No Other Gospel

Galatians 1:6-9
Gary Wassermann | Sunday, October 08, 2023
Copyright © 2023, Gary Wassermann

We began our study of Galatians two weeks ago, and we heard first about the man sent by God, Paul.  As an apostle and a slave of Christ, he had divine authority to carry out a divine commission in preaching the gospel.  We then heard about the message he was sent to deliver.  He was not sent to do whatever he saw fit.  He was entrusted with the gospel of salvation in Christ Jesus.

Now we turn our attention to the Galatian churches and the problem that caused Paul to write this letter.  The central problem was that they were turning from the gospel they had received to something else – a perversion of the gospel.  It was billed as a way or even the way to come to God, but it was a lie.  It could not deliver on its promise.

I’m going to cover this passage under three headings.  The first is “the gospel received.”  The Galatians knew the truth, and so must we if we are to recognize error.  The second is “a substitute preferred.”  Any alternative to the gospel will not save, and it is an evil thing to prefer it.  Finally, “false teachers cursed.”  They are eternally condemned.

The gospel received

The Galatians had first received the true gospel.  Paul had come to them.  He had preached to them.  He refers to that in verses 6, 8, and 9.  We will come to the false gospel that was spreading among them, but it is only by having a clear understanding of the truth that we will be able to recognize error.  And it is only by realizing our personal interest in the truth that we will see the seriousness of error when it comes to the gospel.  So we will see three aspects of the gospel – three fundamentals, beginning with “called.”

Called

Verse 6 says: “you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ.”  Now what is this calling, and who is it that called them?  It was not Paul or any other man who called them.

Paul writes something very similar in 1 Corinthians 1:9: “God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”  God called them.  And this calling is the call of salvation.  God initiates the conversion of a person to be a Christian by calling them.

Now when we talk about the gospel call there are two kinds of calling.  One is the general call that goes out to all people.  Paul preached in Athens, “God calls all men everywhere to repent.”  Everyone who hears the gospel hears the general call, but not everyone believes.  But then there is the effectual call.  Romans 8:30 says, “those he called, he also justified.”  Everyone God called effectually believes and is justified.  This call is an authoritative call.  It is a summons compelling the sinner to come.

We have a picture of being called in the life of Abraham.  He is called the father of all believers, and in significant ways his life is a pattern for the life of every Christian.  Acts 7:2-3 says, “The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran.  ‘Leave your country and your people,’ God said, ‘and go to the land I will show you.’”

Abraham did not find his way to God.  He did not come to realize the truth of God through his meditations and philosophizing.  He was not even seeking God.  Romans 3:11 says, there is “no one who seeks God.”  What was true of Abraham is true of all of us.  God takes the initiative.  God comes seeking the sinner to call him.

Furthermore, it says the God of glory came to Abraham.  This picture is of God coming with bright light and great splendor to a land of darkness.  The region where Abraham was living was full of idolatry.  And really there is nothing unique about Abraham here.  The world is in rebellion against God, and we are by nature right at home in it, because we are sinful people.

Now God appeared to Abraham spoke to him audibly, and while that is not repeated in the life of every believer today, nevertheless there is something akin to it.  There is a reality to God intervening in the lives of people today.  How might that look?  You can sit listen to the word preached week after week and be somewhat detached from what you hear.  But when God effectually calls you, you become aware of a power.  There is something powerful dealing with you.  You are no longer just listening to a man, no longer just listen to words.  1 Thessalonians speaks about this is in 1:5: “Our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.”  There is a power when God speaks.  It is a power that raises the dead.  It is like the power of Christ’s words when he called out, “Lazarus, come out!” and the dead man lived and came out.

Furthermore when God calls you, it generally happens that you become conscious that this message is coming to you personally and directly.  We all know what it is to listen and be a spectator.  We know what it is to sit almost in judgment on the word preached and think it is very well, and it would be very good if people put it into practice.  But at some point you can no longer sit back like that, because that man is speaking to me.  That message is for me.  I am being addressed and involved.  That is the activity of God in the call.

