Our Damascus Road: Galatians 1:11-12

We are disciples of Jesus.  This might feel like a no-brainer, but it doesn’t always play out that way.  Am I Lutheran or am I Christian?  Am I Baptist or am I Christian?  Descriptors like Lutheran or Baptist have a place.  They help us understand how a congregation worships and what parts of theology they stress.  In the end, though, I am not a disciple of Luther nor a disciple of the Baptist movement.  I am a child of God who is a disciple of Jesus.

Paul makes a seriously bold claim in these two verses.  The Gospel he preaches is not something he learned from anyone else.  He learned it from God.

This is an incredibly profound concept.  The message of salvation is God’s message.  It is His message to share.

Paul isn’t saying that we shouldn’t learn from other people.  Paul is himself an evangelist.  An evangelist goes to people who haven’t heard about Jesus and teaches them.  There’s nothing wrong with learning about Jesus from other people.  There’s nothing wrong with gleaming truth from other people.  Discipleship and mentorship are vehicles that encourage growth in faith.  It is the very method Jesus Himself employed.

Paul’s point is that even if we do have a mentor, the message of salvation is still God’s message.  Truth is not something I own and pass along; truth is something God owns and God passes along.  God might use me or you to pass it along.  In either of those cases, though, the truth is still God’s truth.

I’ve always marveled at Paul’s testimony here.  He claims to have received this Gospel through a divine revelation.  Of course, Paul is talking about the Damascus Road experience, which was very much a divine revelation.  God knocked him to the ground and supernaturally blinded him to get his attention.

Go back and read Acts 9.  There we meet Ananias and the other unnamed disciples in Damascus who help Paul understand truth.  God used Ananias and the Christian brothers and sisters of Damascus to help Paul find God.

This is key to understanding Paul.  Yes, Paul had an incredible moment.  We don’t all get heavenly lights and supernatural blindness.  But we do get moments where it feels like someone is speaking right into our soul even though they couldn’t possibly know how close their message hits home.  We’ve all had moments where we read something written just for us even though the author couldn’t possibly know what we needed to read.  We’ve all had moments where the perfect Bible verse crosses our path at exactly the right moment.  Those moments are our Damascus Road.  Those moments are God revealing His truth to us personally.

We should all claim discipleship to Christ.  We should all claim apostleship to Christ.  God will use someone to reach you, but it is still God who is reaching you.  We are not disciples of one another; we are disciples of Jesus.