Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Galatians · About this commentary
Not According to Man
Galatians 1:10-12
10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? For if I were still pleasing men, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ. · WEB
The charge behind the questions is that Paul softened the message to make converts, and his answer is that the message was never his to soften.
The two questions in verse 10 imply an accusation. Someone had evidently said Paul dropped the circumcision requirement to make the gospel easier for gentiles — that he was seeking the favor of men, a crowd-pleaser trimming the terms.
His answer is a piece of grim logic rather than a protest: if I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ. The word still points backward. There was a time when he did please the right people, and it was the time described three verses later, when he was advancing in his religion beyond his contemporaries Galatians 1:14. He knows what approval feels like and what it cost him to lose it.
Verse 11 states the claim that governs the rest of the chapter: the gospel he preached is not according to man. Not measured by human standards, not shaped to human preference.
Verse 12 breaks that into three denials and one affirmation, and the middle denial is the surprising one. He did not receive it from man — no transmission. He was not taught it — no instruction. A man could be taught a true message by a human teacher without that making it false, so the point is not the message's quality but its independence: nothing in Paul's gospel came through a chain he could have altered.
What he claims instead is revelation of Jesus Christ, and the phrase leaves open whether Christ is the one revealing or the thing revealed. Both are true in the account he gives next.
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