Galatians: When the Gospel is Not the Gospel
I'm really excited about this series. There's just, so much neat stuff about what the Bible says about the gospel. And I'm so glad to get to the core of the gospel like we did in the last class with I Corinthians. This time, we're gonna talk about Galatians, when the gospel is not the gospel. I think before long, you're gonna understand that title.
A. Deserting the Gospel
Paul started the churches in Galatia. Galatia is a region where several churches were located, Lystra, Iconium and Derbe. Paul had worked with those churches in Acts 14, but he had heard that there were problems after he'd already moved on to Corinth to work. So he writes this, what we believe to be his very first letter that he ever wrote that's recorded in the New Testament in about 50 AD.
6. How sad that the Galatians were already turning to a different gospel.
6I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; 7which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
- Galatians 1:6-8
It was sad that these churches in the region of Galatia had heard the gospel not long before this. But some others had come in behind Paul, and they were altering the gospel. They were teaching a different gospel. And when he says, I'm amazed, let me translate that for you. The modern version will be, I'm blown away. I can't believe you're doing this. I'm just astonished that so quickly you would desert the gospel. And you're not just deserting the gospel.
2. Preaching a different gospel is the same as deserting God.
Look at verse 6, who called you by the grace of Christ? God the father. He called you by his grace, and you're deserting that for a different gospel? Paul is very upset with the Galatians, and rightfully so. And he's making the same point that we've been making in this class from the very beginning, you don't alter, you don't change the gospel.
3. A distorted gospel is not even gospel because it's no longer good news.
If you change it, then we're not being saved the way the Bible says to be saved, which means we're not saved. That's not good news. There is only one gospel.
And let me take a side note here and say, there are not four gospels. I once had a Bible study with a dear friend and I was telling him about how I was going to be recording these classes and I was excited. And he said, well, what are your classes gonna be about? I said, well, the gospel. He said, "oh, which one?" And what he means is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we call the four gospels.
The Bible never uses gospels as plural unless it's referring to false gospels. There's really only one gospel. I wish I could break us of that habit of saying that. The better way to say it is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are four accounts of the gospel. I taught Matthew, Mark, and Luke as, synoptic books, meaning they're very similar, and we taught it as the synoptic gospel, not the synoptic gospels, because there is only one gospel. And if you distort it, if you change it in any way, it's not gospel. It's not good news anymore.
4. A tainted gospel is disturbing, even destructive to those who listen to it.
which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
- Galatians 1:7
It is disturbing. It is destructive to the church. It's destructive to Christianity when we alter or change the gospel. So the first thing that I hope we get from this lesson is don't ever desert, don't ever change the gospel.
B. The Curse of Man-Made Gospels
1. There is a curse on anyone who alters the plain gospel.
8But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! 10For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.
- Galatians 1:8-10
Paul said, I don't care if was us. I don't care if it's an angel from heaven came down and said, this is the gospel. You don't change it. You don't accept anything but the truth of the gospel.
2. When pleasing man becomes more important than pleasing God, the plain gospel gets distorted.
Too much politics. Politics has no place in the church. We're not here for politics. We're not here to please people. Oh, it's wonderful when people are pleased with what we do, but that's never the goal. When we are so concerned, well, maybe we shouldn't preach this quite so hard because some people don't like it. Well, boohoo. That's a that's a shame.
The fact is we are obligated to preach the gospel just the way the Bible says. And if some people don't believe that baptism is necessary to salvation, and we preach that, we don't do it to offend people. I don't ever want to offend anybody, but I'm certainly not going to alter what the Bible says. Are we too concerned about pleasing people? When pleasing man is more important to us than pleasing god, the gospel is going to get distorted.
3. Any gospel that comes from a man is really not a true gospel.
11For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
- Galatians 1:11-12
Paul says, I'm not just preaching something that a man taught me. No. Jesus taught me this. He gave me this revelation. He revealed this gospel to me, and this is the one that I am preaching. We need to make sure it doesn't get altered in any way.
C. The Gospel's Original Intention
Why do we have the gospel? What's it for? Let's take a look at that.
1. The truth of the gospel must always remain with the church.
But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage.
- Galatians 2:4
You may remember I stated earlier that there are some people who were following Paul around, who were changing the gospels, and saying "well, Paul said this, but did he tell you about circumcision? Uou gotta make sure you get circumcised. Are you keeping the law?" They were adding to, distorting it. They're stepping in and changing the gospel so Paul is writing to address that.
But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.
- Galatians 2:5
He's talking to the churches in Galatia. He needs to remain with you.
6But from those who were of high reputation (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—well, those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me. 7But on the contrary, seeing that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised
- Galatians 2:6-7
This gospel, he says, there are people that came in and they tried to distort this, and we didn't even listen to them for an hour. We gave them nothing, no credibility at all. And I don't care how high their reputation is, he says it doesn't matter. What they're teaching is false, and we need to make sure that the truth of the gospel needs to remain with you, the church.
In verse 7, Paul says he was sent by Christ himself to be the apostle to the Gentiles, to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been working with those who were Jews.
2. It is because of the gospel that we're expected to treat brethren like brethren.
11But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12For prior to the coming of certain men from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision. 13The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy. 14But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, "If you, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?
