"As for those who seemed to be important—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance—those men added nothing to my message." (NIV)
This verse can be interpreted in two ways, the way I see it. The first way is that the fact that the important men approved of Paul's gospel did not make it any more truthful, because it already was the full truth and couldn't be made any more true. But I interpret it this way more readily: the important men did not change Paul's gospel at all to fit theirs. Paul had arrived at the exact same conclusion of the gospel that the other apostles had, the apostles through personal interaction with Jesus, and Paul through spiritual interaction in the desert. Paul's gospel was the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth—and the apostles accepted him as a fellow brother in Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment