For our scripture this morning, we continue with the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, beginning in verse 6.
Paul writes, “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 who 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 preached 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 man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, you have given us your word as a guide, as a rule, as the means by which we may hear and know your gospel. Give us wisdom, give us discernment and understanding to know the true gospel from the false, and let us know the good from the evil and keep and follow in your way alone now and forever. Amen.
So today, we discover the core reason which prompted Paul to write his letter to the churches of Galatia: apostasy. Members of the church falling away from the faith because they were being led astray by false teachers. Paul wrote because he was concerned for them and so for us as well—for our steadfastness in the way, for the strength of our faith in Christ Jesus alone, for our very salvation, for our perseverance unto the end of life’s race.
This letter is not concerning Paul’s legacy or even about the Galatians’ memory of him, but was entirely concerning the true message of Christ, theirs and our continued belief in God’s gospel.
Now, last week we spent a lot of time defining and trying to understand just exactly what the gospel message is: that the Lord Jesus 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.
We studied this so that now we may better understand Paul’s astonishment at what happened so soon after he had left these churches. The issues which tempted them to deviate from faithful Christian orthodoxy and the other particular current concerns which Paul will be raising and arguing against throughout this letter are very similar in content and scope to the Jerusalem council as recorded in Acts chapter 15.
Actually, they so clearly have the same root and core problem as was addressed in Jerusalem that Paul’s stated reason for his letter provides us the best circumstantial evidence in favor of the early composition of this letter sometime in the late 40s A.D., shortly after Paul’s first missionary journey.
See, from Acts 15, we learn that the Jerusalem council debated issues of significant concern for Gentile believers in Christ, impacting their relation to and adherence to the Law of Moses, the Torah. This council made certain pronouncements and decisions which received widespread public distribution. So Paul is arguing here in this letter against a party of legalistic Judaizers—those false teachers and so-called apostles who were trying to enforce the application of and adherence to the whole Law of Moses unto Gentile Christians. Those who were effectively teaching that one must first become a Jew before one could become a Christian.
Therefore, if this letter were written following the council, then it should at minimum reference the council as being a source and/or authority in the matter. So it is more highly likely that the issues the Galatians were facing were an integral part of what precipitated the council’s formation, along with the problem in Syrian Antioch, making this a very early writing.
Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians for two primary reasons. He had heard reports that there were Galatian Christians turning away from God’s gospel truth, and he was wanting to encourage them to be faithful and steadfast. Second, he had heard that their reason for turning away was because of some false teachers offering them immediate and apparent benefits or comforts in human approval which do not satisfy the soul, instead of the eternal benefits found in getting to please and glorify our heavenly Father and King. He who loved us before we loved him, because he has saved us.
Paul writes about how astonished he is that they would desert and abandon the good news of God for some other kind of good news. He firmly denies that there is any other gospel at all and assumes on their part that they must have only perceived it to be good or better. But because of these false apostles’ persuasion otherwise, they would never have considered it to be an alternative.
Please notice that here Paul does not berate or condemn the Galatians for this, their hopefully temporary apostasy. Instead, he graciously considers them to have only been misled and deceived, like Eve was in the garden when she saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was to be desired to make one wise. So she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Paul does not consider the Galatians to be irredeemable, always keeping open the possibility for their repentance, forgiveness, and restoration in Christ. He wanted them to return to the state of faithfulness. Paul does not blame the Galatians; no, he ascribes all of the blame and reserves his full antipathy for these false teachers, these Judaizers—those who troubled the Galatians and who seek to distort the gospel.
And so we should do likewise. We must pity those people who are sadly led astray, praying for their eyes to be opened in time before it is too late, and for their eventual restoration to the truth of Christ in faith.
Even for those nominal Christians who should know better, who may have been raised up in the faith and who might fall away from Christ into entirely different religions, or who are drawn in by some false doctrine that is preached within the midst of the body of Christ, because Jesus himself warned us that this would happen. He said, “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”
For those who appear to be lost to us, there always remains a hope—a hope for them that during their lives, because none of the sovereign Lord’s elect can ever be lost. We never know when Christ may just call them back to himself.
