02 How to Recognize the True Gospel (Galatians 1:1-10)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we're starting the Book of Galatians, and we'll be studying chapter 1, verses 1 through 10. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, and you can also find them by going directly to Wednesdayintheword.com slash Galatians 2. Thank you for downloading the podcast. Let's get started. Last week we began a study of the book of Galatians, just looking at the background for the letter. We talked about who Paul was and how he knew the churches in Galatia. And just to review briefly, the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to the churches that he founded during his first missionary journey in what is today modern Turkey. He wrote the letter around 49 AD. This is about 15 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it's been maybe a year since he founded the churches. In the time since he left, some Jewish believers from Jerusalem have traveled to these churches and they begin teaching that believing in Jesus is good, it's a good first step, but it's not enough. They think that Paul got the gospel wrong and they want to set the Galatian churches straight. So while they do embrace Jesus as the Messiah, they think to be fully Christian, all believers must keep the law and live like Jews. We call this group the Judaizers. Paul writes this letter in response to that teaching. He's writing to correct that view that it's necessary to keep the law, and he's encouraging the churches in Galatia to continue to follow the gospel that he taught them. We're going to start with the greeting in the first five verses of chapter one. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. This is a letter, we call them epistles. Just like our letters today, they have a certain format. Today when we write a letter, we begin, dear recipient, then we include the body of the letter, and then we end sincerely the author. Well, in Paul's day, the formula for a letter was to identify the author first. So the first thing is who wrote it, then who it was written to, so we get the author and then the recipients, then there's a greeting. Paul typically includes a prayer after that greeting and then he gets to the body of the letter. Well, in our formula, dear and sincerely don't really mean much to us, but Paul tends to use this formula to his advantage. In his greeting, he doesn't just say, Hi, this is Paul. He usually fills the greeting with some kind of expression of what he wants them to know or something he wants God to do for them. When he identifies himself as the author, he usually tells his readers what they need to know about him, what is important to understand about him. And when he identifies his readers, he says something about how he thinks about them, particularly their status as the people of God. Paul typically follows the greeting with a prayer for his readers, but not in Galatians. He says very little about his Galatian readers, but he says a lot about himself and the gospel he preaches, because as we'll see, that's going to be a main theme of this letter. The Galatians are turning away to a different gospel. They're rejecting Paul's authority, and Paul is writing to put a stop to that. In this section, Paul's going to introduce two major themes of the book, themes that he's going to return to throughout the letter, and those are his gospel and his authority to proclaim it. Now, Paul's going to argue there is one and only one gospel, and you can recognize it by its substance and by its source. Its substance is grace, the free, unmerited favor of God because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul is going to argue strongly that a gospel without a full understanding of the cross is not the gospel. It's a false gospel. And that's going to be a major theme we'll see in this book. You can also recognize the gospel by its source. Its source is divine revelation from God. The true gospel is the gospel preached by Jesus and his apostles. It is not a gospel that men made up. It does not come from men, it comes from God Himself. And that will be another major theme in this book. So let's walk through this greeting in pieces. Let's look at the first two verses. Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me to the churches of Galatia. Now it's quite common for Paul to start his letters by reminding his readers who he is, and here he says two important things about himself. He says he is an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he is an apostle by the will of God. The term apostle simply means one who is sent. It's derived from the secular concept of an emissary. An emissary was a representative of the king. The king would send out his emissary, and the emissary could make decisions for the king and do his will. And in this situation with the apostles, Jesus is the king, he's the one with the authority. The apostles are the ones sent out to do his will. As an apostle, then Paul has the authority to speak for Jesus. He is an emissary of Jesus because Jesus gave him the authority to speak and act on his behalf. That's what being an apostle means. An apostle has the authority to speak for and about Jesus. Now, Paul's second point is that he was given this authority by the will of God. And Paul emphasizes this a lot in his letters. He did not study and pass an exam. He wasn't elected. He didn't enlist, he didn't apply for