No Other Gospel
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
Good morning church! It is so good to worship with you on this Lord’s Day.
If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those and turn with me to Galatians chapter 1.
Today we are beginning a brand-new sermon series through the book of Galatians. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to be walking slowly, carefully, deeply through this letter from the Apostle Paul to the churches in the region of Galatia.
And if you’ve been with us on Wednesday nights, you already know — this little letter is packed. There is more here than you might expect when you first flip to it.
It’s short.
But it is explosive.
Why Study Galatians?
Why Study Galatians?
Why Galatians?
Why now?
Because this is one of the most important and most relevant books for the church in every generation — including ours.
I’ve heard Galatians described as the Christian’s “Declaration of Independence.”
Why?
Because one of its major themes is freedom.
Not political freedom.
Not cultural freedom.
Not the freedom to do whatever we want.
But the freedom that we have in Christ.
Real freedom.
Deep freedom.
Soul-level freedom.
Galatians is about being set free from trying to earn God’s love.
Set free from spiritual performance.
Set free from religious law keeping.
Set free from guilt and condemnation.
And some of us have been Christians for years and still feel like we’re on probation with God, right?
And if we’re honest, that’s something every one of us wrestles with in some way.
I know last week I spoke a little about Martin Luther. You know, Martin Luther loved the book of Galatians. He loved it so much that he would call it his Katharina, which is the name of his wife.
You ever heard a kid say, “If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it.” Well, Luther kind of did with this book.
Luther was a man crushed by guilt. He tried fasting. Confession. Self-denial. He tried everything.
And when he read Galatians and saw justification by faith alone — it was like chains falling off.
And it makes sense that Martin Luther would love this book so much when you consider all of the things that he was dealing with from the Roman Catholic Church.
At that time in Church History, the church needed the words of Paul to the Galatians. Why? Because of all of the different things that were added to the gospel.
Here’s the thing church, when you add anything to the gospel, you don’t improve it — you replace it.
PAUSE
Because the moment your obedience becomes part of what makes you right with God, Christ is no longer enough.
That is what Galatians is about.
And it is human nature to add to the gospel because we want the credit. We want the glory that only belongs to God.
We don’t mind grace — as long as we get a little credit.
So before we dive into the text for this morning, let me give you some context for this book.
Who were the Galatians?
Who were the Galatians?
Galatia wasn’t a single city like Ephesus or Corinth. It was a region — more like a state. And Paul planted multiple churches there during his first missionary journey in Acts 13 and 14. These churches were in Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidia Antioch.
These weren’t easy church plants. Paul experienced a ton of opposition in each of these cities.
In Pisidia Antioch, Paul was run out of town.
In Iconium, there was an attempt to stone him.
In Lystra, they actually do stone him and then they drag him out of the city and left him for dead.
These churches were born in suffering.
They weren’t started in comfort, they were planted in persecution.
And yet the gospel took root and churches were born in each of these cities.
Why is Paul writing?
Why is Paul writing?
That is who Paul is writing to but why exactly is he writing? What is the occasion?
After Paul left the region of Galatia to do ministry in places like Ephesus, false teachers came in behind him.
These false teachers were Jewish men who had become Christians. So they didn’t deny Jesus. They didn’t reject the cross.
They just added something to the gospel that Paul preached. To the gospel that saved these Gentile Christians. Not only did they add to the gospel that Paul preached, they also questioned the legitimacy of Paul’s Apostleship.
These Jewish false teachers, known as the Judaizers, began telling these Gentile believers,
“Yes, faith in Christ is good… but if you really want to be a Christian…. If you really want to be God’s people, you need to also take on the law of Moses.”
They were teaching things like the necessity of circumcision and law observance, Feast Days. They taught that you had to become a Religious Jew if you are going to be truly accepted by God.
And these young, naive, churches began to succumb to these distortions to the gospel and Paul catches wind about it. This is why he is writing.
This is primarily an epistle of correction. Something that you will not find in this letter is a prayer of thanksgiving or a commendation. Why? Because Paul is hot. He is not happy that these churches he planted are so close to what Paul would consider Apostasy. This is the only letter we have with Paul that does not begin with thanksgiving.
Listen church,
We should care about the gospel this much.
The preservation and the purity of the gospel should be our highest priority and the thing that we guard the most fiercely.
And the reason that we need the book of Galatians is because there are so many false gospels out there.
The false gospels that we combat may not be a return to Old Testament law—although, there are certainly groups out there that teach this like in the Jewish Roots movement and other Youtube ministries. By the way, be wary of Youtube ministries. Always weigh what you hear from them against Scripture. In fact, weigh the things that I saw against Scripture.
Because none of us are immune to adding to the gospel.
Our additions may look different.
It may not be circumcision.