However, this same charity of assuming their gracious intent should not be reserved for the false teachers, for the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are very much known by their fruits and who will be judged by and may be recognized by us according to the rule of sacred scripture. They must be avoided and warned against. Even still, we must continue to pray for them and their salvation, just as we would for any other seemingly lost soul.
Even still, we must love them despite them currently being the enemies of Christ, despite them being our enemy in faith, for they are still made in the image of God and are therefore deserving of the same care, consideration, and respect as any other human person. Paul was changed, and so they might be as well.
However, we may and should call attention to their errors and falsity, both for their own sake and for others. Paul writes, “But if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” For truly it is their false gospels and heretical doctrines that are accursed.
It is because of their willful persistence in this falsity—by their fervent and intentional proclamation and promulgation of heresy. For the shortest, truest definition of heresy is anything at all which detracts, damages, alters, or removes something from the essential doctrines of faith, like the simplicity of our salvation being by God’s graciously given faith in Jesus Christ alone.
And it is their unrepentant nature or choice that makes them to be accursed. But what does Paul mean when he says for someone to be accursed? Or as the NIV puts it, to be under God’s curse? The word he uses here is anathema—a now religious-sounding word which has been imported into English. It has historically been understood as excommunication with curses, hence a curse or denunciation by ecclesiastical authority accompanying excommunication.
This excommunication was practiced in the ancient churches against notorious offenders where all churches were warned not to receive them. All magistrates and private persons were admonished not to harbor or maintain them, and priests were enjoined not to converse with them or attend their funeral. However, even that use—which comes from the old Webster’s Dictionary—has been abused historically by some Christians and denominations.
Like the Amish practice of shunning, the French Wars of Religion, or even the Scottish Jacobite risings between Protestants and Catholics—all of these conflicts—have more mild definitions than what Paul intends here when he calls them anathema.
Paul, the good rabbinical student who is so familiar with the scriptures, particularly the Greek translation, knew that to be declared anathema was to be devoted to destruction at the Lord’s sole sovereign decree, like the ancient Hebrew haram. This is very different from the more common practices of church discipline, including excommunication, which possess within them a hope for future restoration upon their repentance and correction.
Haram meant to be put under the ban. This was the divine decree which the Israelites, when led by Joshua, were to do to the many Canaanite cities, people and their property as they took possession of the promised land. These things which the Lord declared to be haram and anathema were to be devoted to absolute destruction: men, women, children, animals, goods, cities, and their idols.
This was the divine punishment for their wickedness and sin, for their idolatry and disbelief, for their unnatural works, disobedience, and unwillingness to acknowledge that the Lord is God alone.
Now, we must tread carefully here, for the declaration of haram and anathema truly is not the providence of man but is solely the prerogative of the Lord. It is not for any of us to declare a person to be anathema, even when their teaching and doctrine is clearly such, and when we compare it to God’s holy word. Because only the Lord knows the human heart, and only he knows whom he has called and chosen for himself.
Thus, when Paul writes, “Let them be accursed,” he is not saying they are anathema, but instead, he is praying that if the Lord so judges, barring their future repentance and on account of their willful and continued heresy, that then they would be devoted to the eternal destruction of damnation.
Again, the only thing which we may righteously call anathema are our own sins, our own persistent sinfulness, along with all manner of false doctrine and wickedness which are judged such by the words of scripture.
So what then is Paul here calling anathema? Granted that there is no other gospel apart from God’s gospel; anything else being called such must by definition be a false gospel—the binary evil opposite to the divine gospel standard. If it is not God’s gospel, then it must be a false gospel.
What is the false gospel which Paul is arguing here so vehemently against? It is like every other false gospel and heresy that has ever plagued Christ’s church, even to today. These false teachers, instead of outright contradicting Paul and teaching something that is obviously false and different, came in and began to teach a distortion of the gospel. They changed the message being preached.
They changed it in small, subtle ways—perhaps in ways that seemed on the surface to be maybe unessential or only of minor importance. They suggested maybe that Paul was in error or lacking something because he was not really an apostle, but that they instead knew better.
Yet just like adding the tiniest bit of coffee to water, technically transforming that water into coffee, albeit a very weak coffee, or as adding a small amount of black dye to white paint, the paint ceases to be white and becomes a shade of gray.
