No Other Gospel: Christ Alone (Galatians 1:1–10)

Verse today is from Galatians chapter one, verses one to ten.

Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brethren which are with me unto the churches of Galatia.

Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil word willed, according to the will of God and our Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

I marvel that you are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there are some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

But though we or an angel from heaven or any gospel unto you preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

For do I now persuade men?

O God, or do I seek to please men?

But if I have yet but if I have yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

May God have his blessing, believing that this is the holy word.

So today we start our new series on Paul's letter to the church at Galatia.

My dear brethren and sisters in Christ, and I pray you are in Christ this day.

It's a letter written with some urgency, with clarity, and deep pastoral concern.

It's a letter for our own time as well.

Because in it, Paul stands against those who would preach another gospel.

And you only have to look around to see churches preaching another gospel nowadays.

Anything, anything that is added to Christ, anything placed alongside Christ.

Anything that would burden the people of God with requirements that God has not given.

Anything like that is some other gospel.

Galatians is not a polite letter.

It really isn't a polite letter.

Paul writes it as a love letter from a father to his own child.

It is a rescue letter.

The sense of urgency in it matters.

After Paul planted the churches in Galatia, and Galatia is a place in modern day Turkey, a group we called Judaizers.

Now these were people, they arrived.

And these taught that Gentile believers and the Galatian church was a rare church in the sense of there was there wasn't like a Jewish body there at all.

It was purely Gentile converts.

But these Judaizers would come along and say that they must obey the Mosaic law.

They had to be circumcised, at least and as a most imperative point, before they could be fully accepted by God.

To clarify, that is the issue we're talking about here.

We're not talking about circumcision itself.

We are talking about requiring it or anything else as a condition of salvation.

Salvation is free.

All it requires that you place your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he died for your sins, that he rose again for your justification before God.

And when you die and you go before the judgment, and we all will face judgment, as we'll discover when we come to two Hebrews, God is pleased to look at his son when he's looking at you to find out whether you're a sinner or not.

There are modern echoes.

There are movements in the church, and I'm talking about the worldwide church here, not just our little building, that repeat this same pattern.

They add rituals, they're adding obligations, they're adding ceremonies, and they're adding religious hoops that their members have to jump through, otherwise, according to that church, you cannot be saved.

The details differ, but the danger is the same.

Christ plus anything becomes no gospel at all.

And this is why Galatia matters to us in a Protestant, Reformed, Decenter Church.

In verses 1 to 5, Paul talks about his appointment as an apostle.

Paul begins by reminding the Galatians who he is and who sent them.

Verse 1-1.

Paul an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father.

His authority is not human, neither is it inherited.

And it's not borrowed, neither is it second hand.

For those of you who remember the story of the Paul's conversion when he was first, we first meet him in the book of Acts, and he saw.

Saul, the destroyer of the Christian church, we could call him the Saul, the great persecutor.

And on the Damascus road, he's traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus with warrants of arrest for Jews who had followed this new Christ, uh Christian religion.

He has an encounter.

Acts 9.

He sees this bright light.

And he hears this voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute me?

Christ himself confronts him.

And Paul is blinded, or Saul is blinded at this point.

He's not Paul yet.

And he sent on to Damascus while he's blind and he meets the guy called Ananaeas, and I'm compacting this.

And then Ananaeus is told to restore his life by God.

And he becomes baptized and is given the name Paul.

And the restored Paul's apostleship then is God given.

Because in the meeting of Christ, which is what an apostle is, anybody else who says they're an apostle, unless they have had a direct meeting of Christ, is a liar.

Paul's apostleship, just like Peter and Andrew and all the others, is God given.

And therefore, the gospel that Paul preaches is God given.

And this matters because the Galatians are being swayed by teachers who claim a superior authority.

You know the type, they've been well educated.

They've been trained by the Sanhedrin and by the scribes and by the Pharisees.

And they're going round saying to Paul, but Paul is just a tent maker, which is actually his family trade.

But Paul himself describes himself later on in Hebrew, in, I was going to say Hebrews, but I don't think it is, as a Hebrew of Hebrews.

