The Gospel Priority

The Gospel Priority

Galatians 1:6-9

Key Words: Gospel, Justification, Faith, Law

Introduction

Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia uses some of the harshest language in the entire Bible. This is Paul’s most passionate defense of the gospel in the New Testament. Timothy George writes: “From beginning to end its six chapters of 149 verses bristle with passion, sarcasm, and anger. True, there is a touch of tenderness as well; once in the midst of the letter Paul referred to the Galatians as his ‘dear Children’ (4:19). As the context reveals, though, this was the tearing tenderness of a distraught mother who must endure all over again the pains of childbirth because her children, who should have known better, were in danger of committing spiritual suicide.”[1]

Paul was astonished and ‘perplexed’ by their departure from the truth of the gospel. He calls the Galatians “foolish” in chapter 3 (3:1), referring to them more literally as, “my dear idiots.” But what has him so upset?

The churches in Galatia (modern day Turkey) to which Paul is writing are those which he himself helped plant not long before. Now they were tolerating, if not altogether embracing, a form of teaching that directly contradicted that which Paul had previously taught them about the saving work of Jesus Christ. Paul is fighting for the very soul of these churches and he doesn’t mince his words with those whom he regards as enemies of the gospel. And yet, while Paul writes Galatians with strong words and appropriately harsh rebukes, the book maintains a constant theme of grace throughout.

Galatians was the major foundation for the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther was especially fond of it, calling it his “Cathering von Bora”, for he said, “I am wedded to it.”

Historical Background

I want to start by taking a look at the historical background of this letter because it is very important as we attempt to determine what led to its composition and Paul’s disposition when he wrote it.

Based on the events recorded in the book of Acts, we can conclude that Paul had visited Galatia at least twice during his missionary journeys (Acts 14:21). Galatians was written to several churches in the region of Galatia, probably sometime around 48 AD, which was just prior to the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15 (15:1-21). Galatians records the struggle of the gospel spread to the gentiles, and is a reflection of the way in which the issues of the gospel were being debated and handled in Jerusalem, Antioch, and Syria. I mention that this letter was written before the Jerusalem Council because it is important to know what led up to the council and where the Galatians fell in the issues that were raised – this will help to explain Paul’s mindset while writing the letter.

The Jerusalem Council was meeting to answer several questions that began to enter into the church when the gospel began to spread to Gentile regions. They were attempting to determine things like “Is it right for Gentile and Jewish Christians to eat together?” or “Can they eat the same food? Was an Orthodox Jew contaminated by such fellowship, as Jewish tradition declared, or was he not?” So, the most important question of the Jerusalem Council, in other words, was whether or not the Gentile’s we required to conform to the laws of Moses. It was a hotly debated issue until it was settled by the leaders of the church. “As the apostle to the Gentiles, Paul had deliberately not brought up questions of conformity to Jewish law when presenting the gospel to non-Jewish communities… As Paul preached it, salvation is never to be achieved by any amount of conformity to rules and regulations – even God-given regulations. Law condemns. Consequently, if there is to be salvation for sinful men, it must come in another way entirely. God has offered this other way through Jesus Christ. Jesus died for sin. Now God offers righteousness freely to all who put their trust in him.”[2]

So, Paul was preaching the simple gospel message – the doctrine of justification by grace, through faith, apart from works of the law. He proclaimed this message from the very beginning of his ministry as an Apostle, and Acts tells us that as a result of the Jewish opposition to Paul’s proclamation of Christ crucified in the synagogues, Paul and Barnabas turned to preaching to the Gentiles in Galatia. Many were converted.

But soon after they left the region, Jewish converts to Christianity began teaching in the Galatian churches that the new Gentile converts must submit to the Law of Moses and undergo circumcision like they had as Jews in order to be justified before God. These false teachers were called Judaizers, and were throwing the Galatians into confusion soon after Paul had departed saying that the gospel which he had proclaimed to them was dangerous because it did not require obedience to the law as a condition of deliverance from the wrath of God. The Judaizers did not believe that Jesus’ death and righteousness was sufficient in-and-of itself for the salvation of sinners.

It appears as though the Judaizers were not flat out denying that a Christian must trust in the death of Christ in order to be delivered from the wrath of God which is to come. These false teachers were much more subtle than that. To their way of thinking, the death of Christ was necessary for salvation because it removed the guilt of past sin. But the Judaizers also believed that faith in Jesus Christ alone was not good enough to render a person “righteous” before God. To the Judaizers, if one was to maintain a right standing before God, they must add to faith in Christ as Messiah the ethnic symbols of Israel: submission to circumcision, the keeping of certain dietary laws, the celebration of Jewish feasts, and fulfilling obedience to the Law of Moses. So, Gentile converts were being required, in the Judaizers’ teaching, to believe in Jesus and to also live as Jews.

