in Arabia and independent preaching in Syria and Cilicia, so the timing and character of Paul’s second visit to the apostles in Jerusalem was directed by divine revelation. So momentous and surprising, if not shocking, would be the evident shift in primary redemptive operations from the Jews to the Gentiles, that the Lord took care to show all people that He Himself was intimately and immediately superintending that shift through His dealings with Paul, His chosen apostle, who was and remains to the Gentiles analogous to what Moses had been to the Jews.
Monday, April 12th – Galatians 2: 1-3
Paul took with him, on his second and most critical visit to Jerusalem, Barnabas and Titus. Barnabas was the pacific Jewish reconciler of Paul to the disciples in Jerusalem on an earlier visit (Acts 9:26,27) while Titus was a Gentile who was reconciled to God in Christ through Paul’s preaching of the gospel (Titus 1:4). These diverse men were representative of the work of God’s reconciliation not only with Himself through Christ but also with one another in Christ. They were together the living fruits of the gospel’s power to save the Jew first and also the Greek (Rom. 1:16).
Tuesday, April 13th – Galatians 2: 1-3
The revelation that God gave to Paul clearly did not only indicate that he should return to Jerusalem, but also informed the apostle of the character of that visit. Paul returned to Jerusalem not to obtain endorsement from the other apostles of his office and ministry. He returned in the interest of Church harmony, especially in view of the growing inclusion of the Gentiles in the Church. Paul makes this evident in what he writes in Eph. 3:1-12. The deep and expansive blessings of God for His Church can initially appear as a threat to Church unity instead of the enriching treasure that it is. The Lord graciously lessens this appearance of threat through the men He uses and the fruits He grants to those men as they extend the net of gospel proclamation.
Wednesday, April 14th – Galatians 2: 1-3
Paul writes in v.2 that he laid before the other apostles his gospel. By this he means that he presented to them not only the content of the message he preached, but also the man, Titus, as a validating fruit of Paul’s gospel, a trophy of God’s saving grace, and an incarnation of the good news the apostle was proclaiming to Gentiles who were dead in their sin. The genuine gospel is not merely a rightly ordered array of true principles, but most importantly is the power of God to produce new creatures in Christ.
Thursday, April 15th – Galatians 2: 1-3
The New American Standard version of the Bible translates v.2 poorly when it reads that Paul presented his gospel to the other apostles for fear that he might have been ministering in vain. The best translation is that Paul reported lest perhaps he had ministered in vain. The word, fear, indicates that Paul had doubts about his apostolic ministry; the words, lest perhaps, indicate that while he had no doubt regarding his apostolic office or ministry, he based his confidence not on his own certainty but was willing to have it verified by all of the apostles. Such apostolic consensus served to further the harmonious progress of the gospel in the churches and through the gospel outreach of the churches. The Lord led Paul to submit his gospel for this verification so that any clouds of suspicion regarding his apostolic office and work would be swept away.
Friday, April 16th – Galatians 2: 1-3
The result of Paul’s submitting to the other apostles his gospel message and presenting to them Titus, the living new man in Christ, was that all of the apostles recognized Paul’s gospel and its fruit as being complete and in need of no modification. This recognition of the complete nature of Paul’s gospel extended to the matter of Titus not being required to receive circumcision. The original impulse of all of the apostles was to perceive and accept the less shadowy and more spiritual and substantial nature of the new covenant ushered in by Christ, the substance of redemption. This original impulse was right, but it wavered, even in some apostles under pressure of a party that insisted that circumcision was essential to salvation (see vv.11ff). The full liberating truth of the whole counsel of God is always under attack from some quarter, and we must ever be vigilant to stand upon the truth of God and not kneel under the pressure of misguided and misguiding men.
Saturday, April 17th – Galatians 2: 4, 5
In these verses, Paul informs us of the challenge that arose against his gospel and its fruits from false brethren. These were church members who had professed faith in Christ but who did not in sincerity and truth possess Christ or His perfect salvation. They were tares growing amid the wheat. For their salvation they depended not upon Christ but upon the enslaving burden of their own laborious and vain attempts to attain and maintain self-righteousness. Such self-righteous orientation casts contempt upon the person and work of Christ, who liberates His redeemed people from the thrall of their guilt, corruption, misery, and duteous drudgery in their vain attempts to command God’s approval of the filthy rags that fail to cover their shame.
