THE REVELATION OF THE GOSPEL

"Revelation is the abolition of religion.” Karl Barth

“But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.” Gal1:11

Paul is now making it clear that the gospel which he preached to the Galatians, the very gospel which they heard and received was not a gospel of human origin. It did not originate from him or from any other men or group but from God Himself who gave it to him that he might preach it unto the Gentiles.

It was not something that Paul invented as his own personal interpretation and opinion or a continued development of religious tradition authorized by the original apostles in Jerusalem.

“For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Gal1:12

He says that the conveyance of the gospel to him was straight from God’s supernatural activity of grace in Jesus Christ. He did not receive it of man, but of God Himself.
Paul was very adamant that the gospel he shared did not come through human channels. He wasn’t 'discipled' by the apostles or trained by anyone. He did not receive the gospel through learning or mentorship. He did not attend catechism or seminary or bible school to be instructed in the doctrines of a Christian belief-system. None of these human endeavors. He received the gospel through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 
Look at The Message translation of this verse;
“Know this – I am most emphatic here, friends – this great Message I delivered to you is not mere human optimism.  I didn’t receive it through the traditions, and I wasn’t taught it in some school.  I got it straight from God, received the Message directly from Jesus Christ.” Gal1:11-12

You may wonder why there is such an emphasis by Paul on the fact that it is God who revealed the gospel to him. The simple reason as Paul has explained earlier lies in the fact that Jesus is both the subject and the object of the gospel. The gospel is not just a doctrine or information that one is taught.

The gospel is a revelation of Jesus Christ and His grace. It is about knowing and experiencing the eternal life of God as your own life. It is about knowing and experiencing God Himself as your new life and purpose. It is not just gathering information and new doctrines and instructions.
As a result there is no man that can reveal the gospel unto another man. The only way we can get it is by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Each one of us must receive a revelation of the good news for our self.

The gospel is not just a revelation about Jesus Christ, nor merely a revelation conveyed by Jesus Christ to a person, rather the gospel is the revelation of Jesus Christ Himself. It is His very essence. When you receive a revelation of the gospel, you receive a revelation of the very life and grace of God. You receive a revelation of Christ Himself. This is the point that Paul is attempting to make to the Galatians.

“For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.” Gal1:13-14

We know from the book of Acts that Paul had quite a reputation among the Christian communities concerning his pre-conversion activities when he was still known as Saul. Luke noted that “Saul was ravaging the church, entering house after house; and dragging off men and women, to put them in prison” Acts 8:3, And that he was “breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord” Acts 9:1. When the risen Lord Jesus appeared unto him on the road to Damascus he asked him “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Acts 9:4

There is no doubt that these false teachers had brought this to the Galatians’ attention so as to create mistrust and suspicion towards Paul.
Of course Paul is filled with utmost regret and remorse for his actions is the past. He admits that he “persecuted the church of God” in 1Cor15:9 and Phil3:6. However his admissions provide for us some insight into religion and the religious mindset.

His commitment (just like most religion) was fueled by “zeal without knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). He was violently obsessed in his defense of religion even to the disregard of other people’s lives. Religion and religious people too often embrace and adopt violent conflict against those who disagree and will not conform to their beliefs and traditions. Mercy is a concept that does not exist in their paradigm. They are constantly judging, persecuting, ridiculing and condemning those that disagree with them. Mercy is an attribute that is ever present in God and rarely present in man.

It therefore isn’t a surprise that all the major terrorist organizations around the world are built on religious fundamentalism. They always have a religion they are willing to go to any end for, even unto death. From Joseph Kony’s LRA, Holy Spirit Movement of Alice Lakwena, Jamil Mukulu’s ADF, Al Shabab, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Daesh (ISIS) to historical groups like the medieval Christian Crusaders who massacred Jews and muslims while fighting for Jerusalem etc.

Of course most of today’s religious Christian groups and churches don’t kill other people. Their violence is more subtle and varies. Today grace preachers are targeted for malicious claims, they are called false preachers, churches forbid their members from hearing or attending meetings of these ‘false preachers’, blogs are written on the internet about them. Their messages are called false grace, greasy grace, sloppy agape, easy believism and so forth. It is all persecution. Religious zeal without knowledge. We will deal more with this in chapter four.

“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” Gal1:15-16

Paul now refers to the divine action of God, “Who separated me from my mother’s womb.” It was not a coincidence or sheer luck or fate that transformed Paul into a grace-Christian. Paul attributed what happened in his life to God’s pre-ordained plan to sovereignly act in his life, even before he was born. Here we see grace. God acting by his unmerited, unearned, undeserved favor to advance and advantage us.
  
Paul recognizes that God ordained and planned to separate him “unto the gospel of God” Rom1:1 just like He had done with John the Baptist (Lk1:10-17), the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 49:1,6) and the prophet Jeremiah (Jer1:5) before him. 