Paul’s Response

Paul responds to these false teachers in Galatia with deep concern, anguish, and righteous anger. The letter begins very abruptly, without the typical friendly greetings that characterize Paul’s other letters.

Paul had helped to plant these churches by preaching Christ crucified (3:1). The Galatians, many of whom were Gentiles (4:8), had warmly welcomed Paul during his first visit (4:14-15), but now many of these same people had been deceived by those whom Paul describes as trouble-makers and agitators (1:7; 5:12), who had come into the region from elsewhere, looking to add new followers to their movement while boasting about the “flesh” of their converts (6:13). Their basic motive was spiritual self-aggrandizement: they wanted ‘to make a good impression outwardly’; they wanted these Gentile Christians to be circumcised that they may boast in the flesh.[3] So, Paul’s main goal in writing is to rescue his Galatian congregations from falling from grace (5:4), which is a possibility that he says causes him deep personal anguish (3:1; 4:19; 5:12). The anxiety and anger that Paul expresses is the same that any loving parent or friend would experience if a child or companion was going seriously astray.[4]

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Now, we have the background, so here’s the context of these verses so that we don’t miss the forest through the trees. The forest in this book is easy to forget since it seems so obvious, but we must remind ourselves of the very fact this letter is to the churches at Galatia. The book of Galatians is a book about the gospel of grace, in Jesus Christ. Paul speaks of the gospel 4 times in verses 6-9. This letter is about the truth of the gospel. But it is not written to non-believers. It is written to who profess belief in Christ as Lord and Savior.

Now this might seem fairly obvious, but it’s important to think about because we often think of the gospel as that truth that non-believers need to hear in order to become believers. We might even think that it is for new Christians, to remind them about what they just began to believe. What ends up happening is that we begin to think, very subtly, that the gospel is what saves us as brings us into relationship with God and into the Kingdom, but in order to grow we need to learn more important doctrine. The problem with this type of thinking is that it guts any power or motivation to change beyond what we can muster in our own strength or intellect. Yet, it is not just that we are saved and then grow through our effort, but rather that we are saved and are being saved; that we are saved by the gospel and only grow as we learn how to apply the gospel to every area of our lives. It is good news that we are saved, and it is also the good news of how we are going to grow in our life in Christ – by the strength and power of Christ, for the glory of Christ.

The book of Galatians is about understanding the gospel, applying the gospel, and getting the gospel into the hearts of believers. So now we read – the gospel is at stake and Paul gets right to the point.

Galatians 1:6-9

vv. 6-7: Paul, it seems, is genuinely shocked at the news he has received from Galatia. He had poured his life into these people and now, we read in verse 6, they have “quickly” turned from that which Paul proclaimed to them, rejoicing instead in the message of a false gospel. Paul says simply that they are turning to a different gospel, and then he immediately qualifies this statement by saying in verse 7 that there is no other gospel. In the Greek he literally says they were “turning to a different gospel, which is not another.” It’s that simple—there is “not another.”

From this, I draw two observations:

1. New believers are fragile, and easily tempted by the Evil One.

Nothing delights the Devil more than to be given enough leash to disrupt and destroy a true work of God. Whenever there is a genuine moving of God’s spirit, or a great missionary advancement of the gospel, we can be certain that Satan and his minions will have an interest in casting doubt, causing confusing, stirring up arguments, and wreaking havoc. This was shown in Galatia and has been repeated thousands upon thousands of times in the Church throughout history. And so if for no other reason than the fragile state of a new believer, we do poor and sinful service to Christ and his church when we indiscriminately lead men and women to profess faith in Christ but then leave them vulnerable to attack – when we leave them to the ravenous wolves that seek their destruction. Being committed disciples is not optional – it is the difference between life and death for those whom we see awakened to the realities of Christ.

