GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GALATIANS 1:6-7a
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6 I am astonished that you are being turned away so quickly from the one who called you (purely by the grace of Christ) to another gospel, 7 which is really no gospel at all.
Here Paul begins the main body of the letter with the bold statement, “I am astonished!” This is what someone says when they just can’t figure something out. I’ve been thinking about this, he says, trying to piece together and reason through what has happened, and I just don’t get it. What happened to you?! I find it impossible to explain why you Galatians would do this, abandoning the gospel of salvation? But this is what’s going on. This is the main problem with the Galatians.
Part of the issue is how quickly this has taken place. It seems to Paul that the Holy Spirit had struck a match there in Galatia and lit the fire of the gospel, which began to burn brightly. But then Paul turned aside to preach so that the Spirit would light another fire in another place, but now he found that the Galatians’ fire was sputtering out, the wood unburned, and the footprints or hoofprints of the judaizers (and the devil) were everywhere. They had stomped out the fire.
“You are being turned away.” They were in the process of being led completely away from God, who brought them to faith in the first place. The verb metatithesthe means to go somewhere or turn, and they were being turned and led away from Christ. By what means? By another “gospel”? And where was it taking them? “Away from the one who called you.” They were being completely separated from Christ, like a page being torn from a book, or to use Jesus’ image, like a branch cut away and detached from the vine. The Lord warned: “Apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:5-6).
This wasn’t the Galatians’ idea. Later in the letter Paul will cry out in exasperation, “Who has bewitched you?” (Galatians 3:1). After all, what would “another gospel,” one that is not Christ crucified for us, be, or do?
Whatever is not the gospel of Christ is not the grace of God. It does not save. It does not offer forgiveness. It does not benefit– but the reverse! Whatever masquerades as the gospel but is not the gospel of Christ, or whatever might seem to offer salvation and heaven but not through Christ, does nothing but deceive. It misleads. It is false; fake. It kills. It damns.
Whatever is not the gospel of Christ but is held out in its place rejects the authority of the holy Scriptures. It is not from the Lord God who brought Israel out of Egypt, the land of slavery. It is not from the true God at all. It is, in fact, an idol, in whatever form it might take (an idol of “anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below,” as God forbids, Deuteronomy 5:8). Such a gospel demands that the poor misled Galatians bow down before a law, a law that was fulfilled and ended by the blood of Christ. For the law “is only a shadow of the good things that (were) coming– not the realities themselves” (Hebrews 10:1). Do any of the laws and sacrifices still stand in the path of those who have faith in Christ? Not at all. “Where these sins have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. Therefore, brothers, we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:18-19). And as Paul says in another place: “We do not have a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but which is through faith in Christ– the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (Philippians 3:9).
Whatever this “gospel” was that was being held out to the Galatians, misleading them, lying to them, killing their faith, was not the gospel at all. How could it be called “Good News” (which is what “gospel” means)? It was something else; something “other.” It was totally different. It was a menace, a poison that they were being fed with a spoon. “Watch out for false prophets,” Jesus had warned. “They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves” (Matthew 7:15).
These gospel-twisting Judaizers were intentionally leading the Galatians away from Christ. Why? The motive must have included jealousy, because the world is always jealous of Christ and the gospel. The power of Christ, the glory of Christ, the authority of Christ– these are things the world wants, or at least the world wants Christ not to have them. The world (with Satan always whispering in the ear) wants to take the place of Christ. The false teacher wants people to listen to him, to take notice of him, and to give him credit and cash and whatever else he can swindle from them. This is what Paul had already run into in Galatia, when the Jews of Pisidian Antioch “were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying” (Acts 13:45).
Paul speaks strongly to the Galatians, but their faith is in danger! Paul has the courage to root out the problem. He does not attack the personalities or the private lives of the false teachers. He does not attack whatever seemingly good things were done by their hands. He goes to the very heart of the problem, which is not their lives or their reputations or the habits of their wives and children. It is their false doctrine, which leads people astray.
Heavenly Father, keep us focused on the pure doctrine of the Gospel of Christ crucified for our sins. Expose false teachers, turn us away from their enticing message and their flashy ways, their subtle words and the other things that make people want to turn away from Jesus. Let us focus our hearts and minds on Jesus our Savior, and nothing else.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Galatians 1:6-7a No other gospel