the job, he didn't seek out this office, he didn't campaign for it. The other apostles didn't appoint him to the job. He was chosen by God to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. And he speaks primarily to the Gentiles. And he'll tell us being an apostle was not his choice. It was not his decision. The risen Jesus appeared to him and said, I've got a job for you. And as we're going to see, Paul's authority is going to be an issue in this letter. The Judaizers are challenging Paul's authority. They're saying he got it wrong. And Paul is going to defend his authority in this letter. This is also the first of many dichotomies Paul's going to introduce. You'll notice here he says his authority comes through and from God, not through and from men. And we will see the importance of divinely appointed apostleship as this letter unfolds. Most of the first two chapters are about Paul's claim to authority. And because he has this authority, we can be certain that we have a pure and trustworthy word from God. Paul defends his apostolic authority in order to defend his message. He's not trying to claim that he himself is a big deal, that he's an important person. He's claiming he has this authority because he wants to defend the gospel that he taught them. So essentially he's saying, I didn't rise up through the ranks and become an apostle. I didn't grow into the position by getting the right degrees or studying with the right scholars. I was made an apostle by God, the Father, and Jesus Christ. You can have confidence that what I say in my apostolic ministry is true because my gospel comes through and from God, not through and from humans. That has implications for us today. And if you go out searching, reading blogs and books and internet preachers, you'll find many different gospels. And sometimes you'll hear claims like this. Well, Paul was a first century witness to Jesus. But today we are modern witnesses to Jesus. Our witness is just as good as Paul's. Paul was a product of his rather backward and unenlightened culture, but today our modern view is much more sophisticated. We have increased understanding, and so where we disagree with Paul, we can just toss him out. So this issue of Paul's authority is still a big deal today because some modern scholars assume that their authority is equal to Paul's. Paul's going to spend most of the first two chapters arguing against that idea. He claims that the apostles of Jesus were unique. They had a unique experience with the risen Lord and were given a unique authority to speak and write for him. They were inspired to accurately convey the message of Jesus and they were given a unique calling to teach it. And Paul's going to argue that no one, even an angel from heaven, has the authority to alter the gospel as Jesus revealed it to his apostles. Because no one has the right to add to it or change it in any way, the apostolic message is the only one to trust out of all the competing worldviews and philosophies. So his first point then is the apostles derived their authority from God through Christ, and because it is divinely given authority, we can trust it. Now Paul says something else in this greeting that's going to become an important theme in the letter. Let's look at the next three verses. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. The death and resurrection of Jesus is central to the gospel. One of the key issues that separates Paul from the Judaizers is their view of the cross. The cross transforms our understanding. Jesus is central to the plan of God. The Mosaic covenant no longer has the central place. Jesus is not a nice addition to the law. He fulfills the law and completes it. He died and was raised from the dead to bring about our justification. Through the resurrection, God revealed his plan in a new and profound way. So the law had its place, but now that we've seen the cross, we have a better understanding of what God is doing, and Paul's going to explain that later in the letter. He's going to explain what the role of the law was and the central importance of the cross. In 1.4, then Paul emphasizes this idea that Christ's death was for the purpose of delivering us from our sins just as God planned. Christ's death was not primarily a display of love, though it was that, it was primarily a sin offering, a unique sacrifice by which our sins could be forgiven and we could be reconciled to God. Christ's death rescued us from the present evil age, and I think he means by that our bondage to sin. The word deliver in verse 4 can also be translated rescue. It's a term used to refer to the Exodus, the rescue of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In Acts 12, it's used of Peter's rescue from prison. And in Acts 23, it's used with reference to Paul's escape from a mob who wanted to lynch him. This use in Galatians is one of the few times we see it used metaphorically in the New Testament. And here I think the point is Christ's death rescued us from our sins in this present evil age, so that we might have eternal life in the age to come. And this is a theme that Paul's going to develop in the letter. Grace, peace, and rescue from sin is essentially the gospel message that Paul preached to the Galatians, and it's the message he's going to defend in the rest of his letter. As we talked about in the last podcast, we human beings have two big problems that the gospel solves. First, we are