When an older man at my church moved into an upscale retirement community, he was invited to attend a weekly Bible study with his neighbors, some of whom turned out to be retired Baptist preachers.

Knowing these ministers did not follow dispensational truth, he asked them to explain why Paul wrote in Romans 2:16, “In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.”

“The question is, ‘If Jesus is going to judge us according to Paul’s gospel, what is Paul’s gospel?’ ” explains Jordan, who relayed this anecdote in a Sunday morning sermon. “You can take that verse and run preachers who’ve been preaching 40 years right up a stump in about two minutes, looking for a place to get off. With that verse you kind of get the idea that God’s going to hold you accountable.”

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Here’s a great synopsis from Jordan on the difference between following Paul’s gospel and God’s program to Israel:

“God only gave one religion and He gave it to the nation Israel through the hands of Moses. We call it the law. When you read about the law in the Bible, you’re reading about a God-given religion.

“God didn’t give the Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics; He didn’t give those religions. Men made those things up. But He did give a religion, and religion has to do with a performance-based acceptance program before God.

“He said, ‘If you do this then you’ll be my people. If you don’t, I’m gonna curse you.’ And the blessings came when they performed, and the curse came when they didn’t and his relationship with them was based on their performance and that’s what religion is all about. It’s gaining acceptance with God based on your performance.

“That’s why legalism is something God just won’t put up with in your life because the way God accepts people is in His Son Jesus Christ, not in your performing.

“And with that law God gave Israel—that performance-based acceptance program—had they leaned the lesson and listened to the schoolmaster, it would have brought them to Christ because they would have had to come and say, ‘Lord, we can’t do it.’

“And when they couldn’t do it, they had a system to take care of their failures—those sacrifices. But that veil covered their eyes and you know what they did? Paul says in Romans 10:3 says, ‘For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.’

“Paul says, ‘My heart’s desire is that these people—my kinsmen according to the flesh—

get saved, but I bear record they have a zeal for God that is not according to knowledge.’

“You see, they got all kinds of religion. They got church memberships. They’re a part of the right nation, the right religion; they got all the ordinances and the statutes and the ceremonies. They got it all.

“Israel had their religion, though, not because they had faith in God’s Word to them. God tells them in Isaiah 58, ‘You have all your satisfaction in approaching me. All these ceremonies. You love your religious activities because it makes you feel good. Your heart’s far from me but, boy, you’re caught up in religion!’

“As Paul puts it, they went about to establish their own righteousness. Paul says their minds were blinded by their own works. When he says, ‘Satan hath blinded the minds of them that believe not,’ he does that with religion. He does it with their seeking to establish their own righteousness because they’re ignorant of the righteousness of God.

“Satan wants to keep their minds blinded with religion—with trying to please God with their activities—lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine into them, because when the light of the gospel of Christ shines in, hey, the darkness flees.”

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In Galatians 1, Paul talks about the delusion of perverting his gospel and having it drawing a Believer away from Paul. In verses 8 and 9, he addresses the danger posed by leaving his ministry and his apostleship, then goes on to document his authority through chapter two.

There are at least 14 different things Paul points to that demonstrate his independent, distinctive, apostolic ministry.

“He was not part of the 12 apostles and their program and that’s a critically important thing to recognize,” says Jordan. “If there are two whole chapters in your Bible about that one subject—that bring evidences to bear about that subject—somebody needs somewhere to ask the question, ‘Why in the world is Paul in the bible?!’

“You know the one question that Christendom just never seems to come around to ask is why Paul? They’ll go through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and even the Book of Acts, but when it comes to Romans, all of a sudden it just kind of goes away.

“I had a man tell me one time, ‘You know I just never did like that Paul.’ That’s because his writings are just so different in the Bible. Others will say, ‘Well, I read the Bible but when I come to Paul I see, hey, that’s what makes sense to me.’

“So why is he there? There’s the old legend that he was really one of the 12 apostles. And that won’t work. He says he’s not. He starts in Gal. 1:1, ‘But I certify you, brethren,’ meaning, ‘Here’s my ordination certificate. I’m giving you a notarized official document that the gospel preached of me is not after man. It didn’t have origin in human viewpoint.’

“I’ve pointed out to you many times, when you appreciate the gospel of the grace of God you know no human ever dreamed that thing up. Anybody who would ask you . . . if God were to come to you and say, ‘What should I give you to do?’ Did you ever do that with your kids? Parents will say, ‘Okay, you did wrong. Now what do you think your punishment ought to be?’ Well, that’s like Br’er Rabbit: ‘Don’t throw me into that sticker bush, please!’

“If God came and said, ‘What do you think your punishment should be?’ you know you’d have just said, ‘Well, give me something to do and I’ll do it.’ You know you’d have never come up with the idea, ‘Lord, I can’t do anything. You’ll have to go die for me.’

“But that was the original thinking God had about salvation! So it’s not after man’s view. When Paul testifies, ‘For I neither received it of man,’ that means he didn’t get it by any human instrumentality or human authorization. That means the people there before him didn’t teach it to him. He verifies, ‘Neither was I taught it.’

“Well, if he wasn’t taught it, then it wasn’t there prior to him ‘but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.’ He was taught it by the Lord Jesus Christ! And notice it’s not a revelation from the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the revelation of Jesus Christ. Those prepositions are important. It isn’t just that God revealed something to him; it’s that the Lord Jesus Christ himself appeared to Paul and communicated the information to him.

“In Acts 26, when Jesus Christ said, ‘I will appear to thee,’ He’s standing right there appearing to Paul. So the future appearances—the future revelations of the Lord Jesus Christ—are the fact that He’s going to appear to Paul again and again. We know from II Cor. 12:1, Paul saw the Lord repeatedly. This is something the whole religious system is out there trying to get you to forget.”