- Galatians 2:11-14
What had happened was when Cephas, Peter, and Paul were working with these Gentiles, the non Jews, he was in fellowship with them. He was just fine. But then some Jewish brethren came along and he noticed that Peter was pulling back from the Gentiles. And Paul called him on it. He said, you're in the wrong for doing this. And he chastises him about it saying basically, you're a Jew, but you're living like a Gentile. And also, how is it that you compel Gentiles to live like Jews? It's almost like he's saying, you know what, Peter? You never were a very good Jew.
Paul was a Pharisee. If anybody had a problem with fraternizing or spending time with the Gentiles, it should have been Paul, not Peter. But Peter was the one who was pulling back, and he says, that's wrong. And let me tell you why it's wrong, because it hinders the truth of the gospel.
The gospel is not just a doctrine. It's not just the things that we believe. It impacts the way we treat each other as brethren, as brothers in Christ. You either are my brother or you're not my brother today because of the gospel. The gospel determines all of that, and that's why the gospel is so important. This is the original intention of the gospel.
3. Through scripture the gospel was preached to Abraham.
6Even so Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. 7Therefore, be sure that it is those who are of faith who are sons of Abraham. 8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "All the nations will be blessed in you."
- Galatians 3:6-8
Abraham believed, and that was credited to him as righteousness. This is a quote from from the Old Testament. And so he says, we are sons of Abraham through faith. In fact, the gospel goes all the way back to Abraham. How is that possible? The gospel was really the good news about salvation through Christ, the Messiah. How did Abraham get connected with this?
Let me share something with you about the way that I study and a mistake that I see a lot of my brothers and sisters making in their study of the text. When we come across a passage that maybe we don't understand very well like verse 8, our tendency is to run to a commentary and see what the commentary says. Now I have to be really careful I state this because I've been accused of hating commentaries. I don't dislike commentaries. I dislike the way we use them. Because what happens is if you don't understand a text and you just immediately just jump to a commentary, if you've been taught the same thing that the person wrote the commentary was taught, and if it happens to be wrong, you can't tell because you're just seeing what somebody else says that's what it says. Let me show you a better way to do that.
If you will take different translations of the Bible and just read them all to see if you can understand what Galatians 3:8 means.
(ASV) And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be blessed.
(BBE) And the holy Writings, seeing before the event that God would give the Gentiles righteousness by faith, gave the good news before to Abraham, saying, In you will all the nations have a blessing.
(ERV) The Scriptures told what would happen in the future. These writings said that God would make the non-Jewish people right through their faith. God told this Good News to Abraham before it happened. God said to Abraham, "I will use you to bless all the people on earth."
(CEV) Long ago the Scriptures said that God would accept the Gentiles because of their faith. That's why God told Abraham the good news that all nations would be blessed because of him.
(CSB) Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you.
(ESV) And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, "In you shall all the nations be blessed."
(ISV) Because the Scripture saw ahead of time that God would justify the gentiles by faith, it announced the gospel to Abraham beforehand when it said, "Through you all nations will be blessed."
(NLT) What's more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, "All nations will be blessed through you."
(KJV) And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed.
(NKJV) And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, "In you all the nations shall be blessed."
(NIrV) Long ago, Scripture knew that God would make non-Jews right with himself by believing in him. He announced the good news ahead of time to Abraham. He said, "All nations will be blessed because of you."
(NIV84) The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."
First of all, I don't even really like some of these translations and I don't recommend them to others. But I found that even, translations that I don't think are as conservative to the text or as consistent in their translation, even those don't get every verse wrong. And on some of these, I've found that it's it's actually quite insightful. And so grab several translations, look at the verse, wrestle with the text first before you turn to a commentary or before you even ask or believe what I say or any other man says. What does the text say? And when you use different translations, you're seeing, well, what does God actually say? What what was the intent of the original language? If you can't study Koine Greek, if you are a Greek scholar, and I'm not, then English translations will help you.
After you wrestle the text, if you want to turn to a commentary and confirm and see if that's what others are thinking, well, great. That's fine. But let me encourage you to wrestle with the text. This text is saying that Abraham received the gospel long ago, and the reason we know that is because he was told Genesis 12:3-18 and Genesis 22:18. Several times he was told this,
All nations will be blessed because of you. All nations, which means more than just the Jews. Even long ago we see a glimpse of this good news. This gospel was being shared, even with Abraham. Whether Abraham realized it or not is irrelevant. He did receive the gospel message, and that's what the verse is saying.
4. The gospel unites us by clothing us with Christ.
26For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
- Galatians 3:26-28
One of the most beautiful things about the gospel is how it unites us, how it brings us together as a team.
Have you ever been in a restaurant and a team comes through the door, maybe a softball, baseball or football team, and you can tell they're a team because they're all wearing the same uniform. Well, in Christ, if I have been baptized and I've been clothed with Christ, and that's when it says we're clothed with Christ according to verse 27. If that's happened to me and that's happened to you, we're wearing the same uniform. We're on the same team. That's the beauty of the gospel, it unites us.
That's the gospel's original intent. It brings us together as a family of God, as God's kingdom, whether you are here in Oklahoma or you're on the other side of the world, it doesn't matter. We are still wearing the same uniform. We're on the same team because we are clothed with Christ. I hope you understand now when the gospel is not the gospel. I hope you also understand why it is so important that we fervently hold on to and never relinquish what the truth of the gospel is.