We begin a new series through the book of Galatians. This week we look at the important verses that begin this New Testament epistle. Paul speaks to the Galatians about his authority as an apostle. He is very clear that he speaks with the authority of God. He tells the Galatians that any gospel that adds anything to Jesus Christ is a different gospel. He pronounces a curse on any who preach such a different gospel.
Questions for Reflection:
- What are the things you have commonly seen added to the gospel to make a person "right" with God?
- What is an apostle in your understanding? Do we still have authorities like apostles in the church today?
- What does our church add to the gospel, like the Judaizers of the churches in Galatia?
- How can we preach a gospel of Jesus Christ alone and still challenge people to grow and mature in their faith?
Bob had a good, solid-sounding Mennonite last names. It was one of those names that when you first heard it you couldn’t help but jump to the conclusion that Bob was a Christian - his name was that Mennonite. Bob loved God with his whole heart. Bob believed the Bible is the Word of God. Bob seriously tried to live his life according to the call of Scripture. He was dedicated and committed to Christ. Bob was also a police officer. He didn’t really like the traditional Mennonite foods all that much. He didn’t care for frequent and large family gatherings. He didn’t speak German - either high or low.
Bob and his family attended Third Mennonite Church. They found Third Menno to be a wonderfully warm church. The people received their family and loved them and accepted them. The folks of Third Menno were people that just fit with Bob and his family. It was a beautiful time in their family, those early days at Third Menno.
Summer came to Third Mennonite Church and the usual recruitment schedule began to happen. Bob enjoyed working with young people; he often did school programs and community relations in the police force. He felt led by God to volunteer to teach the Junior High boys Sunday School class. The Sunday School superintendent was thrilled to have a police officer volunteer to teach Junior High boys. Even though the superintendent knew Bob could never bring his handcuffs and gun to teach Sunday School it was an amazing answer to prayer.
At Third Mennonite the appointment of all Sunday School teachers had to pass across the desk of the pastor for his approval. It wasn’t a bad system. It helped the pastor know who was volunteering to teach in the Sunday School. If he had any concerns he could raise them with the superintendent. It also helped him to pray for the Sunday School and it was a welcome support to the Sunday School Superintendent. When Bob’s name came across the pastor’s desk he chose to disapprove of Bob’s appointment. It just didn’t sit right with him; Bob just wasn’t the kind of man he thought should be teaching junior high boys’ Sunday School. When he was challenged on it his reasons seemed thin even to him. He said things like he wasn’t sure that a man who carried a gun as part of his job was a suitable Sunday School teacher in a Mennonite Church. The long and the short of it was the Bob wasn’t the right kind of Mennonite Christian in the eyes of the pastor of Third Mennonite Church to teach junior high boys’ Sunday School.
There’s a problem in Third Mennonite Church. Is the problem with the pastor or with Bob or with the church? Is there a book of the Bible that might help? I think there is a book of the New Testament that might help. It’s the letter that Paul wrote to the churches of Galatia. If you have your Bibles with you I would invite you to turn with me to the book of Galatians chapter 1. In the next while I want to work through some of the passages of the book of Galatians with us. It going to be a bit of a scattered series that will reach from now through till August on weekends when I’m preaching that aren’t special events like Baptism and things like that.
Galatians chapter 1 beginning with verse 1 says this,
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:
To the churches in Galatia:
There are a few things that are worth noticing in these two verses. They’re worth noticing because they set the tone for the whole book. If we catch these significant things right at the beginning we can follow that thread through the rest of the book. I’ve become more and more convinced the longer I study the letters of the New Testament that some of the most important verses to understand in a New Testament letter are the first verses.
Paul used a term to describe himself. He called himself an apostle. In the Greek this term is the second word of the book. Apostle is a term that is a good solid Christian term that we’ve probably all heard but it’s also a term whose definition we sometimes struggle to understand. What’s it mean to be an apostle? I’ve always understood an apostle to be those who were an authority like the Apostle Paul or Peter or those who began things like the early church apostles who started the church. That’s a common definition that works. This week I came upon a very interesting definition of apostle.
In the time of the book of Galatians people were used to some people just naturally being in authority over them at all times and in all settings. The term ‘apostle’ is a term that describes that kind of person. The word that’s translated from Greek to English as ‘apostle’ is a parallel term to a Hebrew term that described a personal agent or representative of the one who sent them. An apostle was a direct representation of the one who sent him to that place. The apostle was the very representation of the one who sent them. Paul and the other apostles represented Jesus to the people whom they led. Hearing from Paul, to the people of Galatia, was like hearing directly from Jesus (TNIVAC p. 48). He wasn’t just a man to them; he was Jesus’ representative.