He sat at the feet of Galamael, who is one of the most significant teachers in the Hebrew histories.

He was no fool, was our Paul.

But he doesn't make the gospel up.

It goes against everything Paul has been taught.

It goes against the world.

And he teaches it because he received it from Christ himself.

In verses 6 and 7, Paul is astonished.

Actually, when you read the word astonished, he's actually heartbroken.

It's how it translates.

I marvel, he says, that you're turning away so soon.

You've only just come to Christ.

We've just converted you.

And suddenly you're running off after these Jewish fables and Jewish practices.

It's a different gospel, verse 6.

And the word he uses means to desert.

The deserting Christ.

It's like a soldier abandoning his post.

And the Judaizers were not offering a small correction, they were offering a completely different way, and a more seditious way, and a harder way of being saved.

Paul refers to it as a perversion, a twisting of the gospel of Christ.

You see, the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ is not Christ plus law.

It's not Christ plus ritual.

It's not Christ plus ceremony.

It's not Christ plus human effort.

It's not Christ plus anything.

It is the gospel of Jesus Christ is Christ and Christ alone.

And Paul will later say neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation.

And we'll come across that when we get further into Galatians.

And in Romans 2.29, he reminds us that true circumcision for the Christian and the Jew alive is circumcision of the heart, not of the flesh.

And in verses 8 to 10, then, Paul talks about a warning to the church.

He gives them one of the strongest warnings in the whole of the New Testament.

And he says this if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel, let him be accursed.

Now you've got to remember that angels in the day and today are messengers of God.

They're not some thing we see at Christmas with wings and halos.

If you met an angel, you wouldn't know.

They're quite common in the Bible.

We we come across them a fair amount.

And he says, If even a messenger from God, an angel, a messenger from God, says something other than what I am telling you, it is a different gospel.

Let him be accursed.

And he repeats it in the next verse.

Why so strongly?

You see, if we change the gospel, if I preach to you some other gospel, you lose the gospel.

If I add anything to the gospel, you lose the gospel.

If I take anything away from the gospel, you lose the gospel.

The good news, the gospel, the gospel literally means good news.

The good news of Jesus Christ is He does everything, we do nothing, and we don't have to do anything at all.

It's all of him, nothing of us.

I wanted to say it's buy one, get one free, but it's not.

It just you get it free without buying anything.

It's funny.

The warning that Paul gives applies especially to people like me, preachers, elders of the church, church officers.

Because we're the ones who are most in danger of changing the gospel.

If we don't stick to this book literally, if we don't eat the word as a metaphor that's using in Ezekiel, I think it is.

If we don't consume the word of God then we're in trouble.

Because if I say something to you, see I could say to you I don't know.

Gary, you have to go and stand on your head to be saved.

Now because I'm up here, I know that sounds obscure, but obscene, but I'm standing up here as the pastor.

Many people believe and take what I say.

So I have to be hyper careful.

Because I will get when I die, my judgment is actually worse than yours.

It's not worse than yours, but I get judged more harshly.

Because if I mislead you one little step, if I tell you something about salvation that is not true, I suffer for it, not you.

If you believe it, that's a different thing.

It's not your fault, it's my fault.

And that's why I stress to you, and this is especially for our new friend Josh who's coming.

It's important you have this open on your knees, not you on your knees, but this open on your knees when I preach to actually catch me if I say anything wrong.

And at the end of the service, you're more than welcome, as George's nose, to come and tell me.

And we can talk about it.

And it might be I just got carried away with with with words.

But I am nothing more.

I'm no better than you, I'm nothing more than you.

I'm just somebody who has this drive, husband, to do what I do.

It's a warning to the church.

But also it's for you who are older Christians.

It is for you who talk to others who speak about Christ.

It is for you who talk to your husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, neighbours, anybody who speaks about Christ.

If you add anything, more than Christ alone for the need for salvation, you're preaching some other gospel.

We must never by accident or design turn the gospel of grace into a gospel of works.

It's easy to work for that charity.

You're a Christian, you should work for that charity.