Those who have been called do not merely hear, they are moved to action.  These Galatians were deserting the one who called them.  That means they had previously come to him.  This call is called the effectual call, and what proves that the call has been effective is what we do about it.  Nothing we do causes our salvation, but if we have been called, we will surely do certain things that are in accordance with the calling we have received.  We are persuaded of the evil of this present evil age, and we turn our backs on it and turn to Christ.  We live according to what we are called unto.

And what is this calling unto?  This call is high, holy, and heavenly.  It is to something far beyond what any creature, any mortal man could ever earn or deserve.  It is a calling unto fellowship with Jesus Christ (1 Cor 1:9), peace and fellowship with the saints (Col 3:15), holiness (1 Thess 4:7), light (1 Pet 2:9), freedom (Gal 5:13), hope (Eph 1:18), patient endurance of persecution (1 Pet 2:20), God’s kingdom and glory (1 Thess 2:12), and eternal life in glory (1 Pet 5:10).

Have you been called by God?  We must understand the gospel, but a mere intellectual understanding of it will not profit you at all.  Have you responded to God’s call?

Well now, that is the call, but how can God receive sinners like us to himself?  This is the second fundamental of the gospel.

“By the grace of Christ.”

We are sinners, all of us.  We violated God’s holy law.  We walked in darkness.  We are guilty in his sight, so if we come in as guilty offenders to God, he must punish us.  The wages of sin is death.  On what basis then can we come before God?

The answer is that God himself provided for us.  He sent his Son, the eternal second person of the Trinity.  He is the one through whom the world was created.  He has within himself the power of life and all that belongs to the self-existent God.

This Jesus was sent to be our covenant head.  That means in God’s administration he represented us, and he was qualified to do so, because he took on humanity – body and soul.  He shared every aspect of humanity with us.  He experienced weariness and hunger and thirst.  Even though he was both God and man, he walked in our position, as one who depends on God and is subject to the will of God.  He obeyed God fully to the end, until as our representative and bearing our sin, he died on the cross the death we deserve.  He rose again on the third day as our living and righteous Lord to give eternal life to all who believe in him.

So the will of God is that we put our faith in Jesus Christ, reject all that is in ourselves, and receive his own righteousness.  God accepts Jesus Christ, and if we believe in Christ, we are in Christ, and so God accepts us in him.  Indeed God love us and welcomes us just as much as he does his own Son.

Now I want you to notice the word “grace.”  Grace means free.  It is a word that is large and full with meaning, but that is an important part of it.  The full, unimpeachable righteousness of Christ is given to us freely.  This gift of righteousness does not come to the worthy or the deserving.  It comes to the most undeserving.  It comes to those who are morally bankrupt.  It comes to the worst sinners.  It comes to those who have done terrible things.  It comes to those whose hearts are filthy from sin.

God makes it a free gift because it must be a free gift.  There is nothing that any one can do to be more acceptable to God.  There is nothing we could ever give to God that God would in anyway benefit by it.  When David sought God’s favor and repented after sinning, he said in Ps 51:16, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it.”  If we try to improve on the righteousness of Christ through our own contribution, we would only mar it.  We would take what is perfect and make it imperfect, and at that point we could no longer come before God.  So salvation is by grace, and it must be by grace.

Have you received this salvation?  Have you received Christ and his righteousness and God’s gift freely given?  Put your faith in him.

The third fundamental of the gospel is:

The Scriptural foundation

The Bible and that alone is the authoritative source for the gospel.

Look at what Paul says in our text.  If anyone “should preach a gospel other than the one we preached you, let him be eternally condemned.”  Paul did not come up with his own idea.  His own way of thinking had been that he was righteous and had no need of a savior, but God revealed to him something else entirely.  The gospel Paul preached is the gospel that God revealed to him, and we know what that is because it is written down for us by Paul and the other apostles just as God wanted them to write it in the Bible.

Only God can say on what basis he will forgive us.  Only God can say how we can come to him.  And he did say in the Bible.  The gospel is not some nebulous thing.  It is not an unknowable mystery.  It is definite and articulated.

Even Christian preachers have said that people need only to know in their hearts that they need something they don’t have and turn to whatever light is available to them and they will be saved.  That is not true.  The gospel is not a feeling, and the way of salvation is not a feeling.

