Hey, what have you been doing? I can’t believe you’ve done this. Who is leading you astray? Damn them! They can go to hell!
What emotions stand behind words such as these? Shock? Disbelief? Outrage? Anger? Surely the person who said that couldn’t be a Christian!
What emotions are created in those who receive these words? Shock. Perhaps embarrasement. Guilt! Maybe anger, if you thought the person speaking to you this way was unfair or wrong.
Welcome to Paul’s letter to the Galatians. For Paul, in his first chapter of Galatians, says things very similar to this. And this is an indication of how serious the problem was in the Galatian churches.
What was the problem in the Galatian churches? It was false teaching. False teaching drew from Paul such anger. So that is how serious Paul considers correct thinking about God, Jesus, and the gospel.
The book of Acts gives us a little insight into the historical situation. Acts tells us how the Galatians became Christians. Paul went to the Galatians proclaiming the forgiveness of sins through Jesus (In Pisidian Antioch: Acts 13:38). We have a summary of one of his sermons in Acts 13. His message was, through Jesus everyone who believes is justified, That is, we can be acquitted, pardoned, and our sins forgiven. By trusting Jesus Christ the Messiah our sins are forgiven and we are declared righteous before God. And Paul declared that they could not be justified from their sins by the law of Moses. Their sins could not be blotted out by the law of Moses (Acts 13:38-39).
But then, by Acts chapter 15, after Paul has left them, some other men have been speaking to the Galatian Christians. There is a neat summary of the teaching they brought in.
Acts chapter 15 verse 1.
Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.”
Again, in verse 5
Then some of the believers who belonged to the party of the Pharisees stood up and said, “The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.”
Here is the type of false teaching Paul so fiercely fights. When the Philippian jailer asked Paul, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Paul said: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved’. But now comes a teaching that would say to the Philippian Jailer, ‘Be circumcised as well, and you will be saved’. And ‘Obey the law of Moses, and you will be saved’. In part, you must rely on the law[1] (Galatians 3:10-11). The includes circumcision (Galatians 5:2-4, 5:11), Jewish festivals (cf Galatians 4:10; 5:2-4, 5:11), indeed everything written in the book of the law (Galatians 3: 10-11). These things you must do alongside believing on the Lord Jesus.
So the churches are confused. And Paul is angry. Paul is like a bear robbed of her cubs. And so he writes this white-hot letter. It is a warning shot across the bows of the Galatian churches. It is not a temper tantrum. It is deliberate, calculated, reasoning. But it is passionate and uncompromising. In it, he defends himself as a true apostle, and his gospel as the only gospel which can save us.
Let’s look at verses 1 and 2 of Galatians:
READ GALATIANS 1:1-2
Paul declares himself sent. An apostle is a sent one. But who has Paul been sent by? He is not sent from men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ.
That’s interesting. Paul is saying that no human group or individual person has sent him to share the gospel. Head office in Jerusalem didn’t send him. Peter or James or John didn’t send him. The Bishop didn’t send him. The 5 Star Generals at St Andrew’s House didn’t send him. He is saying, Jesus sent him. That is why Paul is an apostle and why me and you are not. Because Jesus directly sent Paul ... without mediation by any human. Jesus appeared to Paul visibly. So visibly, in fact, that he blinded him. But Jesus has not appeared to us in the same way.
That is why, if we accept Jesus, we must accept Paul. We can’t say, ‘Oh yes, but that is Paul, but Jesus says something different’.
Paul was sent not from men, nor by man, but by Jesus Christ… So what does that make Jesus? Paul doesn’t lump Jesus together with the category ‘men’. Paul just naturally lumps Jesus with ‘God the Father’. Jesus is thought of alongside God. It suggests that Jesus is more than man. And other parts of the bible fill in who he is. Jesus is God the one and only, who was with God and was God, but who became human (John 1:1,14,18).
And we are introduced to Jesus, more than man, as risen. God the Father raised him from the dead. Paul was blinded by the resurrected Jesus’ power and glory on the Damascus Road. For only a living Jesus could have turned him from persecutor to missionary.
The letter is addressed to the churches in Galatia. It is addressed to a number of churches. Some people say the bible is a book from the church. The church gave us the bible. Therefore the church has authority over scripture. But that is not the bible’s basic character. The bible is made up of books to the church from God.
Paul wishes the Galatian churches, his spiritual children, ‘grace and peace’. These are blessings that come from God and Jesus. And he outlines how they come to us.
READ GALATIANS 1:4
How can grace and peace come to us? How do God and Jesus make peace with us and treat us kindly, graciously, mercifully?
It is because Jesus gave himself up ‘for our sins’. Jesus died for our sins. We have sins, each of us. Paul has his. I have mine. You have yours. And these are so serious that Jesus ‘gave himself’ for them. In other words, he gave up his life. His whole self. He submitted to death, for the forgiveness of sins.
Paul will talk about what Jesus’ death means him personally. He says in chapter 2 verse 20, the Son of God, ‘loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20). He cannot set aside the grace of God, because if righteousness comes through the law, Christ died for nothing. God loved Paul while he was still a persecuting, jealous sinner, destroying the church. God justifies the wicked.
And not just Paul, but all of us who put their trust in Christ. Christ redeemed us by becoming a curse for us’. (Gal 3:13). He redeemed us, bought us back by his death, paying the costly price for the forgiveness of our sins. And his death was a curse bearing death. He bore God’s curse that hung over us and our sins. That is why his death was ‘according to the will of God the Father’. Because God presented Jesus as a sacrifice taking away his anger and curse.