Sunday, April 18th – Galatians 2: 4, 5
Paul uses terms to describe the actions of the false brethren that indicate the behavior of enemies. He writes that they sneak into Christian churches, in contrast to Paul’s open submission of his gospel mentioned in v.2. They spy out the gracious and glorious liberty that redeemed sinners have through the perfect saving work of Christ. They spy not to possess that work and its liberating power, but rather to pervert it and to drag the beloved and liberated saints of the Lord into that bondage to which the false brethren cling. Rightly did Paul know their enslaved and enslaving spirit that was kin to the proud Pharisaic spirit that had motivated him to count Christ as his enemy and Christians as pests deserving imprisonment and death. Rightly did Paul refuse to submit to them!
Monday, April 19th – Galatians 2: 4, 5
The bondage into which false brethren would drag believers is that of their subservience to sinful man. By cunning insinuation, like that used by the serpent in the Garden, they would have believers defect from their completeness in Christ and return to subjection to a false system of ranking and supposed salvation by the woefully faulty merits of their own works. When Paul writes we did not yield in subjection to them, he means that neither he, nor Barnabas, nor Titus—men who had deeply imbibed the invigorating wonders and delights of salvation in Christ—were moved even for a little time to submit to the sneaking, spying sabotage attempts of the false brethren, but rather they stood fast in their faith in the Son of God who had loved them and given Himself for them.
Tuesday, April 20th – Galatians 2: 4, 5
Paul and his co-laborers resisted the subtle but deadly pressures of the false brethren not only for their own sakes but also for the sake of all Christians who would ever read this letter. Had the apostle’s team yielded for the least measure of time, not only would they have been oppressed by the bondage of a works righteousness, but they would have served to lead countless others out of the blessed liberty of their salvation and into the bondage of those obligated to working perfect, personal, and perpetual righteousness in order to be accepted by God. Paul rightly refused to be an anti-Moses, leading God’s people out of the freedom of their redemption and back into their Egyptian bondage.
Wednesday, April 21st – Galatians 2: 6-9
In these verses, Paul indicates something of the effect the false brethren had upon the other apostles in Jerusalem. In short, he tells us that the tares had no effect upon the apostolic wheat. None of the apostles were moved to embrace the bondage of self-righteousness while despising the precious liberty they had in Christ and proclaimed to others. Although Paul reiterates his refusal to yield to the false brethren, no matter what the other apostles did, he happily notes that the other apostles stood fast with him in the blessed liberty of Christ.
Thursday, April 22nd – Galatians 2: 6-9
Although the apostles remained true to the gospel and unaffected by the false brethren, Paul indicates to us something of the tactics the tares used in their attempt to manipulate the apostles. The mention of those who were of high reputation hints that these false brethren sought to employ flattery in order to create ranks in the Church—high ranks to which they could ascend. Had the apostles fallen for their flattery, rancor would have resulted in the Church, as it always has done in history when men create and crave purportedly high offices that are not countenanced by the Word of God.
Friday, April 23rd – Galatians 2: 6-9
False brethren endeavor to create high ranks and unholy rancor in the Church. But the apostles did not lose sight of the fact that all believers were essentially children of God and brethren to one another. They rightly held to the wonder of God’s saving grace, wherein Christ descended to save sinners and exalt all of the redeemed to inconceivable glory, all by His grace.
Saturday, April 24th – Galatians 2: 6-9
Paul clearly kept Christ and only Christ as his focus. So did the other apostles. This meant that for them, as it should be for us, the only standard and approval that mattered was Christ’s not men’s, even be they of seeming high rank. Read in 1 Cor. 4:1-5 how Paul elaborates this attitude.
Sunday, April 25th – Galatians 2: 6-10
Although the opinion of men may mean nothing to those who stand and serve approved by God in Christ, it does not follow that brethren and servants of Christ have nothing to do with each other. Hence, Paul touches on themes of unity and diversity in the Body of Christ being maintained by harmonizing love. By the saving grace they shared, Paul and his team were in solid unity with the other apostles (v.9). They also stood unified in charity toward others (v.10). But they mutually recognized and respected their diverse divine callings in their ministry of the gospel (vv.7,8). Such harmony in the church is always beautiful, delightful, and effectively fruitful.
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