guilty before God, and one day we will face him in judgment. Left to ourselves, we will be condemned. Our second big problem is the reason we're guilty. We are guilty because by nature we are sinners. We have a built-in tendency toward evil. We need to be freed from that corruption. Now the gospel is incredibly good news because it solves both of those problems. Jesus solved the problem of our guilt by dying in our place on the cross. Jesus solved the problem of our corruption by reconciling us with God so that God could pour out his Spirit on us and free us from sin. We see both those ideas here in the greeting. Jesus gave himself for our sins, that solves the first problem, in order to deliver us from the present evil age, and that solves the second problem. The present evil age, I think, stands in contrast to the future age, the age of eternity with the new heavens and the new earth where there will be no evil, the age after Jesus returns to rule over creation with justice and righteousness. And we have a place in that age because of the death of Jesus, because it delivers us from our sins so that God can forgive us and it reconciles us to Him so that He can pour out His Spirit on us and free us from our corruption. And all of this happened according to the will of God. All of it was part of the divine plan from the beginning. Jesus' death on the cross was no accident of history, it was part of the plan of redemption from the beginning. Jesus' willingness to die in our place was an act of heroic obedience and profound mercy and love. And God's mercy and compassion was behind it all. So he concludes, may God's mercy be acknowledged forever. Basically, may this be understood and treasured and valued forever. Now Paul is setting up his argument. In his greeting, he's saying, I, Paul, taught you divine truth. This is not some revolutionary spin on the gospel. This is just flat out truth. He claims you can recognize the true gospel by its substance. It is centered on the cross of Christ, and its source, it was revealed by God and Jesus, not by men. And any gospel that eliminates or minimizes the cross is a false gospel. As well, any gospel created by humans is a false gospel. Now the Judaizers were making the opposite point. They came to town and said, Well, you know, what Paul taught you was all well and good, but he left some things out. He forgot to tell you that you need to be circumcised and eat kosher and keep the laws of Moses. You know, Paul's from Antioch. He's got some strange ideas out there, but we're from Jerusalem. We've got the real deal. Paul's gospel is not the complete gospel. You need to listen to us. See, Paul left some things out on purpose. He couldn't tell you all this stuff about keeping the law, or you never would have converted. But we're here now, we'll set you straight. You need to keep the covenant and live like Jews. Now, Paul's countering that with, I told you the gospel from Jesus. This is not something I invented in a coffee shop. The gospel I taught you is from Jesus himself. Critics of Paul still make this charge today. There's a whole branch of modern scholarship that claims that Paul invented Christianity and that Paul taught all kinds of stuff that Jesus never taught, and so they ignore Paul's letters and they concentrate on the gospels to find the so-called real Jesus. Well, Paul is insisting that all he has done is faithfully pass on the truth that Jesus has taught him. Now, if you've read Paul's other letters, at this point you'd expect him to go into some kind of prayer or praise or thanksgiving. And that's what he usually does. But Galatians is the only one of Paul's letters where he does not follow his greeting with a prayer or praise or thanksgiving. Instead, he basically says to the Galatians, have you lost your minds? And he launches into his defense. Let's look at six through ten. 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. 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 preach 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. For am I now seeking the approval of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. And we'll stop there. So Paul launches right in. He says, I am amazed that you are turning away to a different gospel. And I realize there are some who are confusing you, they're distorting the gospel of Christ, they seem to have education and sincerity, but they're throwing dust in your eyes. Paul is so confident that he taught them the complete gospel that he makes this kind of vow. He says, May God curse anyone who teaches a different gospel, including an angel from heaven and including me. I taught you the complete truth. I didn't modify it to seek your approval. I didn't tone it down so I could get more numbers in the door. I didn't change it in any way. And he basically says, Let me say this twice. Now Paul is not talking about how you articulate the gospel. We can explain the gospel differently to different people. And in Paul's letters, we see him doing that. For example, in Acts 17, when Paul goes to Athens, first he has to convince his audience there is one and only one God. But when he's speaking in the synagogues in a city, he doesn't have to make that point. Paul already has that common ground with them. And you'll see he'll use different metaphors or different examples depending on the audience he's speaking to. That's not the kind of thing he means here by a different gospel. The