God has created us to live in community with one another – to love one another, to serve one another, and to mutually encourage one another as we are being sanctified together. The hard work of discipleship has, by and large, been abandoned by most Christians at the altar of individuality. The privatization of our lives has caused us to be a people that values private property and personal growth and self help, over and above the communal work of discipleship. Being a committed disciple means that we are intentionally sharing our lives with other believers. A committed disciple is encouraging others, teaching them, holding them accountable, and praying with/for them. As is evidenced in Paul’s relationship to Timothy, the work of a committed Disciple is the day-to-day, life-on-life relationship that goes beyond a simple hand shake and small talk on Sunday morning. It is a labor of love existing within the desire to see true growth and change in the lives of God’s people. It is intimate and consistent. Ultimately, it is one seeing and hearing from another how the gospel is to be lived out in day-to-day life, how Christian disciplines are to be maintained and cherished, and how to live with a focus on the prize of Christ in the life to come, and not the things of this world.

And yet, while new Christians are in great danger of temptation by the evil one, it is unfortunate that many believers who have been Christians for years upon years in their life have never truly matured beyond the milk to the meat of faith. And I am not speaking primarily of intellectual knowledge and growth, but rather maturing in the ways that the gospel is lived out each day. It is easy to know what the Bible teaches. It is far more difficult and requires greater maturity and discipline to live what the Bible teaches. I think the lack of spiritual maturity and visible fruit in the lives of Christians owes in large part to the lack of a commitment to discipleship in the local church – A lack of a sense of community – A lack of responsibility on the part of the mature for the immature. This is you going to great lengths to ensure that others are being encouraged and challenged to move further in their faith, and to go deeper in the commitment to Christ where they can grow roots that will cause them to be immovable in the face of temptation and controversy. Parents, this is your job with your children. Husbands, this is your job with your wives. Christian, this is your job with one another – we must move beyond the fragility of new belief, and we must do it together.

2. To change the gospel a little is to lose the whole thing.

If you are a new Christian, at some point you will encounter controversy. It does not take very long to see that Christian believers have a lot of disagreements about a lot of different things. We will have a rather large spectrum of views on issues like church government, the end times, baptism, communion, Christian liberties, and so on, yet we should still be able to have fellowship with one another because we share the same foundation of the gospel, though we’re disagreeing on some secondary issues. But the foundation is what matters the most. When it comes to the gospel, we cannot have a spectrum of beliefs or differences. Paul makes clear in these verses that when it comes to the gospel, there is no such thing as a view that is close. To have a different gospel is to have no gospel at all (look at vv. 6-7). When it comes to this true doctrine called the gospel, you cannot deviate – not even a little bit. To do so, is to move light years away. There is no middle ground between Justification by faith and justification by works, which is where the Judaizers were falsely trying to lead these new believers.

Yet, when compared to the whole of Scripture, it is a ridiculous claim that we have anything to offer in terms of our own justification. We need to know and we need to ask ourselves: Does God love us and pour out His grace on us that then causes us to live a life satisfying to God? Or, do we live a good life to satisfy God so that he will then love us? Did He first love us, or did we first love Him? It sounds like a semantics issue, but it’s not. The order is infinitely important. To attempt to reverse the order or add to the order is to completely lose the gospel. All other religions in this world will tell you that the good people are in, and the bad people are out, but when Jesus tells the story of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22, he speaks of a father giving his son a wedding feast, and when the people won’t come in, he sends out servants to gather people for the wedding feast. The people that come to the feast come both socially good and bad, as long as they have a wedding garment. We think the good people make it and the bad don’t, but this is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we are all bad, and deceitfully wicked, and filled with desires of evil. The heart of the gospel is the order of the news. Cause and effect is everything! Because we are justified, we are being sanctified. Your justification is the basis for your sanctification.

Yet, in day to day Christianity, many people rely upon their sanctification to give them confidence that God loves and accepts them in Jesus. But this is a total reversal of the good news. These individuals become desperately hypocritical and judgmental because they have no other alternative. Many people in churches have lives that, by sheer willpower, have been changed – check yourself here – “I don’t cuss anymore,” or “I don’t sleep around,” or “I don’t look at pornographic material anymore.” “I read my Bible from time to time,” “I go to church,” “I fast once per month.” But the reality is that in all of these outward things, it is possible that you really haven’t changed at all because the gospel has been reversed. The motivation behind this kind of thinking is guilt and fear – the fear that if we don’t do these things, we will be rejected and unloved by God. And all of the sudden, we’re riding a rollercoaster up and down depending solely upon our actions. We live with a sense of duty, completely lacking joy and delight and desire to fulfill the things that are caused by a God who first loved us.