I know people who believe doing charitable works will get an entry into heaven.

Total lie.

We are told to work out our faith, that's very true.

We are told that if we are Christians, we would do charitable work.

But the charity comes second to the gospel.

They are not to be joined together.

And certainly nothing is to be put in front of the gospel when it comes to salvation.

Human nature, by default, will resist grace.

Grace is when we have something that's unmerited, we don't deserve it, but God gives this to us in our remission of sins.

We want to help God along.

We think we're so good.

As Christians, we are so blessed, we are so wonderful as Christians that we want to be able to help God along.

We want to contribute, we want to earn our way.

That's in the Bible.

Abraham and Sarah were promised a soon.

And yet they tried to assist God by giving Hagar to Abraham, Genesis 16.

What was the result of man trying to help God?

Sorrow and conflict.

The child of the promise who is Isaac, do not let anybody tell you that it's Ishmael, it is not.

The child of the promises, Isaac, came only by God's power.

And the same pattern appears in the early church.

People wanting to earn what God gives freely.

Some traditions today will still mix grace with ritual obligations, but Scripture teaches that forgiveness is found not through penance, but through Christ, our great high priest, who calls us to repentance and newness of life.

Grace is not earned.

Grace cannot be earned.

Grace cannot be bought.

Grace is given the free gift of God, lest any man should boast.

Once saved, always saved.

It's something I would teach.

Once you're saved by grace, you can never lose that salvation.

You may have a view that God sometimes has shut his eyes to you, but you cannot lose your salvation.

Salvation is secure because Christ holds his people.

He never lets them go.

But Scripture is equally clear that those who truly belong to Christ will not make peace with their sin.

Consider that.

Or let's not pay our say television license because nobody will know.

That little voice out makes you break the law.

Or let's do 40 in a 30 zone.

Or you name it.

When you hear that little voice, or somebody trying to get you something that you know you shouldn't do, that is the devil.

And that is something we fight against.

Persistent, unrepentant sin is not a sign of a Christian losing their salvation.

And I want to ram that one home.

Persistent, unrepentant sin is not a sign of a Christian losing their salvation.

It is a sign.

That the heart may never have been changed properly in the first place.

So you've made a declaration to Christ.

We actually, so to say, that's a change in the heart, but you haven't put all the sins to bed yet.

The unforgivable sin, and there is a single sin that cannot be forgiven, is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

It's not a believer stumbling, it's a lifelong, hardened rejection of Christ's saving work.

A Christian who worries about committing it has, by that very concern, shown that they have not done so.

So we can say with some confidence that, yes, salvation is secure.

No, grace is not a license to sin.

There's a whole group of Christians, um, begins with a name, but I can never remember the name, that used to see how much they could sin to show how much grace God could forgive them.

There's a whole set of them.

And yes, the spirit produces repentance in those who are truly his.

That's an important line.

The spirit produces repentance in those who are truly is.

How do we translate that?

It's basically a case of going, okay, so I've done that wrong.

Or I shouldn't have done that.

That wasn't the right thing to do.

But you know about it.

And you do your best not to do it again.

You turn your back on it, is there the way you say it?

You apologize to if you've hurt somebody, you go out to make amends, not sort of giving gifts to God, but if you've been in a fight or or an argument or whatever, you go out and you make the ethic to apologize.

You turn your back on that shit and you put it to bed.

Because when you do that, you're actually showing that Christ is working in you, that you did wrong and you're trying to fix it.

But I also want to give a warning for those who will hear the recording of this for any church, any denomination, every denomination that adds requirements before a sinner may come to Christ.

That too is preaching another gospel.

Christ does not say clean yourself up and then I'll accept you.

He says, Come to me, and I will give you rest.

We must never place barriers where Christ has placed none.

Good works matter.

But they are the fruit and not the root.

They follow salvation, they never cause it.

Rituals, ceremonies, and human traditions cannot save, only Christ can.

Always, always, please keep in the front of your mind, it is in Christ and in Christ alone that our hope is found.

Anything else is sinking sound.

Amen.

Let us pray.