Anathema!

Opening song: Christ Is Enough

Introduction

I want to show you some people that have been cancelled by the media these days:

JK Rowling

Transgender issues

Kanye West

Some crazy behaviour - Grammy award, when Taylor swift got the award and Beyonce didn’t, he went up and did crazy stuff.

Ellen DeGeneres

Reports of bullying

Johnny Depp & Amber Heard

Domestic violence

Doja Cat

Hating on her fans, racist chat rooms, crazy Satan stuff

Well in today’s passage, we see something similar where Paul is cancelling something else. Obviously, some of the examples above, people have been cancelled for the wrong reasons. But in today’s passage, Paul is very clearly cancelling something for the right reasons because it is a threat to the gospel.

And the phrase Paul uses in this passage is ‘Anathema’! ‘Let him be accursed’! The Greek word is ‘Anathema!’. It’s the word that the Roman Catholic church used to use to cancel opinions and people that they didn’t agree with - ‘Anathema’ was the word they used for the word that we use today called ‘excommunication’. It’s was kind of like, cancel culture! You’re cancelled! Anathema!

Explain crazy example of Pope Stephen & Pope Formosa

Paul obviously doesn’t abuse this power like the Roman Catholics did. So let’s see exactly what Paul is trying to cancel in today’s passage.

Read Galatians 1:1–10

1. The Right Gospel

Now, before we see what Paul is cancelling, let’s look at what he is saying is right, what is the true gospel?

Paul begins his letter explaining the basics of the gospel, the ABCs! And this may seem really easy, and Paul is just writing to non-Christians, but remember, Paul is writing to fellow Christians, not to non-Christians (verse 2, ‘to the churches of Galatia’). So the gospel is not just something we tell to non-Christians trying to convert them. We sometimes think that the gospel is something we tell non-Christians, and now that we are converted, we don’t need the gospel message anymore - we need something more ‘advanced.’ But the gospel is something that Christians need to hear just as much as non-Christians. Not just once at the beginning of our faith, but from beginning to end. The gospel message is something that should shape the entire Christian life.

(skip this point: Paul first establishes the authority of the gospel that he is preaching, because his apostleship is not from man, but from God himself, as shown in verse 1. ‘What he says is not the result of his study, research, reflection and wisdom. It is God-given, and both unchanging and unchangeable’.)

So what is the gospel that Paul is stating? What are the ABCs? Read Galatians 1:3–5 “3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Firstly, the gospel is showing us who we are to Christ and who Christ is to us. If we see verse 4, we see Christ came to ‘deliver us’, meaning ‘rescue us’, ‘save us’. What does that make us? We are people who are in need of rescue/saving. What does that make Christ? Our saviour. This may seem obvious and simple, but Paul really makes a few things clear for us here:

Paul shows us who Christ is. Many people believe that to be a Christian, is to just follow Christ and his teachings - they see Christ as just a good example, as a good teacher, as a good moral person. But Christ is not a teacher. Sure he has many good teachings. But first and foremost, who is Christ to us? Our Saviour.

This simple teaching also clarifies who we are. We are those in need of rescue. To be in need of rescue and saving means we are in a situation in which we are completley helpless. If you are a lifesaver, you wouldn’t go out and save someone unless they are drowning in the water - when you are drowning, you are completely helpless, unable to save yourself, unless someone comes and rescue you. We are the same in in our spiritual state - we are completely helpless, unable to save ourselves, unless Christ comes and rescues us.

So then if we are completely helpless and unable to save ourselves, what do we need? We need God to save us that He does that by giving us his grace and peace. Verse 3 says, ‘Grace to you and peace...’

Grace is the free gift of love that God gives us, even if we didn’t do anything to deserve it. Peace is God restoring our previously broken relationship with Him.

And how does God give us His free gift of grace and peace? Through His Son Jesus Christ. Read Galatians 1:4 “4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age,”

God gives us his grace and peace to rescue us, and the way He does that is getting his Son, Jesus Christ to ‘give himself for our sins.’ What this is saying is that Christ died instead of us, for us. We deserved the punishment for our sins, which was death, but Christ died that death for us. If we were standing before a judge in court, Christ took the ‘guilty’ sentence instead of us, so that now we are considered innocent, without sin. And not only that, Christ lived the perfect life of obedience, and before God he is considered perfectly obedient, righteous, and good, and instead of taking that status of righteousness and goodness for himself, he gives it to us. So we go from the negative, in sin, not just to zero, ‘no sin’, but to positive, righteous/good.

And all this was ‘according to the will of our God and Father’ (verse 4). The death of Christ for our sins, to save us, was not an accident. It was God’s plan all along; God didn’t make a mistake and his plan of His Son dying on the cross wasn’t a backup plan. It was also not because we convinced God to save us because we did anything good to deserve it; it was God’s plan all along. God saved us in this way through the death of His son out of his sheer good pleasure - it pleased God to save us.

2. The ‘Different’ Gospel

So Paul has clarified what is the true gospel. Then what is Paul trying to cancel? Anathema?! A different gospel. What is the different gospel?

