The Good News

January 1, 2018

The Good News

This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead.

Galatians 1:1

Read: Galatians 1: 1-9

A few years ago I made a trip down to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Georgia. The default position for my GPS is for the fastest route, but on this day I wanted to take the scenic route. The GPS kept recalculating because I was initially driving in the opposite direction the device had selected, so I just turned it off. After an hour of magnificent views, I knew it was time to check my bearings for my destination and I turned on the GPS. Sometimes in life we can get sidetracked and off the course Jesus wants us to follow. The Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians provides us with an opportunity to check our bearings and make sure we are on Jesus’ course for our life.

Paul was writing to a church that had gotten sidetracked from the foundation in Christ he had first laid for them. To help them find their bearings, he repeatedly used two terms: Good News, or Gospel, and apostle. It will be helpful to get a clear understanding of what Paul meant by these terms.

The Good News is the announcement that God has won victory over sin and death through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah. The good news about the Good News is that all people, everywhere, may partake of God’s victory through faith that Jesus is the Risen Son of God. And when people accept Jesus as God’s Messiah, they are adopted into God’s own family.

The word apostle means a person who is sent to proclaim the Good News. At the time of Paul, the title apostle was reserved for those people who had personally been with Jesus when He was on earth. Some people accused Paul of not being an apostle because Paul was not one of Jesus’ followers before Jesus was crucified. Others suggested Paul was only a ‘junior’ apostle, because he was sent by the real apostles like Peter and John. Paul makes the point in chapter one that he is qualified to be an apostle because he had a personal encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, and that it was Jesus who called him to proclaim the Good News.

My Takeaway: Paul made the case that there is only one Gospel, and that he was commissioned by God to proclaim this Gospel. As we read this epistle we will have the opportunity to consider whether we have added to or taken away anything from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2018 by Alex M. Knight

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.