So they came, they corrupted and falsified the gospel. Once you add or subtract anything to God’s gospel, it ceases to be the gospel and is now altogether false.
So as Paul writes here, condemning the false gospel being preached to the Galatians, he is also warning us against the many other distortions of the gospel that we continue to face in the church and out there in the world. He is cautioning us and encouraging us against succumbing to the many different false gospels that are being preached to people every day in so many different venues and circumstances, inside and outside of the church.
Today, we’re not going into the particular heresy which Paul is concerned with in his letter, for it hasn’t yet been introduced here, but instead, we’re going to consider more how to recognize its ilk when we hear it.
The gospel message as preached by the apostle Paul, “Of the Lord Jesus, 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,” is such good news, not because of what Jesus has specifically done, but because of what his work means for us.
Because of the great benefits which the gospel gives us to receive by our faith in Jesus, we have peace with God and peace with our fellow man. We are loved by God our Father as his adopted children so that now we may truly love him and others. We have hope for our future life and beyond instead of the fear of death and what comes next.
We have freedom to now choose to do that which is good and to live for the Lord instead of always doing evil and living for ourselves and our sinful nature. We have freedom from the harsh obligation to keep God’s law perfectly in fear of divine retribution for our constant failures.
Instead, we desire to now obey God and receive his blessed mercy for our shortcomings. We have forgiveness of sins and the ability to forgive others for their wrongs against us.
These false teachers, against whom we are warned by Paul, will most often twist and pervert the gospel by taking something that is merely a benefit of the gospel and then call that benefit the gospel—like freedom, or love, or forgiveness. They will preach the salvific benefit alone apart from grace by faith, without any true duty to respond.
Or they may add obligations to faith in Christ by demanding works of religion or acts of piety, transforming our works into becoming the means for our salvation instead of being the right response to the monarchistic work of God’s grace upon us.
Every kind of false gospel, any distortion of the truth, could be said to extend from or be typified by the maxim, “I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.”
The first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., established and defined the orthodox belief concerning the person of Jesus Christ as being co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, being of the same substance (homo usis) and still being his own distinct person against the heresy of Arius, which taught there once was when Christ was not.
The Arian party denied the eternal nature of God the Son, interpreting the only begotten (monogenes) of John 3:16 and 1 John 4:9 as implying that Jesus was created, and took verses like Colossians 1:15, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation,’ out of their context by ignoring the following verses: “For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Or ignoring John 1:3: “And all things were made through him, and without him not anything that was made was made.”
Scripture in context will always immediately refute their illogic and heresy.
Unfortunately, this anti-Trinitarian heresy survives explicitly within the Jehovah’s Witnesses, functionally within the Mormon religion, and also within the false doctrine of the eternal subordination of the Son, which is supported and proposed by certain modern theologians like Wayne Grudem and has even received approval by individuals within otherwise conservative and orthodox denominations.
Or there’s the historical Roman Catholic views and practices concerning a person’s good works, performing acts of penance, and the church’s assumed role of being the sole arbiter and dispenser of divine grace and mercy, granting absolution to sinful man. This comes through their twisting of verses, like establishing a soul absolute ecclesiastical authority as being given to the apostle Peter and his immediate heirs from Matthew 16:19: “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” making Peter to be the first pope and the vicar of Christ, and thereby creating this absolute authority of the Roman Church.
Meanwhile, they ignore Matthew 18:18, where Jesus again clearly declares the same and imparts this same ecclesiastical authority of binding to all of the gathered disciples.
Or they mistranslate the Greek word metanoia via Latin as “do penance” instead of the more straightforward “repent” in Matthew chapters 3:2 and 4:17.
Or they elevate certain verses from James’s letter, like “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world,” and “So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead,” or “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar,” twisting these to now specifically have operative and salvific effects instead of being the responsive result of faith as they are otherwise understood when you consider them in light of all scripture.
Then there are also the more modern heresies of Christian Liberalism, as condemned by J. Gresham Machen back in the 20s, which he decried as being an entirely different religion completely separate from historical orthodox Christianity, and is followed by its reorganized spawn of progressive Christianity that the modern church is still currently dealing with.