Read Galatians 1:6 “6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—”

The different gospel that the believers in Galatia were turning to was something that tries to add something to what Christ has done for us. In verse 6, Paul says ‘him who called you in the grace of Christ’ - the true gospel is one where God has called you, ie, God has already accepted you, and then you follow and live for him even though you didn’t do anything to deserve it. The Galatians were trying to reverse the order - rather than being called/accepted and then following, they were trying to follow and give something to God, so that He accepts them. They were trying to add obedience to the gospel such as circumcision, as the condition and requirement to be saved by God. And isn’t this so true of other religions? They have to do something to be accepted by God. But the true gospel of Christ is the opposite - we don’t do anything to be accepted by God. God already calls us and accepts us in whatever horrible state we are in, and then we follow and obey him. The Galatians who were following ‘another gospel’ were essentially saying, the grace of God, the cross of Christ, is not enough, and they have to add something to Christ’s work on the cross to be accepted by God. Christ is not enough, and you need Christ plus something else.

And if we read Galatians 1:7 (“7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ”), we see that this is not a ‘different gospel’ but it is not the gospel at all. Rather, it is a complete ‘distortion’, a horrible mutated fake copy of the gospel. It’s not even a ‘different gospel’, but no gospel at all.

And Paul is astonished, completely disappointed, that these people in the Galatian churches are ditching the old gospel. The level of disappointment is even worse than when your mum or your teacher is severely disappointed in you! And rightly so - Paul had worked so hard in building up and establishing these churches, and preaching the gospel tirelessly to these people. If you read through Acts, Paul goes through all the cities in the region of Galatia - Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe - and as he travelled around these areas preaching the gospel, he did it risking his own life. He was persecuted and attacked in many of these cities: he was mocked, he was physically abused, and when he was in Lystra, he was dragged out of the city and were stoned with the intention of killing them but by the grace of God they survived. And in less than 1 year after their hard work, Paul heard the news that the churches in these regions had turned to a fake gospel. No wonder they were so sorely disappointed.

This just goes to show how easily our minds and our hearts are tempted by things outside the gospel. We love to be our own saviours. We like to hear messages that tell us what we can do to make ourselves better, how to make our lives better, how to be more successful in our jobs, how to make more money, how to make more friends, how to succeed in our studies. This is why self-help books, programs, and courses are so popular. And this is why so many other religions are popular. They all tell you that they can show you what to do, to make yourself better, essentially save yourself.

But the message of Galatians, the message of Christianity, is the complete opposite. It turns everything upside down. It tells us that there is nothing we can do to make ourselves better. It tells us that we are in such a hopeless, helpless state, that there is nothing we can do, there is nothing inside us, that can save us, that can rescue us. And the true gospel tells us that although there is nothing in us that can save us, God, through His Son Jesus Christ, provides us with a greater rescue than we can ever dream of, far greater than anything else this world offers, and far more than we ever deserved. This is the humbling truth that lies at the heart of Christianity.

This is why I love this quote from Timothy Keller:

The gospel is “the message that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope.”

3. How can we determine the right gospel?

(not enough time for this point. Skip for team 3 sermon. Essentially, Paul gives us a sweeping summary of proper Christian epistemology. The right way we can determine the truth. See Galatians 1:6-9.

Truth is not determined by the church.

Truth is not determined by personal experience. What we ‘feel’ is right, isn’t always what is truly correct.

Truth is not determined by certain people or teachers, no matter who they are. Even if they are the apostles appointed by Christ, or even if they are angels for that matter!

There is only one standard of truth, which is the message of the gospel recorded in the Bible. We are to evaluate and judge all truth claims, whether made by people, or by the church, using the gospel contained in the Bible. The Bible is the final judge, the authority of truth. We are to even judge our experiences and what we feel by the Bible, to examine whether they are true.

So as Christians, how do we know what is true? By the standard of truth which is the gospel proclamation that is contained in the Bible, recorded to us by the apostles who have been given special authority by Christ himself (ie, Galatians 1:1). Against this truth of Jesus Christ everything must be assessed and examined and scrutinised for its veracity.)

Conclusion

So we can see why Paul is so passionate and angry, saying ‘Anathema!’, ‘cursed!’, against all other false gospels. Paul completely rejects anything and everything that tries to take away from the perfect work of what Christ has already done for us. He says ‘Anathema’ ‘Be cursed!’ to anything that says Christ is not enough. Paul fiercely defends the true gospel, because the true gospel of Christ is the only one that will lead to true rescue, true saving, true eternal life. All other gospels are not ‘gospels’ at all, they are no gospel, leading only to death. Only the true gospel is the one that tells us of our complete helplessness, and the perfect rescue that Christ provides. Anything else, is to be removed, gotten rid of, to be cursed. So look into your own hearts today, and see if there is even any hint of us trying to save ourselves, falling victim to ‘another gospel’. And just like Paul, we need to passionately tell ourselves ‘Anathema!’ to all the lies that may be in our hearts. Trust and rely and believe in Christ only, because within us, there is nothing good to trust and rely on.

Closing song: All I Have Is Christ

https://open.spotify.com/track/4aleqpSFx0LQba6s52abGj?si=dc0792f1121845ec