Paul is saying to us that God does select and call an individual “even from his mother’s womb” for His divine purposes. Indeed this is a principle that we see throughout scripture. God has a specific purpose for each one of us. A purpose which he ordained for us even before we were conceived by our mothers. This is what Psalm139:13-18 and Ephesians2:10 teach. Our job then becomes to find out what it is and follow through and fulfill it. But that is a topic for another day

Notice that God did not just give Paul factual data, information, doctrine or theology about Christ, but He “revealed His Son” in him. It was the personal revelation of the life and reality of the Son of God indwelling Paul’s spirit and living in Paul as his life.

The purpose of this revelation of Jesus Christ in Paul was “that I might preach Him among the Gentiles.” Paul’s conversion and commissioning both occurred on the road to Damascus as we see in Acts 9:3-22; Acts 22:6-21 and Acts 26:12-18. Notice that he was commissioned to “preach Him,” Jesus Christ, and not some denominational creed or some organized package of doctrine. Jesus is the subject and the object, the dynamic and the content of genuine Christian gospel preaching. This is a very important issue to deal with. Let us camp here a while.

REVELATION KNOWLEDGE

Ephesians1
15 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints,
16 do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers:
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,
18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints

You would think that knowing Christ begins when God teaches you something you don’t know about Jesus. You get new information or a new understanding concerning Christ. After all this is the way we naturally learn everything else. We obtain new information and as a result add another layer to our understanding of a concept. This is natural.

However, knowing Christ doesn’t work like this at all. Instead God always seeks first to teach us something we don’t know about knowing. In other words, God wants for us to understand that the way we seek to know and understand Him is not the way He seeks to be known and understood.

There is a way to know God that is not natural to us. A way that doesn’t involve our usual gathering and computing and compiling of new information with our brains in order to make a logical conclusion and establish a new belief. This is how the natural mind operates. And yet our natural minds cannot know the things of God because God is spiritual. God seeks to first deal with us about a different kind of knowing and seeing and learning. A spiritual way to know God.

So Paul prays for the Ephesian church that they will receive the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God which will lead to the eyes of their understanding being enlightened so that they may know the way God wants them to know. We are going to expound on this as we go along.

One of the greatest hindrances to truly knowing and experiencing the Lord is our familiarity with biblical words and spiritual concepts. We have become far more acquainted with the words and concepts themselves than with the spiritual realities that these words describe.

If I say grace or faith or love or the Cross or righteousness, there is already a definition in your mind of what that is. You have already confined that word or concept to a certain meaning of it you already have. This meaning you could have acquired from a preacher, mentor, your own study, experience, history and so forth. This word cannot therefore mean anything to you other than what you have already defined it to mean in your heart.  You have already settled it in your mind. This is a major hindrance to knowing God.

THE BOX CALLED DISGUSTING!

In one of our classes we used a very interesting illustration to understand this truth. Imagine that I handed you a box with the word ‘disgusting’ written on top. There is nothing really wrong with this. It's just the word ‘disgusting’ on a box. The word disgusting isn’t necessarily ‘disgusting’.  It doesn’t smell or feel or look bad. It’s just a word.  However you will immediately start defining the contents of that box in your mind. You will imagine something that looks nasty or smells terrible or something filthy or whatever. You might even get out your phone and check the dictionary for the meaning of the word. But here is my point, as long as ‘disgusting’ is just a word on a box, your imagination gets to define the contents. It all depends on your information, past experience or prior knowledge of the word disgusting. But it is not based on a present reality or experience of disgusting. It is not truth.

So eventually curiosity gets the best of you, and you decide that you must open the box. On opening it you discover a container of the filthiest most revolting substance you have ever encountered. It is vile beyond description and offensive to all of your senses. The room immediately fills with the worst stench you have ever encountered. Your eyes are teary, you gag and throw up, you feel sick already and throw the box as far as you can, and rush out of that room totally disgusted. Question is, what happened?

The contents of the box have defined the word ‘disgusting’.  Experiencing what was inside the box has cast down your imagination and replaced it with the truth. Your understanding of disgusting is no longer what you read from Google search or Webster, it is no longer some definition you had in your mind or a past experience. It is now a present reality. You may not be able to define what the word means using appropriate words, you may not be able to write an essay on the word disgusting but now you know exactly what that word means. You have received revelation knowledge of that word. The word is more real to you than any definition by the best English professor in the world. He has an argument or a theory but you have an experience.

And the next time I give you a similar box, the word disgusting will be far more than a word to you. It will mean much more. This word has now been defined and filled with meaning because of your encounter and experience with the substance behind it.

The Word of God is like this. We can say that the Bible is a collection of word packages that cannot be truly known until you are confronted with their contents. The words of Scripture are a wonderful gift from God, but we are meant to see past the words and behold the Lord Himself.

God's desire is not that we necessarily identify correct biblical concepts and correctly define them with our mind. Christianity is not an exam that we have to have all this information to answer certain questions. God doesn’t really care whether you can define what grace or faith or righteousness or the Cross is. He wants you to receive, know, and experience the life and grace of His Son behind these words and concepts!

It is a turning point in our life when we realize that we do not know what we think we know unless God has revealed it to our heart. Paul says something similar in 1Cor8:2 when he says this; “And if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.”
We can read God’s words as much as we like, but real spiritual communication begins when the reality behind these words, the actual substance of which they speak, is shown to us. This is what revelation is.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jn1:1

We understand that the Word mentioned here is a reference to the pre-incarnate Son of God, but fail to ask why He is given this name. Why is Jesus called the Word of God?

The answer is simple. Jesus is, in His very being, what is real and true of God, and what God desires to make known to us. Jesus is God communicating Himself to us in a way that we can experience and understand Him.

Hebrews1:3 calls Him “the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person.” In other words, He represents all that God is, and all that He knows, wants, understands, and loves.
He is the manifestation of God in bodily form. To see Him is to see the Father; (Jn14:7-11) to receive the Word is to receive the One who sends Him. He is called the wisdom and righteousness of God (1Cor1:30), the truth of God (Jn14:6), the love of God (1Jn4:9-10), and God is using this perfect Word (Jesus) to communicate Himself to the human soul.

“No one has seen God at anytime. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” Jn1:18

God unveils and communicates Himself to the human heart through this one perfect Word. When the Father reveals His Son, He is saying all that there is to say. Knowing Jesus is knowing God.
But like the Pharisees we diligently study the Scriptures thinking that we shall find life in mere words written in a book. We fail to connect to the one of whom these words speak. Look at what Jesus said to them;
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” Jn5:39-40

 We assume that by studying and learning the Bible we will thereby come to know the Lord. We think that doing bible courses, going to bible studies, attending fellowships will cause us to know God. This isn’t necessarily true. Devoid of revelation knowledge from the Holy Spirit to you personally, it is simply an accumulation of more information about God. The apostle Paul communicated this truth to the Corinthians very well;

1Corinthians 2
11 For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
16 For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

To truly know another person you have to participate in or somehow partake of what is inside of them. With natural relationships in physical bodies this is very limited since we can’t enter into other people. We can never fully see or know the inner life of another human. When we hear somebody’s words, we often have no idea what is really behind them. They can say they are happy but when they are very sad.

But this is not the case in a Christian’s relationship with God! God has made it possible for us to truly experience Him and His life and grace. He has granted us access to the deep things of God by giving us His very Spirit. We not only have His words, but we also have the Spirit of Truth resident within us, and He wants nothing more than to show us the things that have been freely given to us by God.

Spiritual understanding or what we know as revelation knowledge is not OUR understanding of spiritual things. Rather, spiritual understanding is the understanding OF the spirit Himself. That is to say the way the Holy Spirit understands and knows God. His knowledge of God.
 
Revelation knowledge then is when the Holy Spirits takes His understanding and knowledge of God or of spiritual things and deposits that same understanding and knowledge in us so that now we understand as He understands and know as He knows. It is not that we figure out a spiritual truth or logically work it out, that’s not it at all. The Holy Spirit by His unction takes His knowledge of God and imparts it to us. It is a revelation to us. He reveals something to our understanding. Look at this scripture;
“But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him” 1Jn2:27

Anything we saw Jesus doing for His disciples while He was on the earth is exactly what the Holy Spirit does for the Christian now. We see Jesus constantly teaching His disciples, we see Him constantly instructing, guiding, explaining, revealing and opening their understanding to spiritual truth. This is what the Holy Spirit does for us now. And yet His ministry is even better. He doesn’t just explain these things to our minds like Jesus did with the apostles. This is why Jesus told His disciples that it was to their advantage for Him to go away and send the Holy Spirit to them;
"Nevertheless I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you." Jn16:7
 The Holy Spirit is able to deliver His understanding and knowledge of these things in us in such a way that suddenly we just understand a spiritual truth. It’s like somebody switches on the light in your mind and suddenly you can see a truth. The Holy Spirit works from the inside. From our spirit which has the mind of Christ and “is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” Col3:10

All of us have experienced this to some degree. We usually describe it as the words of scripture jumping off a page. One moment you are reading a scripture and suddenly it just comes alive to you. You may not even fully understand what it means but you just experience life from it. It’s like the scripture does something inside you, you feel that it is alive and anointed. This is the Holy Spirit giving you revelation knowledge, making the written Word to become “living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Heb4:12

Too bad that most of us don’t know how to receive this ministry of the Holy Spirit more frequently and in a way that impacts our lives. I’m believing God that we are going to learn how to receive this.

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