Neither are our feelings the judge of truth.  You may hear someone speak powerfully, persuasively, inspiringly, in a way that moves you to tears or gives you an emotional uplift.  Many cults can do that.  That is not the sign of truth.  The Bible is the standard and source of truth.  That is why we preach the Bible.  We preach the gospel because we preach the Bible, and we preach the whole gospel because we preach the Bible systematically.  We don’t just pick and choose the parts that say what we want to say.

So these are three fundamentals of the gospel.  God initiates our salvation by calling us from darkness and into his marvelous light.  We can come into the light of God’s presence not because we are fit to stand before God, but because God freely gives us the righteousness of Christ.  We know God’s plan and God’s will for our salvation through his infallible and inerrant word, the Bible.  This is not everything that can be said about the gospel, but if we are clear on these points, we are in a good position to reject false gospels.

A Substitute Preferred

What was the great trouble among the Galatian churches?  After Paul left, some teachers from Jerusalem came to these churches.  These Jewish teachers taught that Jews and Jews only were acceptable to God.  Therefore, they said, if you want to be saved, you must become a Jew.  They said, you have been taught to believe in Jesus Christ, and that is all well and good, but it is not enough.  You must make yourself presentable to God by following the rituals and ceremonies that are required of Jews.  That begins most particularly with circumcision, but it includes much more than that – certain rituals at ceremonial seasons and such.

And the Galatian Christians were listening to them.  It is almost certain that the Galatians did not formally renounce Christianity.  Heretics never come announcing themselves to be heretics, and the devil never comes displaying himself as the devil.  But the Galatians were listening to them, and by imbibing their message, they were eviscerating the gospel of Christ.

By saying that there was something they could do or something that they must do in order to make themselves worthy of salvation in God’s sight, they were rejecting Christ as being all-sufficient for them, whose righteousness they could receive freely or not at all.  That was the problem.  They did not have a different sort of gospel or a different sort of Christianity.  They had something that was different than the gospel.

This is the greatest case of subtraction by addition there is.  If you add your own deeds to the perfect sacrifice of Christ to make you worthy of salvation, then you lose Christ entirely.

There are all sorts of substitutes and perversions out there.  Even today there are those who teach that Jewish Christians are somehow superior to ordinary Christians, and they teach people to adopt the ceremonial customs of Judaism.  This is not widespread, but it is out there.

Any other teaching that says you can or you must do something to merit some favor with God is likewise a perversion of the gospel.  That is legalism.  It denies the free grace of Christ as the only way to God.

Likewise there are perversions of the gospel that deny that God’s call unto holiness.  They say the Christian is forgiven and has no expectation or obligation to live anything other than the same old sinful life.  That is called antinomianism.

Now it is not just that there is no other Christian gospel.  There is no other gospel at all.  I say this because many people today object to precisely that statement.  They say, “Why aren’t there many ways to be saved?  Why aren’t there many ways to God?”

The thinking behind that is something like this.  There are many Muslims, and some of them are quite sincere in their beliefs.  Some of them are very devout.  So also Hindus.  There are Hindus who sincerely believe in their religion and their gods, and they are very earnest about their religion.  The same is true with all sorts of other religions you may encounter.  Won’t they go to heaven too?

They question is do they tell you that the only way to come to God is through Jesus Christ?  The answer is no.  Jesus himself said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  He is the only way.  As our text this morning says, a different gospel is no gospel at all.  It will not save you.

What about the person who is not religious but tries to be a good person?  Ans: That person is still in rebellion against God, denying God his sovereignty.  He is still a slave to sin.  You cannot have any conception of who God is and suppose that such a person can come into God’s glorious presence in heaven.

The Apostle Peter declared in Acts 4:12 that “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”  Faith in Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation.  Faith in itself as a human activity is of no value with God.  Many people sincerely believe things that are wrong.  If you sincerely believe that a thread spanning a canyon will support your weight, all the belief in the world will not cause that thread to hold you.  If a person sincerely believes in a way of salvation that God has not given, God will reject both it and the one who believes it.