Judaizers are teaching a different set of beliefs. They have distorted the gospel. They have changed one of its core convictions. And Paul says, look, I'm shocked at what's happening in Galatia. He calls them deserters, a word which means to transfer your allegiance. It's used of soldiers who abandon their post. It's also used of people who switch sides in a political contest. And this is how Paul addresses the Galatians, and it is a serious charge. Almost every culture heaps disdain on deserters. Parents who desert their children, spouses who desert their marriages, team members who desert the team, leaders who desert their followers, soldiers who desert their unit. They are almost universally despised. I can't think of any culture that values or minimizes desertion. It's a serious high stakes charge. It's an interesting charge coming from Paul, who in other New Testament letters argues quite strongly for unity and maintaining the bond of peace. And we're going to talk about this more when we look at Paul's rebuke of Peter, but I think part of what we learn is that unity only goes so far. When the gospel itself is at stake, we must stand up and draw on the line in the sand, as Paul does here. We can disagree over what music is best or how often to serve communion, but when the message of the gospel itself is compromised, we have to take a stand. And we'll talk more about that later in the book. But notice Paul does not accuse them of deserting a political philosophy or abandoning their duty or switching sides. He does not say you deserted a theory about the truth or you've changed your religious affiliation. He says you have. Deserted God Himself. You have deserted the God who called you by the grace of Jesus Christ. They're turning to a different gospel. The true gospel is grace and peace based on the cross. We have peace with God because He willingly accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as payment for our sins. Nothing is due to our efforts. It's all based on the grace of God. A false gospel removes the cross or minimizes its effect. The Judaizers have come to town and started teaching essentially a gospel of works. They agree, well, yes, you do have to believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, but that's not enough. You also have to keep the law of Moses. In other words, you have to finish what Christ began. You start with Christ, but then you must finish what he started through your obedience to the law. So the two chief characteristics of the Judaizers here is that they are troubling the church and they are changing the gospel. Rather than producing growth and fellowship, their teaching is producing dissension and debate because they are distorting the gospel. Paul is saying, don't be deceived by that pretty package wrapped around this so-called gospel. This different gospel is no gospel at all. The so-called more sophisticated, more impressive gospel is no gospel at all. It is a distortion of the truth, and Paul is shocked that they would be deceived by it. So first we see Paul's sense of shock at their change, and then we see his very stern, powerful declaration that they are deserters, turning away from God Himself. And if that's not warning enough, now we see this third element where he says, Let me be clear, let anyone, even an angel from heaven who preaches a different gospel, be cursed. And just in case you think he was speaking out of an emotional rush or not really meaning what he says because he's all worked up, he repeats himself and says, I mean this, just to be clear. Anyone who preaches a different gospel should be cursed. Now the word he uses is the Greek word anathema. It's a word that translates the Hebrew word, which means devoted to destruction. And Paul is essentially asking for God's judgment to fall on them. Well, that raises the question: is Paul being too harsh? Is he merely lashing out against his critics and is he overdoing it? I think the universal nature of his statement clears him of that kind of charge. His judgment falls on anyone who teaches a false gospel, every teacher who distorts the truth, including an angel from heaven and Paul himself. The fact that he includes himself, I think clears him that this is some kind of personal attack, and his repetition shows that his words are deliberate. These weren't irrationally written in anger. Now notice he's not speaking these verses to the Galatians, the deserters, he's speaking against the false teachers. So he's not judging the deceived, he is judging the deceivers. He is speaking to those leaders who know what they're doing, those who have thought about and studied the issues, who have had every opportunity to believe the real gospel, who are clear about the stakes involved, and yet make the choice to believe and teach a false gospel and to try to ruin the gospel for others. And he's saying no matter who these teachers are, whatever their names, whatever their degrees, their backgrounds, no matter which seminary they attended, no matter how many PhDs they have, if they deny the finished work of the cross of Jesus Christ, Paul says, Let them be cursed, let them fall into the wrath of God. This is not an emotional outburst, it's not a personal attack, this is not judgment on those who have been deceived by false doctrine. This is calling for judgment on those who with knowledge and understanding distort the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now