It may not be dietary laws.
But we are very capable of saying:
Jesus plus moral performance.
Jesus plus political alignment.
Jesus plus church attendance.
Jesus plus theological precision.
Jesus plus cultural conservatism.
Jesus plus personal discipline.
And the moment we say “plus,” we are in dangerous territory.
Because the gospel is not Christ plus anything.
It is Christ alone. Amen?
And that is why we need Galatians.
We need to be reminded that we are justified by faith alone.
We need to be reminded that we are adopted by grace alone.
We need to be reminded that what counts is not external performance—but new creation.
Church, if we lose clarity on the gospel,
PAUSE
we lose everything.
If the gospel becomes blurred, everything else becomes distorted.
And so Paul writes urgently.
He writes passionately.
He writes protectively.
Because he loves these churches.
And that same urgency should live in us.
We need this book because we are in a spiritual battle for the clarity of the gospel in our culture.
There are new, false gospels being preached all around us. Prosperity Gospels, Poverty Gospels, Social Justice Gospels…
And this is not a small issue. Eternity is at stake. When people trust in something other than Christ, their souls are in danger.
So with that, let’s bring our attention to Galatians.
This morning I will just have two points for your notes. This is the first point,
The Gospel Defined (vv. 1-5)
The Gospel Defined (vv. 1-5)
Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—
From the very beginning of the letter, Paul introduces himself as an Apostle. Now, what is an Apostle? The Greek, Apostolos, means Sent One. Jesus himself chose 12 men to be his Sent Ones to lead the church in its early years.
Paul was not one of the original Apostles but was called after Christ ascended into heaven when he appeared to him on the road for Damascus. You can read about this in Acts chapter 9.
What Paul is saying is that he has authority from Jesus Christ himself.
So, when Paul says, “an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father …”
He is making something very clear to these Galatian churches. He is saying,
My authority does not come from Jerusalem.
It does not come from Peter.
It does not come from a church council.
It does not come from any human commissioning.
It comes from the risen Christ himself.
These false teachers were questioning Paul’s authority. If they can undermine the messenger, they can undermine the message.
So before Paul ever defines the gospel, he establishes the authority behind it.
This gospel is not Paul’s idea.
It is Christ’s revelation.
We have to remember that. The gospel is not something that any man or organization or institution came up with. The gospel has been revealed to us through the person and work of Jesus Christ and in his life, death, and resurrection. All of these has been revealed to us in the pages of Scripture.
And we can trust these Scriptures that they are from God himself. This is his Word.
Verse 2,
and all the brothers who are with me,
To the churches of Galatia:
He says, “and all the brothers who are with me.” What he is saying is that he is not alone in what he is about to say. The gospel that Paul is preaching… the gospel that was preached to these churches and formed them as local bodies of believers is not just Paul’s gospel.
Paul is saying, “This isn’t just my opinion. The churches and the faithful brothers around me stand with this gospel.”
In other words, the gospel of grace is not a fringe message. It has a long history of saving the most wretched of people.
The gospel is the unified testimony of the apostolic church.
Verse 3,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
Martin Luther said those words, “Grace and Peace” sum up the gospel perfectly. And I think that is true because that is exactly what the gospel does, isn’t it?
It offers us grace and through that grace, we are given peace with God.
But here’s the thing, Grace always comes before Peace. What that means is that we cannot earn Grace. We can only be given Grace.
You know what Grace is? Think of it like an acronym: G.R.A.C.E. God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. It is because of Christ that we receive the Grace of God and then through that Grace experience Peace with God.
Grace is God’s unmerited favor. And Peace is the result of that favor.
And the Peace that Paul is speaking of here is not just inner calm.
It’s not just reduced anxiety.
It is peace with God. Because before Christ, all of us were enemies with God. Paul tells us in the book of Romans that we were hostile to God.
Having peace with God means the war is over.
It means hostility has ended.
It means there is no condemnation left for those who are in Christ.
And notice again where Paul says grace and peace come from:
“God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Paul places Jesus right alongside the Father as the source of divine grace.
That’s a bold claim about who Jesus is. Paul had an incredibly high Christology, and so should we.
He’s saying,
Grace flows from the Father.
Grace flows from the Son.
Because the Son is not a mere messenger of grace like Muhammad—
He is its source.
And how has he provided us with Grace and Peace? This is where Paul defines the gospel that he is getting ready to defend:
Verse 4,
who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
This is the gospel. If you are here this morning and you have never heard the gospel proclaimed, hear me now.
Christ gave himself to pay the penalty for our sins.
Paul does not say: “He was taken.”
He says: “He gave himself.”
That means the cross was not forced upon Him.
It was voluntary.
He wasn’t a victim.
He was a substitute for you.