Now at this point some will object that it is not just fair for God not to accept many ways to him.  But again, those who say such things have no conception of who this holy and transcendent God is.  Fair is that God deals with each of us as we stand before him.  Fair is that God sends every one of us to hell as we deserve for sinning against him.

The grace of God is that he has provided a way of salvation to us.  And he did that not by allowing for an exception to his absolute justice, but by providing what cost him the most.  Jesus Christ gave his life for us.  Praise God for his immeasurable grace!

And we are concerned for those who do not believe in Christ or who have not heard about God’s gospel of salvation.  That is why we preach the gospel, again and again.  We try by every means we know to spread the word and win some over to Jesus Christ.

So there is no other gospel, but the problem is the desire of the human heart for a substitute, the preference for a perversion of some kind.  This applies to everyone, and at this point I particularly address those of you who have believed the gospel and put your faith in Christ.

Man is by nature totally depraved.  He is naturally an enemy of God.  He willingly swallows lies in order to sin and rebel, and the whole time he asserts that he will be like God.  He asserts that he is right, and he is just fine without God.

No one turns from this rebellion unless he has been born of God.  That new birth implants a new principle in the man.  He is able to confess his own sinfulness.  He is able to acknowledge the truth.  He can submit to God and give him thanks.  He has the power as God wants him to live.

And yet that right thinking and right living extend only so far as the Holy Spirit actually has control in his life.  If the Holy Spirit were to withdraw, the natural sinful desires that still remain would rise up.  The final condition of that man would be worse than the first.  This is not theory.  We know the sin that still dwells in us and how quickly we can turn to sin.

Every one of us has within us in some measure a natural preference for all sorts of evils and errors.

I am astonished at how quickly King David committed adultery and murder after having followed God so long.  I am astonished at how quickly Peter turned, in the course of one night from total certainty that he would follow Jesus to death to saying, “I don’t know the man.”  And I am astonished at how quickly the Galatians were turning from the God who called them to a perversion of the gospel which was really no gospel at all.

But there is nothing unique about these people.  We are not fundamentally different.  Learn from the Galatians how easily and quickly our own preference for some substitute gospel can rear its head within us.

Paul was not making this argument that there is no other gospel to the Athenians on Mars Hill or on an evangelistic campaign.  He wrote this to people who had believed the gospel.

Look at what the Galatians had to persuade them of the truth of the gospel.  They were taught by the Apostle Paul himself.  No one understood the gospel more clearly and was more capable of explaining it than him.  He taught the Galatians that Christ crucified was the all-sufficient Savior and that faith in him was the only way to be saved.  On top of his clarity and power in preaching, Paul worked miracles among them to prove that he was sent from God and was preaching the truth.

The Galatians for their part believed the gospel and were so delighted with it that they received the messenger as an angel of God.  If it had been possible, they would have plucked out their own eyes and given them to him.

But some time after Paul moved on, false teachers came without any convincing proof of being sent by God or of the truth of their message.  And in a short time, they effectively renounced the principles Paul had taught them and adopted a system that was fundamentally incompatible with them.

We don’t have to have questions in our mind about whether other religions are true, in order to drift back into error, into something that is no gospel at all.  Don’t drift away.

The gospel comes to sinners.  But man by nature does not want a gospel that says he is corrupt through and through.  He wants a gospel that allows him to be respectable.  Many who come to Christ do so when they are young.  They are small and have nothing.  Or they do so when their life is a mess.

As time goes on and lives under the Scriptural commands and in the company of other Christians, his life is cleaned up.  He grows.  He has connections and wealth and reputation.  He has some respect in the eyes of others, and he wants to have some respect in the eyes of God too.  He wants to say that on some level he is worthy of God because of who he is.  He is sliding into the Galatian error in a different form.

Man wants a God of the moral gaps.  He wants a gospel that saves him by grace where he needs it, but gives him credit and independence where he imagines he does not.  How can you recognize when you are thinking that way?  How can you recognize when you are taking pride before God in something about yourself?

