GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
GALATIANS 1:9
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9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel beside what you received, we must curse him!
In verse 8, Paul proposed one improbable and one impossible setting: that Paul himself, or even an angel from heaven, would preach a gospel alongside of or in place of the gospel the Galatians had already heard and believed. Now he restates himself with the actual setting in Galatia: An “anybody” was actually preaching something beside the gospel of Christ.
The world is confused about Christian doctrine. A great many Christians don’t think about it; they have the idea that as long as they believe in Jesus, that’s enough. On their deathbed, that might be true. That’s a kind of faith that is like a bruised reed or a smoldering wick (Matthew 12:20). Jesus will not break a bruised reed; he will not snuff out a smoldering wick. But does that mean we should strive to reduce all of Christianity to a field of bruised reeds, to a candelabra of smoldering wicks? Just how many new smoking wicks can one old smoking wick ignite? That isn’t a sustainable church; that isn’t a body of teachings and doctrine that can be passed along from one generation to another.
We must first and foremost accept that the holy Scriptures are the authority for all Christian doctrine. We take the Scriptures in the clear sense of their words, allowing the Scriptures themselves to interpret the Scriptures, and remembering that in the matter of doctrine, one doctrine most never be set up against another; they are a complete body of teachings from the mouth of God to the hearts of men. We confess formally: “We believe, teach, and confess that the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments are the only rule and norm according to which all doctrines and teachers alike must be appraised and judged, as it is written in Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Formula of Concord, Epitome, I:1).
And we must also distinguish between doctrine and practice. When one church serves the Lord’s Supper in a chalice, and another serves the wine in cups, and a third church serves with both a chalice and in cups, they have a different practice, but this says nothing about their doctrine. On the other hand, if one church teaches that the Lord’s Supper is nothing but a memorial, a kind of Bible Study with treats, but our church teaches that the Lord’s Supper is actually the sharing of the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the strengthening of faith, then there is a vast difference in doctrine. It wouldn’t matter if the distribution looked exactly the same, chalice for chalice or cup for cup, for the meaning and the purpose of the act would be completely different.
In the matter of doctrine, almost all differences take place because of a disagreement in one of three areas: (1) Is the Bible the true authority? (2) Who is Jesus Christ? (3) How do we get to heaven?
(1) Is the Bible the true authority? When someone rejects the authority of the Bible, they’ve run away from God himself, because he is the one who has handed the Bible to us through the inspired prophets and apostles. Scripture is the sole authority for us: The righteousness that is from God is what the Law and the Prophets testify (Romans 3:21).
(2) Who is Jesus Christ? If someone does accept that Jesus is true God and true man, then his sacrifice on the cross is not enough. If someone says that Christ isn’t enough, he is no longer a Christian. He is forced to use his own deeds to gain heaven; he has rejected Christ. When anyone tries to add to Christ, or tries to multiply his own good deeds to supplement Christ, he ends up with the same answer as when one tries to multiply by zero. He has nothing at all. “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
(3) How do we get to heaven? If anyone says that there are ways to heaven apart from Christ, then they have rejected Christ, who is truly the only way to heaven, since he says, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). If only one fringe group said this, we could roll our eyes and say, “Just ignore them,” but more and more people are saying this. We can’t ignore this infection, because now it’s the world that is trying to crush bent reeds and to stamp out smoldering wicks, saying: “You are wrong, and you can’t believe what you believe!” The world despises the one who tells the truth (Amos 5:10).
Notice that Paul has changed something between his curse in verse 8 and here in verse 9. In verse 8, he cursed the doctrine being preached if it is any different from the one already preached. Here, he speaks out against the doctrine that the Galatians received. Paul does this so that the Galatians won’t be able to say, “You preached something wrong, but now we’ve been set straight by better teachers.” Paul is saying: What is the gospel that brought you to faith? The pure gospel of Christ crucified is what you received from me. This is what set your faith on fire. It doesn’t matter if it was preached by me or Barnabas or his cousin, it was that gospel that brought you to faith. But what have you jumped up and grabbed onto now? It’s another gospel, a different gospel; a gospel that’s trying to stand beside the true gospel. That’s not me failing at my role as a teacher, that’s you failing at your role as a believer. The gospel you heard from me means faith, and forgiveness, and eternal life in heaven– why are you letting someone make changes to that?
Paul warns: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them” (1 Timothy 4:16). The word of God is the word of truth (Colossians 1:5). Through it, we have been given the new birth of faith (James 1:18). Watch out for any message that is different, because through the word of God, you have everlasting life. John says: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched– this we proclaim concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1). It is not an opinion, or a trend, or a daydream in the summer sun. It is God’s own truth, and it alone is life.
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 1:9 Beside what you received