And you need a substitute because the debt you owed was not something you could just chip away at. It was infinite. It was eternal. It was beyond your ability to fix.
Christ gave Himself for our sins—or on behalf of our sins—as a substitute.
One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is 2 Corinthians 5:21 which says,
“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
That is what theologians call the great exchange.
That is what Paul means by justification.
God counts Christ’s righteousness as yours when you trust in Him.
This is Justification by Faith. This is what Galatians is all about.
You see, when Christ was on this earth, he lived a perfect, sinless life under the Covenant of Works. This is what God requires from all of us but we have a disadvantage that makes this impossible. All of us are born in sin because of the sin committed by our first parents Adam and Eve. We inherited it. But we don’t just inherit it. We choose it.
We are born sinners and we choose sin every single day.
But God loved you so much that he sent his own Son to live the life you were supposed to live. And then on the Cross, Christ died the death that you were supposed to.
And when we place our faith in Christ, he takes our sin and gives us his righteousness. So that perfect, sinless life that Christ lived is credited to us when we repent of our sin and place our faith in him. That is Just Justification by Faith.
Christ didn’t just bring your account to zero.
He credited His perfect righteousness to you.
You are not merely forgiven.
You are declared righteous.
What all this means is your sin is not too great to be forgiven. Your sin is great but Christ is greater.
Your past is not too dark. Christ offers to bring you into the light forever.
Your guilt is not too heavy. Christ can carry that for you.
If you will turn from trusting yourself
and place your faith in Christ alone,
you can be forgiven.
You can be reconciled.
You can have peace with God.
Not because you earned it.
But because He gave Himself.
PAUSE
What Paul is saying is that Christ gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age.
Biblically speaking, there are two ages.
There is this present age — marked by sin, death, rebellion, and corruption.
And there is the age to come — when Christ returns, when righteousness reigns, when the kingdom is fully visible.
But here’s what is amazing.
When you believe the gospel, you are not just forgiven.
You are transferred.
You are brought out of the dominion of this present evil age and made a citizen of the age to come.
You are still here physically.
But spiritually, everything has changed.
Your allegiance has changed.
Your identity has changed.
Your kingdom has changed.
And as a deposit — as a guarantee that the age to come is truly coming — God gives us the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is the down payment of our future inheritance.
He teaches us how to live as citizens of the kingdom of God even while we still live in this broken world.
For Christians, there is an overlap between the ages.
This is what theologians call the “Already and Not Yet.”
The kingdom has already broken in.
But it has not yet been fully revealed.
We are already rescued.
But we are not yet home.
This gospel has one appropriate response. And that is worship.
Verse 5,
to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Now, let me ask you something church. If Christ delivered you out of this present evil age… If Christ has paid for all your sins and has given you his righteousness…
Why would you want to go back?
Why would you want to return to slavery?
Why would you want to place yourself under the bondage of law-keeping as the basis of your standing before God?
That sounds foolish doesn’t it?
But this is exactly what happens all the time.
The gospel is that we are saved by grace. We believe that we are saved by grace but then we try to sustain our salvation with effort.
We begin by trusting Christ and then we slowly shift to trusting our performance.
We sing about grace on Sunday…
And then we measure our standing with God on Monday by how well we did.
That is what was happening in Galatia.
They weren’t rejecting Christ.
They were supplementing Him with something else.
They weren’t denying grace.
But they were undermining it.
And Paul says — that’s not a small shift.
That’s a different gospel.
This is why Paul is defending the gospel.
And this is the second thing for you this morning,
The Gospel Defended (vv. 6-9)
The Gospel Defended (vv. 6-9)
Verse 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—
Paul doesn’t say, “I’m mildly concerned.” He says, “I am astonished.”
He cannot believe what he is hearing.
Paul is stunned that these believers are moving away from the gospel so quickly. And notice, he doesn’t say, “You’re confused.” He says, “You are deserting.”
That’s pretty strong language. This word, deserting, was used of soldiers defecting in the middle of battle. It’s betrayal.
And then notice who they are deserting.
Not Paul.
Not a theological system.
“Him who called you in the grace of Christ.”
To abandon the gospel is to abandon the God who called you.
That’s heavy. This isn’t just about doctrinal precision. This is relational.
To turn from grace to works is to turn from the One who saved you. And church, this is not just a first-century problem.
In our Wednesday night group this past week, we talked about something called “functional gospels.” Every one of us says we believe the gospel.
But the real question is:
What are you functionally trusting in?
John Calvin said, “The human heart is a perpetual idol factory.”
What he meant is this: We were created to worship. We were created to trust.
The problem is not that we have faith.
The problem is that we put our faith in the wrong things. And idols today don’t look like little statues carved from stone. They are more subtle. An idol is anything you look to for ultimate security. Anything you look to for identity. Anything you look to for righteousness.
