Transcript

The Texas Army National Guard has a group of special workers called parachute riggers. Their job is to fold and pack the parachutes soldiers use when jumping from airplanes.

These people are intensely dedicated to their task. The Rigger’s Creed states, “I will be sure—always!” They know jumpers need assurance that everything regarding their chutes is perfect.

In the time it takes to meticulously pack an MC1-1 military parachute, 30 folds are required. A jumper has nothing to do with the chute until they put it on before a jump. Trust in the error-free performance of the riggers is all a jumper has to rely on.

The Rigger’s Creed further states: “I will never let the idea that a piece of work is ‘good enough’ make me a potential murderer through a careless mistake or oversight, for I know there can be no compromise with perfection.”

Riggers know that the parachute business is a life-or-death enterprise. Mistakes cost lives. There is no room for complacency.

There is no room for error in the packing of a parachute. Likewise in the gospel ministry, there is no room for error.

It is a matter of eternal life and eternal death. Mistakes cost people their eternal destinies. It is vital that we have the gospel absolutely, 100 percent correct.

As those jumpers need full assurance that everything is perfect with their chute, so people need full assurance that the gospel they hear and believe is true for today. When we rightly divide God’s Word, we can give people this assurance.

Paul’s gospel of grace is the only and true gospel by which men are saved today. The gospel of grace teaches that all are sinners and that “the wages of sin is death” and that sin is what separates us from God.

The gospel for today is that there is absolutely nothing for you to do for salvation from your sins and hell: Christ did it all. He paid the full penalty for all our sins at the Cross.

Paul’s gospel tells us to trust that Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again, and, in so believing, you are saved (1 Cor. 15:3,4). We are saved by God’s grace, through faith, in Christ alone.

At that moment of trusting Christ for salvation, by God’s grace we are forgiven all our sins; we are redeemed, reconciled, justified, and have the gift of eternal life.

Galatians 1:6-7 says, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Gal. 1:6,7).

A boy asked his father to explain the differences among irritation, aggravation, and frustration. His father picks up the phone and dials a number at random. When the phone is answered, he asks, “Can I speak to Ralph, please?”

“No. There’s no one called Ralph here,” says the person who answered the phone. His father hangs up. “That’s irritation,” he says.

He picks up the phone again, dials the same number, and asks for Ralph a second time. “No, there’s no one here called Ralph. Go away. Don’t call again,” the person says. His father hangs up and says, “That’s aggravation.”

“Then what’s frustration?” asks his son. The father picks up the phone and dials the same number a third time. “Hello, this is Ralph. Have I received any phone calls?”

Paul is irritated, aggravated and frustrated with the Galatians. In his letters to other churches, Paul normally begins with some expression of praise and thanksgiving for their faith and service to the Lord, but not here in the Epistle to the Galatians.

This is especially striking when compared to the letter of 1 Corinthians.

In spite of the Corinthians’ carnality and immorality, Paul still commended and offered thanksgiving for them.

Here though, in the face of a theological, doctrinal departure, a defection from grace and Paul’s gospel, he does not offer any commendation or praise for the Galatians.

Rather, Paul begins with disbelief that the Galatians were allowing themselves to be influenced to mix law and grace, both doctrinally and practically, and were willingly putting themselves under the law.

The Galatians were being told that Gentiles needed circumcision and had to come under the Law of Moses to be saved and to live a life pleasing to the Lord.

But to Paul, what they were basically being taught to believe was that Christ was not enough—and the Galatians were buying into it.

This direct contradiction of the primary thrust of Paul’s ministry outrages Paul and prompts him to write a strong, stinging letter to the Galatians, unequivocally reaffirming the sufficiency of Christ for salvation and for our practical sanctification.

The Church today is faced with the same mixing of law and grace, the same departure from Paul and the gospel of pure grace, and the same lack of faith in the sufficiency of Christ for salvation and daily living.

Thus, the teaching of Galatians is vitally important for all believers, then and now.

Paul writes “I marvel,” meaning that he was astounded, bewildered, astonished, or amazed. He found it extraordinary. He could not fathom why they were so soon removed from Him that called them into the grace of Christ unto a different gospel.

Pastor Charles Swindoll writes, “Why would a slave, once freed, go back to living in bondage? Why would he willingly place his healed ankles back in the shackles that had scraped them raw? Why would he, having breathed the sweet, pure air of the Gospel…return to the dark, dank dungeon of legalism?”

With these kind of questions in mind, Paul wrote to the Galatians. It was almost inconceivable to him that they would desert Christ and grace for the law and legalism.

Paul’s heart is stirred as he marveled that they were “so soon removed,” or so quickly turning away and becoming of another mind.