That’s what’s behind the rest of Paul’s words in verse 1. He said he was an apostle and he clarified what that meant so that the people of Galatia would have in their minds a very clear picture of who was speaking to them. He said he was, “sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”
Make no mistake, Paul wants the people of Galatia to know that he is not speaking as a peer, he is not speaking as a friend who wants them to test and discern together if God might be saying something. He is speaking with all the authority of Almighty God and the people had better understand that right at the beginning of the book. The second word of the book of Galatians in the Greek language is the word ‘apostle’ and that’s important as we look at this book from time to time in the next number of months. This book is Paul at his authoritatively strongest. He speaks with powerful force and bluntness in this book. We need to be ready for it.
The other thing I want us to be sure to understand from these first two verses is that Paul is not writing to one church located in a city called Galatia like he did when he wrote to the church at Corinth or the church at Ephesus. Those were cities. In this book Paul is writing to a group of churches that are spread around a region of what is now the country of Turkey. Probably this letter was circulated from one church to another and was read at a gathering of that church before it was passed along to another church. In my imagination when this letter hit Galatia there was a wave that swept across the church in that region.
Let’s go on reading beginning with verse 3,
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.
Paul gave to the Galatians a blessing that is fairly standard in all the books we have that Paul wrote. He always included a blessing of grace and peace to the people to whom he is writing. In this case Paul took that time to spell out Jesus’ work on behalf of the people.
When you know what’s coming in the rest of the book these verses almost feel like the classic parental guilt trip. “After all your mother does for you how could you forget her on Mother’s Day. She was in labor for three thousand hours before you were born. Do you have any idea how painful labor and delivery is? She has wiped up more snot and puke and nasty bodily fluids that you can even imagine. She gives and gives and what kind of thanks does she get? She gets a child who forgets her on the one day of the year when at the very least she should be able to expect some sort of honor.” It’s not quite that bad but, in my cynical moments, it kind of sounds like that.
Another reason to be suspicious that something is brewing is because in all the other letters of Paul that we know about he always included a prayer of thanksgiving for the churches. When Paul wrote to the Philippians he beautiful prayer of thanksgiving when he wrote,
3I thank my God every time I remember you.
4In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy
5because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now,
6being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
In Galatians there is no prayer of thanksgiving. Scholars speculate as to why that might be. One possible reason is that Galatians is the first book we have that Paul wrote and maybe he hadn’t developed the habit of including prayers of thanksgiving at this point in his writing career. That’s possible.
Another possible reason was that when he thought about writing to the Galatians Paul could think of nothing about them in their current state for which he could be thankful. It reminds me of the story I read about Peter Marshall. Peter Marshall hated foods made out of leftover turkey. One day after thanksgiving his wife Catherine had prepared a form of turkey hash for supper. As the family sat down to supper Peter looked up to Catherine and said, “Catherine, would you say the blessing for this meal. I cannot lie to God and pretend I am thankful for this food.” Paul didn’t speak of thanksgiving for the Galatians.
All of this makes me think there must be a reason why Paul laid it on that thick and why he skipped the blessing. He’s building toward something. If you’ve read ahead in the book you know it’s a big deal. There’s a big problem in the Galatian Church. We begin to find out what it is beginning in verse 6,
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.
The people of Galatia had deserted Jesus Christ. They didn’t do it on purpose. In fact if Paul had spoken to them in a less direct way they probably would have been offended that anyone would even think they had deserted Jesus. They thought they had learned the full gospel of Jesus Christ. What had happened to them?
They had fallen in with some people that are commonly called Judaizers. What’s a Judaizer? A Judaizer is someone who believed that true Christians were Christians who in addition to having received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior also kept all the laws and rules of Judaism. In particular, as far as the Galatians were concerned, it meant that the men all needed to be circumcised and that they could only eat together with people who practiced the Jewish dietary laws. The Judaizers were legalistic. They believed you could not be accepted by God unless you also kept the Jewish laws, particularly the laws about circumcision and eating with unclean people.
It was a way for Jewish people who had become Christians to fit in both with Christians as well as with Jewish people. To them it wasn’t a big deal. Both things came from God. What could possibly be wrong with requiring that the Old Testament laws of God be obeyed by people who called themselves Children of God. It was a way to have Jesus and still fit in with Judaism.
