"I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ." (NIV)
"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." (MSG)
Paul reinforces here that the gospel is not, and cannot be, an invention of man. It is obviously not something Paul picked up from tradition. The Pharisees were the biggest practitioners of tradition, and Paul (then Saul) was one of them. Yet the Pharisees rejected Jesus as the Messiah. And if the gospel could have been learned solely by observing the Scriptures and examining every excruciating detail, then the Pharisees would have realized that Jesus was the Christ. They would have studied the Scriptures and associated the Messianic prophecies with the life of Jesus. So clearly, since the Pharisees refused to accept the fact that Jesus was (and is) the Messiah, the gospel could not have been learned or passed on through Jewish tradition.
If anyone were to take the academic approach to proving Jesus' identity as the Christ, Paul would have been the one to do it and succeed. But he was one of Christianity's fiercest opponents. It took a miracle of God, an encounter with Jesus Himself, to connect the dots in Paul's heart and mind, to make him realize the truth in the apostles' preaching. He did not examine the Scriptures and suddenly think, "Hey, that Jesus guy fulfilled a lot of the Messianic prophecies. Maybe those Christian nutcases are on to something." No, he came to the conclusion that Jesus is God when Christ revealed Himself to him in a blinding light with a booming voice. There was no adding things up. The answer just came to him. It was a moment of God-inspired intuition. And because God is the ultimate authority, pure Truth, Paul's testimony must also be true. There is no falsehood in his words to the Galatians.
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