But we needed more than rescue from our sins. Paul says, Jesus gave himself to rescue us from the present evil age. The salvation Jesus wins for us is bigger than just ‘me and my sins’. There is a world at war with God. And we need to be air lifted out of it. The time in which we live is characterised by evil. It is time of hostility towards God. This is the explanation of much of what happens at this time. Hostility in the spiritual realm – devils and demons. Hostility in the world of men – who won’t glorify God.
And Jesus has rescued us from all this. By Jesus death and resurrection we who believe have been transferred. Moved from this present kingdom of darkness, and brought into the kingdom of the son he loves. (Col 1:13-14). So we Christians live in this time. This ‘now rescued but not yet there’ time. The overlap of the ages. Jesus has already rescued and transferred us from the evil kingdom. But we see and receive this only by faith, not by sight.
Now, what we’ve been reading so far is, if you like, the addresses on a letter. From Paul. To Galatia. Greetings.
But as we have seen, Paul has managed to jam these addresses full of who he is and of what his message consists. He has asserted not only his apostleship, but has also outlined his gospel. The gospel is about Jesus, who died for our sins, to rescue us, and was raised again. And while the gospel to us is news of rescue. The gospel brings glory to God. For God through the gospel saves us in a way that glorifies himself and humbles us.
In Paul’s other letters, we often see a thanksgiving. Paul says something like ‘I thank God for all of you when I remember you’. You can see that in a lot of Paul’s letters. Except in Galatians. Something is so serious, so bad, that Paul cannot thank God for them.
READ GALATIANS 1:6
Paul can’t believe what he hears. So soon they have deserted Christ, and rebelled against him, and mutinied. They are traitors and turncoats.
How long does it take for a church to turn away from gospel truth. 50 years. 20 years. 10 years. 2 years? 6 months. What if they have a really good church planter? Aren’t they on a better foundation? What if an apostle himself plants and establishes the church? Aren’t they off to a better start?
The Galatians seem to have created a new land speed record in changing their religious convictions. They have turned away from the God who saves. They have turned away from the gospel, those facts that Paul has just spoken about. And they have turned to a different gospel. But it is no gospel.
I remember hearing of a debate amongst church elders. The debate was over whether a person is justified by faith alone. And one elder said to the other. ‘You have your gospel, I have mine’.
Now what is this saying about the gospel? That there are different gospels that can co-exist. But Paul will have none of that. There is only one gospel.
The Galatians churches, we see, have become confused The last part of verse 7 Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ (NIV). The Judaizer’s added to the gospel. And in adding to it, they spoiled it.
It is not an adding like icing and cherries on top of a cake. It is adding like tobasco sauce and mustard on ice cream. It is a twisting, a ruining, a perverting of the gospel.
They added to ‘believe in the Lord Jesus’ ‘You must keep the law’. But by adding to the gospel, they have subtracted.
True Gospel of Jesus + Law of Moses = False Gospel.
True Gospel of Jesus + circumcision = Eternal condemnation.
Because the gospel plus anything means ‘No Gospel At All’.
And this renders these teachers liable to God’s Curse. Anathema. In other words, judgment, death and hell.
READ GALATIANS 1:8-9
The gospel is a matter of heaven and hell. A different gospel brings no good news. It brings condemnation and damnation.
If it is an angel that brings another gospel, it is no good news. It Paul or Timothy or Barnabas or Peter or James or John brings another gospel, it is no good news. Whoever they are, let them be damned. So serious is Paul, that he coldly, soberly, deliberately repeats the anathema. It is not the messenger that ultimately matters. It is the message. The message validates the messenger, not the messenger the message. The gospel is not true because it is Paul’s. It is true because it is Jesus’.
It appears that Paul was sometimes accused of doing one thing to please one group, and then inconsistently doing the opposite thing to please another group.
So, here in Galatians he says, ‘if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you’ (Gal 5:2). Yet, Paul did have Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3). Isn’t this inconsistent?
After all, Paul is the one who said he ‘tries to please everybody in every way (1 Cor 10:33). He has become all things to all men, so that by all possible means he might save some (1 Cor 9:22). Maybe Paul has the same attitude to the gospel. A gospel for the Jews. A gospel for the Greeks. That Paul’s gospel is like a chameleon. It changes colour depending on where it is.
Paul says, ‘No!’ He is free in many things. What he eats, drinks, days, seasons, what he wears, his haircut. But his freedom does not extend to the content of the gospel.
Take circumcision. Paul did circumcise Timothy. He can do that because circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing. (Gal 6:15). There might be good reasons to circumcise. It doesn’t matter. And if it doesn’t matter, then you can.
But once someone says you must be circumcised to be saved, then it matters. That is a gospel statement. They have added circumcision to the gospel. And if you must, then you must not.
So here, Paul says, when it comes to the gospel, I don’t care about what men think[2]. I don’t try to please men. I leave the gospel message unchanged. Because I care about what God thinks. It’s his gospel. And if people preach a different gospel, then let them be eternally condemned, no matter who they are, even if it is me. Paul says: I am a slave of Christ. I don’t agree with people just to keep the peace. I don’t please people.
And we must also be like this with the gospel. We can be flexible with what doesn’t matter. But we can never allow additions to the gospel. Because it matters. The simple gospel message, Jesus’ death for our sins to rescue us according to God’s will, Jesus is raised from the dead, that we are saved by trusting Jesus not by our works, by keeping the law, this we must keep and cling to in it’s simplicity, without addition, and without subtraction.
Let’s pray.
[1] See ‘Thumbnail’ portrait by R A Cole, Galatians, 23
[2] Fung, 49, Contra Bruce, 85.