Consider this.  People can take pride in all sorts of things.  It could be musical ability.  It could be academic ability or success.  It could be the particular field of study you have.  It could be the area where you live.  You can recognize that you are taking pride in it when you think that those other people who have that same thing true about them will have an easier time becoming Christians or they will make better Christians because of it.  No one has an advantage over anyone else before God.  All are depraved in every part and need God’s grace in every part to be saved.

Salvation is by the free grace of Christ received by faith alone from first to last.

In view of how easily influenced and led astray we are, we will now consider those who lead God’s people astray.

False teachers cursed

Now what about those who had come to the Galatian churches?  They were the ones who were perverting the gospel.  They were throwing the churches into confusion.  They were preaching a message that God did not authorize.  They were heretics and savage wolves, though they did not appear that way outwardly.  Twice Paul says that anyone who does such things will be eternally condemned.

It is the most serious evil a person can do to give people a false hope regarding salvation while leading them away from Christ.  All other crimes that can be committed against a person affect this life alone.  A murder can kill you, but he cannot harm your soul.  A thief that can leave you poor, but he is only stealing what you can’t take with you into the next life anyway.

A false pastor or a false preacher can lead many people to eternal damnation.

Jesus Christ himself pronounced the most severe judgment on such people.  In Matthew 23 he pronounced seven woes of judgment.  “Woe” means the wrath and curse of God.  The first two of those woes are against such people.  He says in Matthew 23:13-15, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces.  You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.  Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”

Again, Jesus said in Mark 9:42, “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.”  There is eternal punishment coming for anyone who leads others away from salvation in Christ.

But the message for us is not just that we may know what awaits false teachers.  The message for us is: stay away from them.  The word used twice in this text is “anathema.”  This word is used in the Septuagint to describe what was devoted to God for destruction.  God commanded his people to have nothing to do with them.  Deuteronomy 7:26 says, “Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you, like it, will be set apart for destruction – anathema. Utterly abhor and detest it, for it is set apart for destruction – anathema.”

When God sent the Israelites to conquer Jericho, he told them in Joshua 6:17 “The city and all that is in it are to be devoted – anathema – to the Lord.”  When the time for conquest came, most of the Israelites heeded God’s command, but one man, Achan did not.  He took for himself into his tent some silver, some gold, and some find garments.  He thought he could hide it from God.  But God sees all things.  God singled Achan out from among all the Israelites, and at God’s command he and all he had were stoned to death and burned.

That is what God is saying about false teachers.  Don’t go near them.  The church has a responsibility to cast them out.  They are harmful and destructive in the most serious matters.

Each of us individually has the same responsibility.  The internet especially is a means for people to communicate with you, provided you click on their links or listen to their podcast or sermons or read their blog.  If there is anyone who is teaching a false gospel, have nothing to do with them.  Treat them like the gold and silver of Jericho.  Don’t have any contact with them.

So by way of application:

1. Be clear about the gospel. The gospel is not an experience. It is not an emotion.  It is not a state of mind.  The Bible is written down for us in plain language so that we can understand it.  Major on the majors.  God calls us from the darkness of sin and alienation into the light of holiness and fellowship with him.  We are qualified to come into the light through the grace of Jesus Christ alone, and we receive that grace by faith in him.
2. Believe the gospel. Put your faith in Christ. The reason that substitutes and perversions of the gospel are so serious is that there is only one way of escape from the wrath of God.  There is only one way to eternal glory and that is through faith in Jesus Christ.  This is the one thing that matters.  It matters eternally and you have today to settle it.  Don’t delay to another time.
3. Hold to the gospel. I address this to those who have believed the gospel. This is a serious issue.  If anyone thinks he stands he should be careful lest he fall.  We all are prone to drift off into wrong ideas we used to hold or new errors that look attractive.  We all have a vested interest in some system that allows us to sin or some system that allows us to take pride in ourselves.  So watch your life and doctrine closely.  Renew your mind through daily, focused reading of the Bible.  And stay near to your pastor.  One of the purposes for which God gave pastors is, as we read in Ephesians 4, to teach the faith and the knowledge of God, so that we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.  The pastor’s ministry will keep you in the truth.  Don’t tire of hearing the old gospel from the Bible.  It may not be new, but it will bring you to glory.