The True Gospel

Galatians begins with Paul losing his cool. He and Barnabas had just returned from a missionary journey through Galatia, where for the first time he preached directly to the Gentiles. God responded and they witnessed a great move of the Spirit.


Nevertheless, Paul and Barnabas wanted to be sure that what he had done was of God. So he went to Jerusalem and met with the disciples. When they heard about it, they rejoiced. The Holy Spirit witnessed that this was from God.

But the Devil is always stirring up trouble. He was already trying to undo what God had done in Galatia. A group of false Christians called the Judaizers had heard what had happened in Galatia and went to the same towns Paul visited, preaching a different message. They convinced these young new believers that they were not yet good enough to be accepted by God. These people old them that they should be circumcised, keep the Sabbath, and all the other Jewish laws. In short, they were turning these young believers into legalistic Pharisees.

This group had a different Gospel. To them, the Gospel Paul preached it was too easy. They believed that Christians were just Jews with extra laws tacked on. They did not understand that as Christians they were free from the Law. If anything, they were more bound to the Law than the Pharisees Jesus condemned.

It’s not surprising that a group of people who grew up in the Jewish Pharisee community might adopt this view. What is surprising is that these Gentile believers would so readily accept it, too. Why should Gentiles so quickly accept the restrictions of the Jewish Law?

This question has a direct bearing on us. Legalistic religion has always had a strong appeal. You only have to look around us, and you will see that churches which emphasize legalistic practices attract many followers. Some of the largest churches in town are also some of the most legalistic.

The Gentile environment that the Galatians knew also had much legalism. Some religions required that mark your body with tattoos or piercings. Others required that you wear special clothing or underwear. Others required that you join a temple and make regular sacrifices to a pagan God. Other religions required their followers to give up certain foods, or worship on a particular day of the week. So the message of the Judaizers had a great appeal to them. Paul’s Gospel seemed too easy to them, too. Legalism seemed more natural.

I am convinced that faith is an unnatural act. It is natural for us to want to do something for our salvation. After all, when we do something, we are in control. Works put us in control. We decide whether or not God is worth following, and whether we will adopt the symbols of that faith. Faith requires that we do nothing except believe what Jesus has already done.

Faith has always been strange to us, because it requires the surrender of our control of our own life. People would rather do almost anything than to feel as if they are losing control.

In Exodus, when Israel fled from Egypt and into the desert, God led them by day and by night. He provided miraculous food from heaven. But God’s miraculous provision and leadership had a down side. The people were no longer in control. Every day they had to get fresh guidance and fresh provisions from God. They could not even store manna for more than a day!

It did not take long for them to grow tired of being helpless. They wanted to be independent again. They wanted to be somewhere –anywhere—where they did not have to depend on bread falling from the sky each night. People would rather live caged in slavery forever, than to live with uncertainty and freedom. They would rather endure almost in any circumstance however bad than to face the discomfort of feeling helpless.

Faith is being willing to trust in only Jesus, and follow where He leads. God doesn’t tell us what is coming next. He only tells us what to do at the moment. God doesn’t give us what we need tomorrow. He only gives us what we need today. Those who want security and regularity ought not to try actually following God. They will be disappointed.

Let me make this clear. There is nothing you can do to save yourself—nothing. You are not saved by church. You are not saved by tithing, you are not saved by grace before meals, any more than our country is saved by a prayer at a football game.

Have you ever been with a person who had OCD—obsessive compulsive disorder? OCD people have what seems to others to be meaningless rituals which make them feel safe. They horde things, because they feel that someday they might need them, even though it is nonsense. They will not step on a crack in the sidewalk. They think they must wash their hands over and over, even when they are clean. They do this because they believe that these rituals cause them to be in control and save. If they can stave off bad luck by not stepping on cracks, they have some control over the universe.

These rituals seem strange to us but how much stranger are they than some things that are done in church every week? What about the people who say that you have to be baptized in a full tank of water or you are going to hell? Or the people who say that if go to confession and say six “Hail Marys” God will automatically absolve you of your sins? Does it make any more sense to say that if you join a Presbyterian church or give ten percent of your income, you will automatically get what you want from God? Yet I know Christians who believe all those things.

So the Judaizers fulfilled a need in their lives—a need for regularity, order and control. In responses, Paul wrote them a letter to the Galatians. Here is how it begins.

1:1-2 Paul, an apostle — sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— and all the brothers with me, To the churches in Galatia:

Paul’s letter begins by letting them know he really is an apostle sent from God. An apostle is a messenger. He is saying to them. “Look, I’m not making this up, It comes from God. Those who are with him are the other apostles—the disciples plus Barnabas and others who preached the Gospel to them. Paul s reminding them that the others agree. As crazy at is may sound, God wants them to do nothing but trust Jesus. That’s grace through faith.

I know how Paul felt. I’m not making this up, either. It may not feel natural to you—in fact, if probably doesn’t. But listen anyway. You must let go even of that sense of being natural, and embrace the message of the Gospel.

What do you do when you when your car starts to skid? Turn in the direction of the skid. It seems unnatural. It feels like you should turn in the opposite direction. But do that and you’ll have a wreck. If you follow your feelings and turn the other way, you’ll be wrong.

Salvation is the same way. Our instincts tell us that salvation lies in doing something. God’s Word is that salvation lies in simply trusting. That’s because Jesus has already done all that is necessary for you.

3-5 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Christ died for our sins to rescue us from hell. More than that, He died to rescue us from hell on earth, too. Paul calls that hell the “present evil age.” The Roman Empire days were truly hell, too. There is not one of us who would last a week in all the disease, injustice, superstition, and oppression that people endured in Roman times. They did not know this, of course, because the people of the time did not know any better. But Jesus came to be with people in the middle of that chaos. He gave these people His Presence to help them through the worst of times. Ours is also an evil age. The only hope we have is to depend upon Him utterly.

That’s what Paul told the Galatians. But they left that teaching very quickly, as we can see from verses 6-7

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

I once got an ad in the mail that said “congratulations! You have been named to be a member of Young America’s Who’s Who. Now you are entitled to all the rights and privileges thereof. For the live of me, I could not find what rights and privileges went with this high honor, except the privilege of buying a book for the low price of fifty dollars. Beyond that, I know no other right or privilege to being in their book. This was a false good news. There were no privileges.

What are the “rights” and “privileges” of fake churchianity? We have the privilege of going to church. We have the privilege of tithing. Without communion with God, there are burdens, not blessing. We have the “privilege” of cutting out what we enjoy and replacing them with things we do not enjoy. We have the “privilege” of managing on our own, without divine intervention. Then we wonder why no one wants to join our church!

The real good news is actually good. It actually gives them a new, clean life. It does not put extra burdens on us, but relieves us of the burden that guilt and the false gospels of the world pile on our heads.

Paul is serious about this, as he shows in verses 8-9

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!

There is not another place in Paul’s writings where he is this angry. “Eternally condemned” in Paul’s native language was anathema maranatha—cursed until the end of time.

I am angry, too. I am angry with generations of people who have told the church one thing when salvation is another. Over and over again, in all the churches I have served, I have met people in the sixties, seventies, and even eighties, who still do not know that all they have to do is trust Jesus. They have been taught by preachers, Sunday school teachers, and even mothers and fathers that they are saved by following some rituals. They cannot conceive of God saving them without making them get baptized in a certain way, or joining a particular church. They live their lives in perpetual guilt, because they are afraid that there might be something they have left out.