Paul’s point, in the rest of the book, is going to be that if Jesus is enough to have peace and a right relationship with God then He’s enough. If Jesus is only enough to have peace and a right relationship with God when the social conventions of Judaism are added then He’s not enough. If the social conventions of Judaism have to be added to Jesus this is not just a fuller expression of the gospel; it’s a different gospel. Paul said to the Galatians that this other gospel - the gospel that says something must be added to Jesus - is not a gospel at all. It cannot save because only Jesus saves.
Verse 8,
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!
By Paul’s reckoning no one is allowed to preach a gospel other than the gospel that Jesus alone is enough. If they do; if he does; if an angel from the very presence of God were to preach a message other than the one that Jesus alone is the one way to have our sins forgiven and to have a right relationship with God then Paul pronounced a curse on that person. A curse that they would be condemned for all eternity. That’s what a huge deal this is to Paul - the apostle Paul, the one who speaks for God. Paul emphasized that he is an apostle and because of that he is now speaking God’s words to the people as God’s representative.
What do you think about that? I know one thing for sure our culture would hate that. In our culture, no one can say to anyone that what they believe is wrong. We’re not allowed to say that there is only one way to be right with God. We’re certainly not allowed to curse anyone who might preach a different gospel. It might in fact be named inciting hatred by some. This is big deal stuff that Paul is speaking about. What do we do with it? I think the very last thing Paul intended for us to do with these words of his is apply them to other people and other churches. I think what Paul wanted was for us to look at our own hearts and our own church to see what we are doing; what gospel do we believe?
As I thought about it this week all of us have grown up in some form of legalism - some form of Judaizing influence in our lives. I would even go so far as to say that those of you who are the youngest among us are, right now, growing up in a form of legalism - a Judaizing influence in your lives.
When I was younger I grew up in a church of wonderful, godly, Christian people. My parents are wonderful Christian parents who have lived their lives as far as they are able to God’s glory. Having said all of that I grew up in a legalistic environment. I grew up with social conventions added to the gospel. It’s maybe best expressed in a little rhyme I learned in Bible College. The rhyme says, “I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t go out with girls that do.”
Churches like ours and the one in which I grew up and Third Mennonite Church where Bob wanted to teach Sunday School all added things to the gospel. Most of those things weren’t bad either. Not smoking and not chewing tobacco are good health choices. Not drinking and becoming drunk would be a good thing for our society - the families of loved ones killed by drunk drivers would probably agree. Many of the things churches become legalistic about would yield positive results for society and would probably be good for individual Christians. But they’re not the gospel and we cannot make them the gospel. We can’ say that in order to be right with God you must have Jesus plus this law that we have devised.
When we say that we can only be right with God when we add our favorite social convention to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we’ve become Judaizers. We’ve committed the sin of the people who led astray the people of Galatia. What did Paul say should happen to them - that they would be eternally condemned. When we add something to the gospel of Jesus Christ and hint or come right out and say that this will make us more right with God we’ve created a new gospel.
We can do this with really good things. I’ve done this with spiritual disciplines. Early in my preaching career I used to commonly preach that people should read their bibles and pray more. I couldn’t miss with a sermon like that. Who of us reads our bible too much or prays too much? Nobody. Can’t miss. My fear is that I somehow conveyed that in order to be right with God, it wasn’t enough to just receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we had to read our bibles and pray ever-increasing measurable amounts. I’m afraid I implied that those who read their bibles lots were more right with God than the person for whom reading was a struggle and who didn’t read their bible much.
If you read books on growing your walk with God it’s hard not to escape the conclusion that people who fast are more right with God or they are God’s favorite kind of Christian. The same is true for people who go on silent retreats. They’re more saved than I am because the times I feel closest to God is right before someone shouts, “Turn that down; it’s way too loud!”
The Bible doesn’t say that only those who read through their bible in a year can be save or can be right with God or that they are better Christians than all the rest of us. The Bible doesn’t say that only those who fast can be saved. The Bible doesn’t say that only those who go on silent retreats can truly know God.
The problem comes when I preach and I try to persuade us to do something that I know will be good for us and I imply or come right out and teach that if we don’t do this we don’t know God or can’t have a right relationship with God. When we do that we cross the line and become Judaizers - the sin of the Galatians.
The great irony is that Grace Mennonite Church is legalistic in places. At times in our history we’ve preached a different gospel. If we haven’t preached it we lived it and expected it of the good Christians among us.
The message of the greeting that Paul wrote to the church is Galatia is that the gospel is only Jesus. The gospel is never Jesus plus something. If it becomes that it is no longer the gospel - it’s a different gospel. As a church it’s hard for us to leave the gospel that simple. It’s such a great temptation to add something to the simplicity and easiness of the gospel. It can’t be that simple but it is. Anything other than that is no longer gospel.
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