NOTES for Gal 1:15-16

The apostle Paul, of course, speaks first of all about his own calling, but by no means only his own. In essence, when God calls each person into the Church, He performs the four key actions about which the apostle speaks. First, the Lord chooses each person, and we become unique for Him, one of a kind and unrepeatable. When we suffer over the question of the meaning of our life, it is important for us to remember that God's election is already contained in the Creator's design for each of us. Second, the Lord calls every person. He addresses the heart and waits for a response, waits for us to accept Him Himself and His will for us. This call is a great gift of God's grace. Third, so that we may be truly alive and bear within ourselves the undistorted image of the Invisible God, the Lord "reveals His Son in us." The apostle refrains from specifying how this takes place; what matters to him is that when a person responds to the call, he is united with the Son of God with his whole being. What happens is what the Fathers of the Church called the deification of the human person. Finally, fourth, the gift of life is given to us so that we may use it as God Himself does. And this means first of all giving life, bringing to others not ourselves, but the Word of God.

The apostle Paul very vividly contrasts the human and the grace-filled in serving God. He says that when he tried to serve God according to his own human understanding, he "persecuted the Church... being an excessive zealot for the traditions of my fathers." But when God was pleased, He revealed, that is, made manifest, the presence of the Son of God in him and appointed the apostle to preach Him among the Gentiles. It was no longer Saul of Tarsus himself, but God who was pleased to choose him for service; no longer himself and his own zeal that he could bring to people, but the Son of God; no longer was he sent to be zealous for correctness, but to proclaim salvation. This is the choice offered to us Christians who read these words: to be excessive zealots for the traditions of the fathers, or to proclaim the Son of God. As the Didache, the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a monument of Christian writing from the end of the first century, says in its first words, "There are two ways: one of life and one of death."

The Apostle Paul is, after all, distinguished by an astonishing boldness that one is sometimes tempted to call impudence. Just consider what he says: after God revealed His Son to him, he “did not confer with flesh and blood”! Generally speaking, communicating only with God directly and ignoring the Church is a straight road to founding a sect... Wait. Does Paul ignore the Church? No, and no again. He comes precisely into the Church, becomes part of it, and begins to preach Christ—not apart from the Church. What he does not seek is human instruction or approval. God’s calling is sufficient for him, and he does not have to go to the apostles to have his calling confirmed. He joins the community that already exists and then goes out to preach... In essence, by not trying to contact the apostles, he is also not trying to obtain any additional authority. He does not need confirmation from human beings.

Speaking about his own spiritual path, Paul does not stress by chance that, while at one time he was a zealous adherent of Judaism, he later became a witness of Christ, who sent him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (vv. 13-17). Apparently, in this way the apostle was answering possible reproaches that he himself had sharply changed his views on foundational questions of spiritual and religious life. If that is so, why should the Christians of Galatia not do the same, especially since the changes in their worldview were far less radical than those Paul had experienced?

But the apostle immediately notes a fundamentally important point concerning his spiritual path: the absolute sincerity of his search. If at first he was a zealous supporter of Judaism, it was not because he wanted to be "like everyone else," but because he was sincerely convinced that the way he lived and believed was right before God.

It was precisely this sincerity that helped him meet Christ and acquire the Kingdom. But one meeting on the Damascus road was not enough. Now he had to change his life decisively in order to become a witness of Christ. Here too Paul remained true to himself. He did not begin looking for anyone to confirm the truth of his revelation; he simply went to do the work God had entrusted to him (vv. 15-19).

Such sincerity is a pledge both of spiritual sobriety and of freedom from spiritual error. A spiritually sincere person will never look for detours in spiritual life in order to avoid problems, find an easier way to live in the Kingdom, or seek compromises where they are inadmissible. The preachers who distort the gospel, of whom the apostle speaks, were apparently insisting on the strict obligation for all Christians to observe Jewish religious prescriptions. This was caused most of all, no doubt, by the desire to avoid conflict with the Synagogue, which otherwise became inevitable. Clearly, such "spiritual searches" had nothing to do either with spirituality or with a genuine search. They could only distance a person from the Kingdom, as Paul does not grow tired of reminding them.

Paul, it seems, speaks almost defiantly of how, after receiving his revelation on the road to Damascus, he rejected from the very beginning the idea of consulting any human being, even his fellow believers, including the apostles themselves. Strange? At first glance, yes: meeting someone who shares one's mind and faith is always joyful, especially at the beginning of one's spiritual journey. Yet the apostle evidently understood that there are things fully comprehensible only to those to whom they have been revealed, and one must work them out for oneself. On the road to Damascus he met the Messiah risen from the dead, and only he himself could and had to understand how to live from then on, how to build a relationship with the One whom he had sought and finally found where he had not expected to find Him. Others could tell Paul about their experience, but they could not make that experience his own. Paul needed precisely his own experience, for God needed him as a witness, and a true witness cannot testify from someone else's words. Is our testimony sometimes not very convincing for the same reason—that we testify not to our own experience, but to someone else's? Such testimony may be called “instruction in the foundations of faith,” “initiation into tradition,” or any number of other fine and perhaps even accurate terms. Yet such testimony will still not be fully authentic if we speak of Christ and the Kingdom from someone else's words, without ourselves knowing what we ought to know. No instruction or upbringing can replace the path one has travelled oneself.

With honesty and directness worthy of imitation, the apostle Paul in today's reading from the Epistle to the Galatians contrasts what is human and what is gracious in service to God. He says that while trying to serve God according to his own human understanding, he "persecuted the Church... being exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers." But when God was pleased, He revealed, that is, made manifest, the presence of the Son of God in him and appointed the apostle to preach Him among the Gentiles. It was no longer Saul of Tarsus himself, but God who was pleased to choose him for service; he could no longer bring himself and his zeal to people, but the Son of God; he was no longer sent to be zealous for correctness, but to proclaim salvation. This is the choice offered to us, Christians who read these words: to be exceedingly zealous for the traditions of the fathers, or to proclaim the Son of God. As the Didache says in its opening words (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, a monument of Christian writing from the end of the first century), "There are two ways: one of life and one of death..."