When obsessive fear and a works based mentality is gone, you are free. When you become aware of the love of the Father for you as a believer in Christ, only given by grace and only received by faith, you become a totally new person. Your entire worldview changes, the way you treat people changes, the way you think of God changes, the way you live your life changes because you become a person of joy who lives out of loving gratitude rather than to acquire favor from God or man. When you truly embrace that which God has accomplished in Christ for you as a believer, you will be driven to glorify God in the way that he deserves and desires, and you will be filled with a joy that exists only beyond human understanding – this is the work of the true gospel.

And to lose even a little bit of this, is to lose the gospel entirely. Amongst our Christian brothers and sisters of other churches and denominations, we can agree to disagree on a multitude of issues, but not the gospel. It is the heart of our faith. If you lose a hand, or a finger, it hurts – but if you lose your heart, you’re dead.

So we, like the Galatians, must distinguish between the true gospel and all the false gospels that exist. There is the gospel of prosperity, where Jesus becomes our personal Sears catalog. There is the gospel of family values, which teaches that Jesus in the way to a happy home. There is the gospel of self, which teaches that Jesus is the way to personal fulfillment. There is the gospel of religious tradition, which teaches that Jesus is the way to respectability. There is the gospel of morality, which teaches that Jesus is the way to be a good person.

What makes these so dangerous is that the things they offer are all beneficial and seem to be true scripturally. God will bless certain individuals with prosperous lives, and it is very good to have a happy home with strong family values, and to be morally sound. Yet, as good and right as all these things are, they are not the good news of the gospel. When they become the gospel for us, then we are in danger of turning away from the only gospel there is. These things are results of the gospel and too often we look at these results as the gospel itself.

Think about what our church would look like without the gospel. What would we have to replace the centrality of the gospel with? What might take the place of the gospel in the life of this church? It might be some very good things, but it may not be the gospel. Here are some possibilities:

A passionate devotion to the pro-life cause
A passionate devotion to the heterosexual traditional family
A drive toward church growth
A clever appeal to consumerism by offering a Christianity-Lite version
A sympathetic, empathetic focus on interpersonal relationships
A warm affirmation of self-esteem
Pianos, organs, suites and ties, big buildings, and little silver plates with that little piece of carpet glued in the middle
Mowed grass, clean windows, fresh paint, new carpet, and plenty of space for everyone and their brother
Pride in the doctrines of grace with a spirit of mockery toward those who do not see the sovereignty of God as clearly
A relentless commitment to keep our doors open, our facilities clean, and our lights on while committing none of our time to loving our neighbors, or supporting frontier missions efforts in the world.

We cannot assume that we have the gospel unless we keep it at the center. It is extremely important that the good news of the cross and the resurrection of Christ is preached and demonstrated to be the very power of God unto salvation and for our growth as believers of Christ. Otherwise, we’re left with ideas and doctrines and stuff, but we don’t have Christ.

The church’s greatest danger is not the anti-gospel outside the church; it is the multitude of false and counterfeit gospels inside the church. The Judaizers didn’t walk around the churches in Galatia wearing T-shirts that said, “Wanna be a heretic? Ask me how.” What made them so dangerous was that they knew how to talk about salvation in Christ. They “presented the gospel,” Only, they did not have the gospel at all. So we should expect, therefore, that the most serious threat to the one true gospel is something that is also called the gospel and is pretty close. The most dangerous teachers are the ones who preach a different Christ but still call him “Jesus,” and we can never back off in arrogance and claim that we are not susceptible to this error, because as soon as we do, we have committed it.

Judging What is Truth and What is Error

v. 8: Paul gives a very specific directive as to how to judge external authorities such as teachers, institutional leaders, or even ordained leaders within the Church. What is remarkable to note in this verse is that Paul uses the word “we,” to include himself as a human authority of whom must be questioned and compared to the gospel. He is saying that even he must be rejected if he says, “I’ve changed my mind about the gospel. There is more.” And he can say this because he makes the argument all the way though chapters 1 and 2 that the gospel did not come from him – it did not come through reasoning or reflection, but it was received by him. He didn’t arrive at the gospel – he received the gospel as an Apostle.

Therefore, even he who proclaimed the gospel at the beginning is not free to alter it, and is telling the Galatians that he too should be scrutinized. He as an apostle must be evaluated. The angels from heaven must be evaluated. The church and its gospel must be evaluated with the Bible as the plumb line for determining all truth claims. Contrary to what many teach today, our experiences must be evaluated by the gospel – we do not evaluate the gospel by our experiences.

