The Great Commentary of Cornelius a Lapide: the Epistle to the Galatians
The sense then is this : I, Paul, speak so boldly and sincerely, and denounce a curse on Judaisers and all who preach another Gospel, because, although I once contended vigorously against the Gospel on behalf of Jews and their religion, yet now , illuminated by the Gospel-light, it is not to men, least of all to Jews, that I do my best to approve myself and my Gospel, but to God, whom alone I seek to please, that I may give a true and good account before His tribunal. In other words, I do not care what the Jews or others think of me, as being too bigoted, or an enemy of my country and its religion, for I seek to please God alone. Formerly I pleased them but displeased Him ; and if I wished now to please them, I should again displease Him, for I should be establishing the law of Moses and destroying the grace of Christ.
If I yet pleased men , I should not be the servant of Christ. S. Jerome and Anselm remark that the desire to please men is a vice whereby a man so yields to others, so seeks their favour and goodwill, that he is prepared to break the law of God and offend Him. But whoever seeks to please men, in such a way and with such an end in view as to lead them to God and His service, seeks not so much to please men as God. S. Augustine says: “ A man does not please others to any useful end , save when he is pleasing for God’s sake ; i.e., when it is God in him that pleases and is glorified, as when it is His gifts in a man that are regarded , or that are received through man's instrumentality . For when a man is pleasing in this way , it is not now man that is pleasing but God." So S. Paul says, in 1 Cor. ix. 19-22, that he is made all things to all men, that he might gain all to Christ. S. Chrysostom, in his Horn. 29 in Epist. 2 ad Corin., remarks how useless and contemptible are the favour and good report of this world; and S. Jerome devoutly and stoutly wrote to Asella, that he thanked God for being worthy of the world’s hatred.
Ver. 11. — The Gospel which was preached of me is not after man. It is not a human but a Divine Gospel ; it is not man’s but God’s, or, as Ephrem puts it, it is not from man, i.e., it does not spring from man’s opinions or from man’s invention, but from God. Hence he adds :
Ver. 12. — For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. Viz., when I was carried by Him into the third heaven (2 Cor. xii. 1).
Ver. 13. — I persecuted the Church of God and wasted it. That is, I did my best to storm it and overturn it. Cf. Ps. cxxix. 1, 2. The word translated waste here comes, as some think, from a word denoting the burning of a town by an enemy, or else, as Erasmus held, from one denoting the surrounding of it. Either way Paul’s meaning is clear. He says this to remove from himself all suspicion of hatred of the Jews. Though they inveigh against me, he says, as their foe, yet my past life is sufficient answer. For I am myself a Jew, and fought more vigorously for Judaism than they, before God, by His call, changed my heart and enlightened it by faith in Christ.
Ver. 14. — In mine own nation being more exceedingly zealous. A more eager lover and follower; or better still, a more jealous lover of it, on behalf of the national institution, handed down to me from my ancestors ; a zealot of the law though through ignorance. So much more when he knew the truth was he zealous for the Gospel, so expiating his former evil zeal. From this it seems that Paul's eager zeal was greater than that of his contemporaries, and acted as a handmaid and whetstone of virtue to him. For an eager nature does not creep along the ground, but, like a fire, leaps upwards and attempts to overcome all difficulties. On this, S. Augustine has some excellent remarks : “ Souls that are capable of virtue and expansive often give birth to vices first, by which they show the virtue they are most adapted to produce , when they have been carefully disciplined. For instance , the hasty feeling which prompted Moses to revenge the wrong done to his brother in Egypt by a cruel Egyptian was indeed vicious , inasmuch as it overstepped the bounds of authority , but yet it gave great promise for the future . So in the case of Saul, when he was persecuting the Church, when God called to him out of heaven, smote him to the ground, lifted him up, drew him into the Church , he was as it were cut down, pruned, sown in the ground, and fertilised ; for his very fierceness in persecuting the Gospel out of jealousy for the traditions of his fathers, thereby thinking that he was doing God service, was, like a vicious woodland growth, but a sign of great power ” ( contra Faustum, lib. xxii. c. 70).
Ver. 15. — But when it pleased God. Vatablus has, “ When it seemed good to God,” which is too weak a rendering of εὐδόκησεν, a word that denotes the free call of God's love to grace and salvation.
Who separated me from my mother’s womb. Of His loving-kindness He separated me from my mother's womb, and caused me to be born into this world with this object in view, viz., to reveal His Son in me. Before all merit, and when not yet born, He predestined me ; and when predestined, separated me from the womb, and caused me to be born ; and when born He called me that He might bring me to the knowledge of Christ and His Gospel, and so to the apostleship, that I might preach Christ to the Gentiles.
S. Jerome remarks that the same thing is said of Jeremiah in Jer. i. 5 : “ Before I found thee in the belly I knew thee; and before god’s predestination thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee , and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations .” Paul here alludes to this, for Jeremiah was a type of Paul. The Hebrew for sanctified denotes both sanctified and separated; for that is called sacred which is separated from father, mother, and all earthly things to be dedicated ahd consecrated to God. So Paul was separated by God’s predestination from his mother’s womb, and consecrated to the Gospel, to be a prophet and teacher of the Gentiles.
Mystically, says S. Anselm, from my mother’s womb denotes “from the darkness of the synagogue to see the light of the Gospel.”
Observe that segregates, “ separated,” denotes one selected (egrege) out of the flock, as the predestinate are selected by God out of the flock of men. So much more is an Apostle and Herald of the word of God separated from the many ; and, as S. Chrysostom says, he ought to excel the many as a shepherd excels his flock. It was for this reason that the prophet exclaims, in Isa. vi. 5 : “ Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips , and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips .” Woe is me ! for I am nothing better than others, who are merely unholy themselves. See the comment on Rom. i. 1.
Ver. 16. — To reveal His Son in me. In my soul. The phrase is a Hebraism. He says in me rather than to me , to denote that he had received no bare revelation by ear or eye, but that in his inmost heart he had so entirely drunk in Christ and His teaching and Spirit that Christ was in him and spoke by him (Theophylact). Secondly, Jerome and Vatablus understand it, “ To reveal His Son through me .” Thirdly, Jerome has another interpretation more subtle than literal : “ He does not say to me but in me, because Christ was already in Paul. For there were in him the principle of all virtues and of God, and the seeds of faith. These, however, he did not recognise, nor believe in them till God revealed them in him as being in his heart.”
I conferred not with flesh and blood. I joined myself to no one; I conferred with no one about my vocation, or the revelation, or the way to act on it ; I called into counsel no relations or any one else ; but, knowing of a certainty that I had been called and taught by God, I followed God as my only teacher and leader. The word rendered confer denotes, says Budæus, to communicate secrets and counsels, to go to one’s friends as counsellors and upright judges, that they may approve or disapprove, advise or dissuade, as they see fit.
Flesh and blood denotes, by synecdoche, the whole man consisting of these two elements. Cf. S. Matt xvi. 17. I was not taught the Gospel, says S. Paul, by any man, for I conferred with none, but by revelation from God alone. See, then, O Galatians, it, and tainting it with an admixture of Judaism, you are tainting and rejecting the word of God, and even God Himself, who revealed it to me, that I might go and preach it.
It may be said : Why, then, did Paul afterwards go to Jerusalem to see Peter (ver. 18), and what is more, confer with him about the Gospel ? I reply : He did not confer with him as though in doubt or imperfectly instructed, but that the faithful whom he taught might know him to be in communion with Peter and the other Apostles, to hold the same faith as they, that so they might give more credence to his preaching of the Gospel.