Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Galatians 1:3-5 NKJV
Our thoughts about salvation are often on the future of heaven, but the Messiah also came to deliver His children from this present evil age. That is the will of our Father. Most of what the Bible teaches is about how to live our present lives, because Jesus came to give us fullness of life. Very little of it is about the afterlife, and what may be there, is often ambiguous.
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Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead)... For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ. 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.
For you have heard of my former conduct in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother.
Galatians 1:1;10-19 NKJV
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Paul was called to be an apostle by God. It was not a title that he came up with, or that was given to him by men.
Paul was a bondservant of Christ - a slave of Christ. His purpose was not to seek the approval of men, but of God, not even the approval of the other apostles or elders. His first priority was to please God.
This goes also for the gospel that he preached. It was revealed to him by God, therefore it is what he preached. He was not concerned about whether those in authority over him agreed with him or not, but only that what he preached was the truth revealed to him by God.
When God revealed His Son to Paul, he did not go immediately to consult the apostles or other Christians. He went into solitude, or so it seems, to seek God himself. This is interesting because he did not go to the church leaders, nor to other Christians to learn about God, but he sought to know God for himself. It wasn't until three years later that he met with any of the apostles, and then only Peter for fifteen days, and James. All three of their writings in the New Testament have reflections of one another indicating that they agreed with Paul's teaching. Peter seems to have even borrowed some of Paul's ideas in his epistles, and considered Paul a beloved brother who wrote his letters to the church according to the wisdom that was given to him. Peter considered Paul's writings to be Scripture, placing them on the same level as the Old Testament (2 Peter 3:15-16).
So, though Paul did not seek the opinions of the apostles or the church regarding who Jesus was, or on matters of theology, they still accepted him as an apostle and a brother in the Lord whose writings are Scripture. Maybe the way that Paul came to know Christ was an isolated event because God had chosen him to be the apostle to the Gentiles, as well as to write Scripture to instruct the church. Or maybe, we can learn from Paul, and rather than seek knowledge about Jesus by listening to the opinions of others, we can seek to know Him on our own through His Spirit who lives in us, and through the Scriptures and His Word which He has given to us.
Especially with over 40,000 denominations, each with different beliefs about Jesus, it is important for us to seek Him ourselves, because our teachers may not have the correct opinion about Him. God has given some to be teachers and shepherds, but not all who are in these positions are there because God has put them there. Therefore, they may be feeding the flock inaccurate information.
God has given us all who believe in Christ, the ability to know who He is without the need for a human mediator. Under the old covenant, God gave His people priests to mediate between God and man, but under the new covenant, Jesus is our mediator, He is the High Priest. We no longer need a human priest to intercede on our behalf or to offer sacrifices on our behalf. Jesus is the sacrifice. Because of Jesus, whose sacrifice reconciled us back to God through the forgiveness of sins, we all have direct access to God, and can seek Him on our own.
Our teachers can feed us information about Jesus and help us to know Him, but they cannot give us a relationship with Him. That can only be done by getting to know Him personally. All Christians have the Holy Spirit, who is God's Spirit, who is Jesus, residing within them to teach and guide them to a knowledge of God. Not a knowledge about God, but of knowing God, which is something that cannot be done by a human teacher. If we are to know God, we must personally seek Him ourselves as Paul did.
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and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.
II Peter 3:15-16 NKJV
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