Anything you look to and say,
“If I have this, I’m okay.”
And that’s where false gospels creep in.
It could be control. Maybe you feel like if you can just control everything — your home, your job, your church — then you’ll be secure.
It could be financial success.
If I just make enough…
If I just climb high enough…Then I’ll be at peace.
It could be reputation.
It could be theological knowledge.
It could even be religious performance.
And here’s the danger:
When we trust those things functionally, we are preaching a different gospel with our lives.
Because we are essentially saying, “This is what makes me okay. This is what makes me righteous. This is what makes me acceptable.”
In places like the Bible Belt — in churches like ours — the danger is not usually outright denial of Jesus.
The danger is moralism.
It’s subtle.
It’s the slow drift from “Christ is enough” to “Christ plus being a good person.”
We don’t usually say, “You must be circumcised.”
But we might say — without realizing it —
You need to clean yourself up.
You need to act right.
You need to vote right.
You need to raise your kids right.
You need to look like you have it together.
And slowly, Christianity becomes more about behavior modification instead of heart transformation.
Moralism says, “Be good enough and God will accept you.” But that is not the gospel!
The gospel says, “God has accepted you in Christ, now you can grow in godliness and in good works.”
We are not saved, we are not justified by our works or how good we are. That is a distortion of the only true gospel.
And this is what Paul says next in verse 7,
not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.
In verse 7, Paul gives us the diagnosis but in verses 8 and 9, he gives us the weight of this issue. He says that there are those within the church that are preaching this false gospel and are causing these young believers to drift into a false gospel. And that is a heavy thing.
Paul says, “Let him be accursed.” The greek word is anathema.
That means under the judgment of God.
That is not just disagreeing with them. He says that they are under eternal judgment.
Church, this is a big deal. We have to defend the true gospel—the gospel that we received from Christ through the Apostolic witness, the Scriptures.
Why?
Because eternity is at stake. When we believe in and teach a false gospel, knowingly or unknowingly, we are placing ourselves and others in eternal danger. But not only that but we are pointing people to something that cannot justify them.
There is only one gospel.
One.
And Paul repeats the warning twice so that no one misses it.
Even if we.
Even if an angel.
Even if a respected teacher.
Even if a church leader.
If the message shifts your trust away from Christ alone , it is not the gospel.
And we must not receive it.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Church, we are called to believe in one gospel. And that one gospel is what made us a people. It is the reason that we gather in this place week after week.
The good news is this:
The true gospel is still true.
Christ gave Himself for our sins.
To rescue us from this present evil age.
According to the will of our God and Father.
So cling to Him.
Stand firm in Him.
Boast only in Him.
Luther
Luther
Last week, I mentioned Luther standing before the emperor and church council at the Diet of Worms.
Do you remember why he was there?
Because he had come under the conviction that the church had drifted.
The church was teaching something that sounded close — but wasn’t the gospel of this book.
They were preaching indulgences.
Their message was:
“Yes, Christ saves… but you must also pay.”
“You must also do penance.”
“You must also contribute your works.”
That’s Galatians in real time.
That’s Christ plus something else.
And Luther saw it clearly.
As he taught through the Psalms, Romans, and the Letter to the Galatians, he became convinced that justification is by faith alone in Christ alone.
So when the emperor demanded he recant — to soften his language, to adjust his theology — Luther refused.
He said,
“My conscience is captive to the Word of God… I cannot and will not recant… Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me.”
Why?
Because the gospel was at stake.
Church, Luther wasn’t trying to be rebellious. He wasn’t trying to be dramatic. He was trying to be faithful.
When the gospel is distorted, faithfulness requires clarity.
And we are called to that same kind of clarity.
Not arrogance.
Not hostility.
Not culture-war aggression.
But conviction.
Because there is only one gospel.
And eternity is at stake.
Response
Response
So before we leave this text, let me ask you something.
Are you functionally trusting in something other than Christ alone?
Are you measuring your standing with God by your performance instead of His finished work?
Do you find yourself constantly wondering if you’ve done enough?
Do you struggle with assurance?
If you feel like you are always on probation with God…
If you feel like you must prove yourself over and over again…
If you feel like peace only comes when you’ve had a “good” spiritual week…
That is not the voice of the true gospel.
The true gospel says:
Christ gave Himself for your sins.
He rescued you.
He accomplished it.
It is finished.
There is only one gospel.
Christ plus nothing.
Grace plus nothing.
Faith plus nothing.
And that is enough.
So cling to Him.
Stand firm in Him.
Rest in Him.
Because if Christ has given Himself for you, you do not need to add anything to what He has already completed.
Let’s go ahead and stand and pray about it.