that suggests to us that there's going to be more distortions of the gospel. I think Paul knows the Judaizers aren't going to be the last group to try to change the gospel. And throughout church history, we have seen the gospel distorted by those who claim to have had some kind of heavenly encounter or superior understanding. We could go over lots of examples, but just a couple. Joseph Smith claimed that he had an encounter with an angel named Moroni, and he claimed to have authority to preach a new gospel because of that encounter, and he founded the Mormon church. Sung Young Moon also claimed to have had a divine encounter, and that was the source of his message. And there are many others. Many, many cult leaders begin by saying, Well, God told me. Paul anticipates that and says, even if an angel from heaven teaches you a different gospel, it is wrong. Probably closer to home, how many times have we heard someone from some learned group with a whole alphabet of letters after their names claim that they have definitive new scholarship which clarifies here's what the gospel really means? And they claim their academic prowess or ecclesiastical pedigree gives them the authority to say we have this new understanding. Paul was mistaken, he didn't really know what Jesus taught, forget what the Bible says, here's the true message. And Paul is warning against that. He's saying, do not be deceived, don't be taken in by a slick new package wrapped around the gospel. It's a lie, it's a distortion. There is only one voice to listen to. There's only one voice that should arrest your attention and claim your trust, and that is the apostolic voice that proclaims the gospel of grace and peace with God through the cross of Jesus Christ. Paul closes this section with an attitude check. He says in verse 10, Do you think I'm writing these things to try to gain your approval or to gather a following? This very strong rebuke he's giving them is not a good way to win friends and influence people. Paul is saying, Look, I can't serve both God and men. I'm not trying to tickle your ears with fancy words or entertain you with stories. I am a bondservant of Christ. I serve him, I teach what he taught me to teach, and I am not out to please people. His unwillingness to say what his readers want to hear adds to his credibility. So Paul opens his letter by claiming the only voice you should listen to is the voice that carries apostolic authority. The apostolic voice is trustworthy because the message it teaches comes from God. No human being made it up. God himself is the source of the message. And the message of the apostles does not change. Not even an angel from heaven can change it. The substance of the gospel is the cross of Jesus, the source is God Himself. The gospel is reliable, it's true, it contains the words of life, and all these words will set you free. So we've seen two major themes of Galatians. That is Paul's gospel, the one true gospel, and his apostleship. The third major theme we're going to see in this letter is the freedom the gospel brings. He is going to argue later that the true gospel sets us free, free from sin, free from perfectionism, free from pleasing other people, free from law-keeping, and free from the wrath of God. So the gospel of grace and peace brings a joyous and wonderful freedom, and we'll be talking about that more as we get farther into the letter. So, what do we do with this today? Let me suggest two points of application. First, almost every false gospel denies the cross in some way. Some claim the cross wasn't necessary, others claim it was not enough. Many today claim, well, sin is not such a big deal, and therefore the cross is no big deal. And as we'll see in Galatians, the Judaizers were claiming the cross was not enough. In addition to faith in Jesus, you had to keep the law of Moses, and Paul will vehemently argue against that in this letter. Second, I think this greeting teaches us to choose the voice you listen to, and the wisest choice is the apostolic voice that teaches the gospel. How do we find that voice? How do we know what the apostles taught? We read the Bible, Bible study. The message of the gospel was recorded in the writings of the apostles and the prophets, which are all contained in Scripture. The more you know and understand what the Bible says, the more you will be able to recognize the counterfeits. People who need to recognize counterfeit money study real money over and over and over again. The more they handle the real thing, the easier it is to spot the forgery. And I think the same is true for us. The more we immerse ourselves in the Word of God, the more we study the scriptures with the goal of understanding them in context, the easier it is to spot false gospels. You've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. My mission is to explain not only what a passage means, but teach you how to figure it out. If you've been blessed by what you heard, please rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can find out more and hear all previous episodes in this series by going to WednesdayInTheWord.com. Our theme music is graciously provided by Reggie Coates. You can find his music and CDs on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word. In the meantime, I hope you find some time to visit my website, Wednesdayandheword.com, and take advantage of some of my free Bible study materials.