One reason I love Bible study is that when you wake up in the morning and go to have your time with the Lord, you know right where to go. Though the years when I haven’t had a set study I’m doing, I’ll wake up and want to spend time with the Lord, but wonder where I should go and what I should read. I end up wasting time, maybe seeing a verse or a psalm and praying, but not real focused with the time I have.
But when you have a study, you know right where to start. There’s no wasting time. And as you go through a book of the Bible, you add to your understanding of that book each day. You find there is so much there to study! As I look at Galatians and read the Bible notes or a book or commentary with it, I realize one small post can’t capture all that I’ve read. So we can go back again and again to learn and grow in God’s Word.
I also love Bible study because it takes us deeper than just reading something quickly like a devotional. And while I also loved reading through the Bible in a year last year and would encourage that, too, for so many other reasons, it’s at such a fast pace, there’s not as much time to linger on a specific passage or go more in depth.
I find when I’m doing an in-depth Bible study, my mind is pondering all through the day the questions I’ve seen or the thoughts I’ve had, so it gives me something good to fix my mind on instead of things I might dwell on instead which aren’t always as worthwhile.
It is a treasure to study God’s Word each day. Today we come to Galatians 1:11-12.
We have already seen that Paul is writing to the Galatian churches to address the issue of them turning away from the gospel of God, this gospel of grace, and that others were trying to pervert this gospel of truth. Then we saw last time that Paul’s goal was to please God, to be approved by God, not man, and he continues now:
“But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (NKJV)
Just as in verse 1, we see that Paul is an apostle, not from men or through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, we also see that this gospel is not according to man or received from man or taught by man. But both of these things, Paul’s apostleship and the gospel of God, came through Jesus Christ.
Paul will go on to talk about what this revelation from Jesus Christ is and we will look at that more in the days ahead, but the point of these verses today is that this is a God-given gospel, not from man. Any other gospel created by man – or the true gospel that is twisted or added to by man to make it something else – is not the gospel at all.
This adds to our understanding of why Paul’s goal is to please God, not man – because who he is and what he has been given has all come from God. And he lives in response to that, as a bondservant of Christ.
And isn’t this who we are? All that we are and all that we have has come from God who has created us and given us good gifts – the greatest gift of even Himself!
God has also revealed Himself to us – through this gospel, through this Word of God, and through His Son! May we live to please and honor Him, too.
PRAYER: Dear Lord, we praise and exalt You today. Thank you for revealing Yourself to us in so many ways. Thank you for this gospel of truth. Thank you for giving us life and then making a way for us to have eternal life with You through Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for dying for our sins so that by faith in You, we can be forgiven and saved. May this gospel truth go deeply into our hearts, and may we in turn live for You, the source of our total satisfaction and deepest joy. Let us experience that reality each day and walk with You by faith. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Praise Proclaimer 