When I was a teenager, and a few years into young adulthood, I went through a season of pushing back hard against the faith I’d grown up in. My father was a deacon at the time, studying and working toward ordination as a pastor, and I was determined to find the cracks. The truth is, I didn’t reject the gospel or Christ, but I resented how much of my life had been forced to be spent in church.
I thought so much “required church” growing up had held me back from everything I wanted, and I was a pissed off, selfish teenager. That’s it in a nutshell.
In my continued resentment fueled by arrogance (and ignorance), I decided to retaliate, even though at that point I no longer lived under my fathers roof, nor had him dictating my lifestyle to me, and one of my methods was to constantly argue with my father about scripture. I thought if I could prove him wrong and prove to him that he was wasting his time, I’d be able to get him to either stop pushing church or abandon it altogether. Terrible, I know, looking back. I was operating under a false spirit, no doubt. Alas, I pressed on.
I read, I dug, i researched, I looked for contradictions (which were plenty), and I landed on this one: Paul and Jesus preached different gospels. Surely, I thought, that blows the whole thing apart.
I brought it to my dad. I made my argument. I was sure it was sound and I had finally achieved my goal.
Nope.
He didn’t get rattled. He just opened the Bible and walked me through it. By the time we were done, I wasn’t just wrong, I understood why I was wrong, and it was actually the argument itself that deepened my faith rather than unraveling it.
I saw someone online this morning making the same claim, using Galatians 2:7 as proof. And I thought: okay, let’s do this again, except this time let’s wear my father’s shoes, because he taught me this, he was right, and the text answers it clearly, if we’re willing to actually read it.
Full circle moment.
The Argument
The argument online wasn’t framed the same way I framed it for my father, much shorter, in fact; but, it was just as accusatory at the end. It was:
Jesus preached one gospel.
Paul preached another.
The gospel Jesus preached on earth cannot save a Gentile today.
Galatians 2:7.
Prove me wrong with your Bible.
The Truth
What does Galatians 2:7 actually say?
On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised.
Read it again, but read slowly.
Paul is not saying he preaches a different gospel. He is saying he and Peter were assigned to different audiences. Paul was assigned to the Gentiles, and Peter to the Jews.
Same message. Different mission fields. That’s it.
If you want to know what Paul actually thought about anyone preaching a different gospel, you don’t even have to leave Galatians to find the answer to that question. All you need to do is go back one chapter:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse. (Galatians 1:8)
Paul is not claiming a second gospel. He is standing guard over the one. He says if anyone changes it, even himself, even an angel, that is a serious problem. That is not the language of a man running a rival version.
If that raises the obvious question “well, where did Paul get his gospel, if not from the other apostles or from walking with Jesus himself?” Paul answers that too, just a few verses later:
I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-12)
Not from men, not from the disciples, not from the church. It came directly from Christ. Paul is not building a rival system. He is reporting what Jesus gave him.
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul defines exactly what his gospel is: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day. Then he says this:
Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. (1 Corinthians 15:11)
This is what we preach. Paul is explicitly saying his preaching and the other apostles’ preaching is the same thing.
Paul never walked with the earthly Jesus. He was not among the disciples during the ministry, the miracles, or the crucifixion. By the time Paul encountered Christ, Jesus had already risen and ascended. His meeting with Christ happened on the road to Damascus, when the risen Jesus appeared to him directly, which was an encounter so overwhelming it left him physically blinded for three days (Acts 9). That is where he received his gospel.
After his conversion, Paul eventually connected with the other apostles, including Peter, which is how two men with such different histories ended up in the same room at the Jerusalem Council, as we will see.
One man (Peter) followed Jesus through Galilee. The other (Paul) had met him on a road in a flash of blinding light. Both received the same truth.
Now, what about Peter, who actually walked with Jesus? In Acts 2, he preached Christ crucified, risen, and calling all who hear to repentance and belief. Death, burial, resurrection. That is the same gospel Paul defines in 1 Corinthians 15.
Peter, one of the eyewitnesses to the earthly ministry of Jesus, looked at Paul’s letters and wrote this:
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. (2 Peter 3:15)
Dear brother Paul. Wisdom that God gave him. That is not how you describe someone preaching a competing gospel.
Peter and Paul were not running rival operations. Peter, a disciple who literally walked with Christ and was taught directly by Him, is not a contrast to Paul. He is a bridge. He knew very well, firsthand, from the horse’s mouth, if you will, what Jesus preached. He also knew what Paul preached, and he called them the same family of truth.
Finally, we have Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council, where both men (Peter and Paul) are in the same room, in full agreement, with Peter himself arguing that Gentiles should not be burdened with circumcision for salvation. Unity, not division.
The claim falls apart the moment you actually read the passage it’s built on.
Closing Thoughts
My father answered this argument calmly, without flinching, and walked me right back to the text. He didn’t need to win a debate. He just knew what it said.
I did not appreciate that thirty years ago. I do now, especially as I write this post.
The argument I carried into his living room like a weapon turned out to be one of the things that built my faith rather than dismantled it. It wasn’t because my father was smarter than me, though he was certainly more patient. It was because the Word held up, and it answered. It was not fragile.
That is still true today. The claim that Christ and Paul preached competing gospels is not a new one, and it is not a difficult one to answer if you are actually willing to open the book. The text does not require defending so much as it does to be read carefully, and in full context.
When I saw that argument online this morning, I did not feel threatened. I felt something closer to gratitude, and I’d like to thank the author of that post for bringing it up. I felt a long held but rarely consciously experienced gratitude for having not just a father but a community of people around me in my youth, people I so often judged and resented, who knew their Bible well enough to sit down with a stubborn, resentful teenager such as myself and show them the truth without losing his temper.
I hope I am carrying their example forward today, and helping others to understand what I do today because of them.
God bless.
Twin Tree Project 