All of these heresies begin by undermining the authority of scripture as the word of God, emphasizing instead that it has uninspired human authorship and is corrupted by both written errors and by being the product of their times. They will seek the historical Jesus and declare the theological or mythological Jesus to have been constructed much later by men seeking power.
They will go on to deny the virgin birth, any miracles, and Christ’s resurrection from the dead as being unscientific and unreasonable. They prefer to consider Jesus, when they consider him at all, as being only a great man, a good example, or an influential moralist, and therefore no different, no better or worse than an ancient Greek philosopher or any other religious figure such as Buddha or Muhammad.
Once they deny scripture’s nature, they then begin to cherry-pick tidbits from the Bible that they prefer—like the Marxianite heretics of old or Andy Stanley of today—taking things that they feel affirm them, while discarding everything related to sin, ignoring everything which convicts them and condemns them for their wickedness.
They will take a verse like 1 John 4:16, saying only that “God is love,” twisting it away from the orthodox understanding of love being an attribute of God, that all or everything of God is love, like his holiness, and imply it to instead mean that God is all and only love.
Then they’ll ignore the biblical definitions of love—of agape and hesed, of 1 Corinthians 13 and Jesus’s example in John 13—instead redefining love itself to include all, to include all of modern immorality as never giving any reason for someone to take offense, affirming a person’s fantasy as being their reality or their truth.
Instead of what is actually affirming— the highest love attainable as being through limitless sexual gratification—by silently promoting love of self as being the greatest good, transforming everything which defies or denies one’s own personal feelings and defined sense of love into non-love or being considered unloving.
Or, even more nonsensically and illogically, they will build up an entire theology and religion around a single verse like John 3:16: “For God so loved the world” and suggest that because God so loved, and that because God is love, therefore everyone is saved—preaching, “For God so loved the world, now everyone has a get-out-of-hell-free card.”
As if salvation comes to us as an audience gift from Oprah: “And you get salvation, and you get salvation, and you get salvation!”
Here we reach the ultimate liberal and false gospel: universal salvation, or even no need at all for salvation, because to them, there is no condemnation for anyone, since everything is now morally permissible, and because nothing is intrinsically bad, and because a loving God would neither create a hell nor ever possibly send anybody there.
Does any of this sound familiar? We can go on and on about all these many different false gospels that are preached, but I won’t. I trust that you have discernment since we are here together within the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, instead of the prior body which shall not be named.
So I encourage you to continue studying your Bibles diligently, becoming more and better familiar with what scripture actually teaches so that you are not led astray. I encourage you to join together with your fellow believers in Christ and take advantage and partake in the different discipleship opportunities that we have here.
We have Joy in the Morning, we have Prime Time Spirit Seekers, and now Sunday School for the kids. Together, we will grow and continue to grow in faithful knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
Scripture teaches us that something may be known to be true by the testimony of two or three witnesses, and our EPC essentials affirm that the Bible, uniquely and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit, is the supreme and final authority on all matters on which it speaks.
So we can know the difference between true doctrine and what is anathema. Every true doctrine is proven and found throughout all of scripture with multiple references, but a false gospel cannot be proven by any such witnessing. In fact, it is easily disproved.
Thus, we test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Don’t just take my word for it, simply because I am who I am as your pastor. You will find every week back in the narthex and online my sermon notes, which include the different scripture references and citations that influence my preaching.
I include these extra notes for both of our benefits—to check me, to remind myself, and to strengthen both of our understanding. Check your other teachers as well; always test us, help us to stay in line too. We are not perfect; we will make mistakes.
Rarely does a person set out to be a false teacher; rarely do they ever intend to distort the truth, but it can happen. So be watchful, be mindful of what you see and hear. Test those things that are being called true against the word of God.
Test them against God’s gospel so that you will continue to stand firm in faith, continuing to believe the true gospel and separating yourself from anathema.
Believe that Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins and is rescuing us from this present evil age. By God’s grace alone, we can know this and have the faith to believe in this because it is taught to us only according to the scriptures alone, confirmed by the Holy Spirit within us, and is all and always for the Father’s glory.
Amen.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we ask that you guard us, that you keep us safe, that you grant us wisdom and discernment to always choose the good, to follow your way and to know what is right, to avoid what is evil and to remain apart from what you declare to be anathema according to your word.
Amen.