Galatians 1:1-9

1Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2and all the brothers with me,

To the churches in Galatia:

3Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.No Other Gospel

No Other Gospel

6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!



Dig Deeper

When I coached high school basketball at an inner city school in Milwaukee we always had an issue with many, if not most, of the basketball players also being associated with one gang or another. There was one year in particular when our team was dominated by two gangs. The numbers were almost split down the middle between Latin Kings and Black Gangster Disciples. As the coach, I spent an incredible amount of time working on their unity. At every opportunity, we taught them that they had committed to play basketball and their commitment to the team outweighed any gang associations they might have. It took awhile but the message worked and they became quite unified, overcoming the fact that they should have been enemies. Imagine though, if I had accomplished all of that and then left them for a few months, during which time, some other coach came in and segregated the team based on gang ties. What if they told them that I didn’t know what I was doing and that their gangs really did matter and really were more important than team? This would undo everything that we had taught them and would have destroyed the incredible team that had been built.

This is something of the situation that was happening in the churches of Galatia as Paul writes his letter. Paul had preached the gospel and planted the Galatian churches in an area that was mixed with both Jews and Gentiles. He had spent a great deal of time, presumably, teaching them that all that truly mattered was that they were in Christ, that any previous distinctions such as Jew and Gentile did not take supremacy over their position in Christ. Paul had built a beautiful building of unity on the foundation of Christ and had moved on to start more churches. In his absence, however, some ultra-conservative Jews from Jerusalem had come to town claiming they were sent by the church there but apparently were not (Acts 15:24). They swept into town with the message that Paul was confused and didn’t have authorization from the real authorities to do what he was doing. Rather than all racial and other distinctions being superceded by the supremacy of their status in Christ, these teachers claimed that non-Jews must first become full Jews, following all the laws of Moses including circumcision.

Paul had taught the Christians in Galatia that the true creator of the universe had finally revealed His long-promised plan to deal with evil in the world. He had done it through a seemingly ordinary Jew named Jesus. Jesus had faced evil’s most powerful weapon, death, and had walked out the other side. This resurrection meant that God had fulfilled His promises and was now building a new a family, a new people of God. This new family was one without divisions and without race. All were welcome and equal at this table. Paul laid the foundation for this family and then moved on but these men from Jerusalem had come in and said that he didn’t know what he was doing. He was not a real apostle, they said. He’d gotten his strange ideas by mucking up what other people had taught him. He got his so-called position of apostleship from other people, not from Jesus himself. They, on the other hand, claimed to have been sent by the real authorities, the real apostles in Jerusalem, and so were the bearers of the real gospel. They taught the young Galatian Christians that in order to be a part of the real family of God that they had to enter in through circumcision and the laws of Moses rather than entering in through Christ. If they wanted to be a part of God’s family, they needed to keep the law, the thing that kept the Jews and the Gentiles neatly divided and separated.

Thus, as Paul begins his letter, he stresses that he is an apostle but that his authority does not come from man, it does indeed come from Jesus. Ultimately, his apostleship comes from God the Father. We can see within this opening greeting that Paul does two things in particular when it comes to talking about God. First, he inextricably links Jesus and the Father together. Whatever is true of one is true of the other. They always act and are described in perfect unity. The other is that he follows a very Jewish practice of describing Jesus and the Father by their actions. Thus, who is the Father? The One who raised him from the dead. Who is Jesus Christ, the One who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present age. Paul is thus reminding them that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Father has made available the life of the age to come.

After the standard greeting, Paul normally moves into some prayer or commendation for the local church, but in this letter he is so shocked there is no time for that. Paul is astonished, not that they have slowly drifted off or been persuaded, but that they have willingly deserted the true gospel. They hadn’t even put up a fight but had, apparently, embraced this new gospel with blinding speed. In doing so, they had not simply abandoned some theoretical theological position, but had deserted a personal, loving God, the one who called them by the grace of Christ. By not teaching that the gospel is about entering into the life of the Messiah and becoming one family, the new people of God, Paul says that these men are not just perverting the gospel but twisting it to such a point that it is no gospel (good news) at all.

Paul makes it clear in verse 8 that the status or reputation of the messenger does not validate the message. It is the message that validates the messenger. In other words, it doesn’t matter how impressive or authoritative the speaker might be, if they are not speaking the true gospel, then they need to be rejected. That means even if an angel preached a different gospel, they should be rejected. In bringing up angels in this instance, Paul is probably referring to the Jewish belief that the Mosaic law had been delivered through angelic mediators (based on a particular reading of Psalm 68:17). It is quite possible that these Jerusalem teachers had stressed the importance of following the law by stressing its angelic, and thus heavenly origins. But Paul wants them to know better. They have allowed their itching ears to be scratched by this false gospel (2 Tim. 4:3) because they valued the messenger over the message. Paul warns them against this even when it comes to him. The messenger is unimportant but the message cannot be changed. If anyone, says Paul, preaches a different message than the true gospel, then let him be eternally a curse before God.



Devotional Thought

Paul worked hard to build a single family of people that had entered into the life of Jesus and left behind any human and social distinctions. This is as much a challenge for us today as it was in Paul’s day. Has your community of disciples truly embraced that and become a single family of believers? If not, what can you do to embrace that vision?