Galatians 1:6-10

6 "I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7 "not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 "As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him! 10 "For am I now trying to persuade people, or God? Or am I striving to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” ()

The Apostle opens up this letter in astonishment. He is amazed!

What is he amazed at in v6? “so quickly turning away from Him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel”

So there was good reason for Paul’s urgency. He was facing a crisis.

It goes down like this:

A messenger had brought him a letter or report about the churches in Galatia.

The word was that the Galatians were adding the law of Moses to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This was the teaching of the Judaizers, the Jewish-Christian legalists who came from Jerusalem

to do follow-up on Paul’s evangelism.

They wanted to make Gentiles become Jews before they could become Christians.

They wanted to add works of the law on top of faith in Jesus Christ as the basis for salvation.

No sooner did Paul hear this than he started composing his response.

We can imagine how he did it, grabbing a parchment, slamming an inkwell on his desk, and calling for his secretary.

As he paced back and forth in his chamber, he dictated his letter in short, angry outbursts: “Paul … apostle … I’m surprised at you!”

He’s afraid that they are abandoning the Christian faith.

The word “turning away” means deserting.

In the military context this would be a deserter, traitor, turncoat.

Judaizers came. In no time at all, the church was giving up the gospel. How fickle!

Yet this is a reminder how easy it is to fall away unless we are kept safe by God’s grace.

The apostle was going through what Moses went through when he came down from Mount Sinai

to find God’s people worshiping the golden calf.

The great prophet had been up with God having the ultimate mountaintop experience.

Remember that? Turn to Exodus

7 "The Lord spoke to Moses: “Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly. 8 "They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them; they have made for themselves an image of a calf. They have bowed down to it, sacrificed to it, and said, ‘Israel, these are your gods, who brought you up from the land of Egypt.’ ”” ()

Paul was as angry as Moses had been. Only instead of throwing down stone tablets,

he tried to get in touch with the Galatians before it was too late.

His letter shows the urgency of a man who is trying to stop a disaster before any more damage can be done.

The gospel—this is what the Galatians were giving up. To use the proper term for it, they were “apostatizing.”

They were abandoning the good news about the cross and the empty tomb.

The good news of God’s grace is his unmerited favor for undeserving sinners.

The gospel proclaims that Jesus Christ died and rose again to save us from sin.

When the Galatians turned away from this gracious gospel, they were not just adopting a new philosophical position.

They were not simply trading one set of ideas for another.

No, Paul said to them, “you are so quickly deserting him who called you” (), meaning God himself.

This put their betrayal in personal terms.

They could not give up the gospel without giving up God Himself.

The Galatians were turning away from God and his gospel of free grace.

This was the problem, and Paul went on to identify its cause: 7 "not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” ()

Throughout this letter Paul addresses the Galatians directly, calling them “you.”

But when he refers to the teachers of the other gospel, he refers to them as “they.”

Whoever they were, they were causing a disturbance in the church.

They were creating turmoil. They were “troubling” the Galatians ().

These people were agitators. Since they were stirring up trouble, the best term for them is “troublemakers.”

Many things can disturb the peace of the church, but these troublemakers were doing the most disturbing thing of all.

The church’s greatest troublemakers (now as then) are not those outside

who oppose,

ridicule and

persecute it,

but those inside who try to change the gospel.

This is what the Judaizers were doing. They wanted “to distort the gospel of Christ” ().

They were distorting things. They were taking sound theology and twisting it.

Remember that the people who came to the Galatians with this “other gospel” were baptized members of the Christian church.

Their teaching started something like this:

“We believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

He is the Messiah, the chosen one of Israel, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead.

You must repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ to be saved.”

The teachers who were getting Paul all hot and bothered were using the same terminology that he used.

They were preaching salvation in Christ. All they wanted to do was take it a little further.

The Judaizers wanted to add something to Paul’s gospel of free grace.

“Yes, yes, what Paul preaches is fine,” they said, “as far as it goes.

But we’ve been worshiping God for a long time, a lot longer than you Gentiles. In fact, we’ve been keeping the law of Moses for over a thousand years.

And you know what Jesus said? He said that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

If you want the full gospel, you need to be circumcised in order to get it.

This is what Gentiles have always had to do to become part of God’s people.”

What could be more reasonable?

If you had gone to church in Iconium, or Lystra, would you have been able to get the gospel right side up?

Modern Gospels

More importantly, can you distinguish between the true gospel and all the false gospels in the contemporary church?

We worship in a church of many gospels.

There is the gospel of material prosperity, which teaches that Jesus is the way to financial gain.

There is the gospel of family values, which teaches that Jesus is the way to a happy home.

There is the gospel of the self, which teaches that Jesus is the way to personal fulfillment.

There is the gospel of religious tradition, which teaches that Jesus is the way to respectability.

There is the gospel of morality, which teaches that Jesus is the way to be a good person.

What makes these other gospels so dangerous is that the things they offer are all beneficial.

It is good

to be prosperous,

to have a happy home, and

to be well behaved.

Yet as good as all these things are, they are not the good news.

When they become for us a sort of gospel, then we are in danger

of turning away from the only gospel there is.

What might our evangelicalism, without the evangel, look like?

We would have to replace the centrality of the gospel with something else, naturally.

So what might take the place of the gospel in our

sermons and

books and

cd’s and

Sunday school classes and

home Bible studies and, above all,

in our hearts?

• “a passionate devotion to the pro-life cause”

• “a drive toward church growth”

• “a deep concern for the institution of the family”

• “a clever appeal to consumerism by offering a sort of cost-free Christianity Lite”

• “a sympathetic, empathetic, thickly-honeyed cultivation of interpersonal relationships”

• “a determination to take America back to its Christian roots through political power”

• “a warm affirmation of self-esteem”

In other words, the church without the gospel would look very much the way the evangelical church looks at this very moment.

We cannot simply assume that we have the gospel.

Unless we keep the gospel at the center of the church, we are always in danger of

shoving it off to one side and letting something else take its place.

The church’s greatest danger is not the anti-gospel outside the church;

it is the counterfeit gospel inside the church.

The Judaizers did not walk around Antioch wearing T-shirts that said, “Hug me, I’m a false apostle.”

What made them so dangerous was that they knew how to talk the way Christians talk.

They used all the right terminology.

They talked about how they “got saved.”

They told people to “trust in Christ.” They “presented the gospel.”

Only they did not have the gospel after all.

We should expect, therefore, that the most serious threat to the one true gospel is

something that is also called the gospel.

The most dangerous teachers are the ones who preach a different Christ but still call him “Jesus.”