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Verse 8 marks what is, perhaps, the harshest statement from any of the New Testament writers. Paul does not call for a mere slap on the wrist; His is a statement that would invoke great distress from those to whom it applied. He’s not saying we should remove these false teachers from the pulpit, or not allow them to teach a Bible study or Sunday school class. He’s not even saying that we should dis-fellowship them and send them out. He’s saying that if they hold to this false gospel, they are anathema, cursed (damned). The absolute, most severe punishment for those in the Bible is reserved for the false prophet. Paul says that false prophets deserve God’s eternal punishment. Paul is not losing his cool and flying off in a fit of rage and anger – he proves this by reemphasizing his point in verse 9.

These words are driven from a deep desire to see God’s people come to a fullness of understanding God and His nature and work, and this is why we can say that Galatians is a book about grace. Paul wants those who call Christ their Savior to be gripped by what that really means. This is no mere intellectual argument or exercise for Him. He sees this as a matter of life and death. Paul loves the Galatians. He is reacting so strongly to the news he received about these churches that he loved because it is the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ! In order for us to have an appreciation for Paul’s harsh words, we have to be just as astonished as Paul was at anyone who follows a false gospel over the true gospel. Remember verse 6 – Paul is shocked – and so shall we also be, and yet were it not for the grace of God we too would believe a false gospel.

It is vitally important that we note that Paul’s condemnation towards those who preach a false gospel is directed not to anyone outside the church, but to those who are inside the church and are corrupting it from within. Much the same way, when Christ went on an offensive attack towards individuals, it wasn’t towards the Greeks or Romans. He was incredibly patient and merciful to the prostitute, the adulteress, the publicans, and all forms of sinners from the people of the land. He didn’t enter into heated disputes with the pagans. However, His rebukes were strong towards those who considered themselves the chosen of God, the religious, the very ones who assumed they had a privileged position in the covenant. Jesus saw that the greatest threat to his people was from the inside, and not the outside. It was an attack of those who were not simply mistaken, but actively opposed to the gospel of grace. They were attempting to subvert the gospel by bringing those within the church into conformity with their gospel of works rather than grace. Paul and Jesus were always submerged in controversy over the gospel. When the gospel is preached boldly, controversy always follows because man’s security and system of salvation is under direct assault every time the gospel of grace is thundered.

The Gospel

Paul’s gospel teaches us that Jesus Christ has died for our sins (past, present and future), and that the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ is attributed to us through faith alone. This means that a sinner such as I can actually go to heaven since, when I measure myself by the law, I know that I have not the slightest chance of earning enough merit or possessing enough good works to stand in God’s presence.

Paul’s gospel says that every sinner who trusts in Jesus Christ alone can know that their sins are forgiven and that they will fall before the throne of Jesus in heaven when they die. Paul’s gospel teaches us that if we are trusting in Christ Jesus, his death is sufficient to absorb the wrath of God for our sins and his perfect obedience is given to us as our own. This is the only way for sinful men and women to stand before the Holy God in the judgment yet to come.

Isaiah 43:6-7 teaches us that God created the universe and everything in it, including us, for his glory. We have an obligation to live for the glory of God – living as refractors of God’s glory to the world around us. A gospel that is “some of Christ and some of me” is a different gospel from that which Paul taught, and tragically, is no gospel at all. All of God’s gifts are good only to the place where they lead us to God himself – they help us to be captivated by and fixated on what is most deeply and most durably satisfying, namely, God himself. God is the gospel, Jesus is the good news – and if we lose the gospel, we have lost everything. But if we have the gospel we have everything we need for our only comfort, satisfaction and joy in this life and in our future death. For in the gospel, we have Jesus Christ and all his saving merits. What else do we need?

Having faith in Christ is fighting to have joy in Christ – delighting in him, being satisfied by him, and putting all of your affections in him. Let us fall before the majesty of our great God, acknowledging our own faults and inaccuracies, praying that he will make us ever more conscious of them. May this lead us to repentance, and make us grow and increase in faith, as true sacrifices to him. Since our Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our redemption, let us also seek to dedicate ourselves fully to him. May we be led by him to persevere, so that in life and in death we seek no other contentment or rest than to submit to his good will.

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[1] Timothy George, The New American Commentary: Galatians, Vol. 30, ed. by E. Ray Clendenin (Nashville: B&H, 1994), 22.

[2] James M. Boice, The Expositors Bible Commentary: Romans through Galatians, Vol. 10, Ed. by Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), 410.

[3] George, 433.

[4] Timothy J. Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: Leader’s Guide (New York: Redeemer Presbyterian, 2003), 8.