The words “so soon” may refer to the time of their conversion, or to the time that the Judaizers, the legalists, had come among them, and the short period of time before their apostasy from Paul and his gospel of grace.

The Galatians were apparently offering little resistance, were not taking a stand, and were easily influenced by these teachers to grab onto “another gospel.”

Paul reached for their hearts to show the gravity of what they were doing when he wrote, “I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him.”

The Galatians were not just defecting or turning away from a system of theology, they were turning away from God Himself. The gospel of grace is God’s truth for today, and to turn away from it is to turn away from God.

The Galatians perhaps thought they were honoring God by putting themselves under His Law but, in actuality, they were dishonoring Him by doing so under grace.

Paul says that that they were turning away “from Him that called you into the grace of Christ.” The Galatian believers had responded in faith to God’s call for salvation which is made to all people by His grace. And He calls all men to salvation today by Paul’s gospel.

Paul’s point is that, seeing as how they were called by God to the saving gospel of the grace of God, why were they going back to another gospel, for a former dispensation and a former program?

Paul tells the Galatians, who had been called into the grace of Christ, that they were turning away “unto another gospel: Which is not another.”

Now, what does Paul mean? It makes you want to ask, “Is it another, or isn’t it another?” In verses 6 and 7 there are two different Greek words used for “another.”

The first, heteros, means another of a different kind. The second “another” is the Greek word allos meaning another of the same kind. Paul is not saying that the Galatians were being led astray to a false gospel, but to “another gospel” of a different kind.

In other words, they were trusting in a gospel which belonged to a former dispensation. They were forsaking the gospel of grace for the gospel of the circumcision, the gospel of the kingdom, a gospel of faith demonstrated by works under the law.

And Paul says that this gospel “is not another [allos],” meaning that it is not another of the same kind as his gospel, the gospel purely of the grace of God, a gospel of faith plus nothing.

The Galatian believers were saved by the gospel of grace under the dispensation of grace, but the Judaizers were trying to bring them back under the law, requiring and demanding that law be added to faith in Christ for salvation.

In doing this, they “would pervert the gospel of Christ.” Trying to bring believers who are saved under grace back under bondage and law-keeping is to frustrate the grace of God and pervert the gospel of the grace of God.

American dispensationalist pioneer Pastor J. C. O’Hair once rightly said, “God is very jealous concerning His own redemptive work. It is a serious spiritual crime to offer to saint or sinner a message of grace and law, mixed.”

God wants His message of grace to be kept pure and the sufficiency of Christ for salvation to be proclaimed. The Greek word translated as “pervert” means to reverse, to turn about, to change to the opposite.

And so, in adding works and law to Paul’s gospel, the Judaizers had reversed it, turned it around, and changed its character completely (Rom. 11:6).

It’s been rightly said that “The legalists were substituting law for grace, circumcision for the cross, works for faith, bondage for liberty, and self for Christ.”

The law doesn’t pollute grace, it reverses it. Grace can’t be modified or changed or altered. Nothing could be added to the grace of God to make it better.

The grace of God shows us that Christ is our all. It shows us that Christ, not the law, is our righteousness. Christ, not the law, is our life. Christ, not the law, is our standard for holiness. Christ, not the law, gives strength for life, for living a life pleasing to God.

As we read in Galatians 2:20,21, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”

Galatians 1:8-9: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, 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.”

Paul presents a hypothetical to convey how important it is to stand for his gospel. Paul states that if “we,” meaning he or any of his co-laborers, or even if “an angel from heaven” came preaching any other gospel, they should be anathema or “accursed.”

Paul’s gospel was unchangeable. Neither he nor anyone else had any authority or right to alter it or add to it, because it was of divine origin.

Paul’s gospel was given to him by Christ Himself, as verses 11 and 12 show: “the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

Later in the epistle (4:14), Paul wrote that the Galatians received him “as an angel of God,” and so “an angel from heaven” may refer to a messenger who came to them with false or with true authority from above (2 Cor. 11:13-15).

In any case, Paul takes his illustration to an extreme to bring home his firm and earnest point that absolutely no messenger, no matter how seemingly godly, good, popular or authoritative, not even an angel from heaven, should be received, believed or followed if their teaching does not fall in line with Paul’s gospel of grace.

To those who would doubt that believers are complete in Christ by faith alone, or who would change or add to Paul’s gospel, or who would preach a gospel other than his, Paul calls down a curse and says, “let him be accursed,” or anathema.

The Greek word anathema is a strong word that means devoted to destruction.

As for those who are not saved and proclaim any other gospel than Paul’s, they will be anathema if they do not trust Christ and die in their sins, and will be devoted to destruction forever in hell.

But what about those who are saved, and thus cannot lose their salvation, and yet, knowingly or ignorantly, preach a gospel other than Paul’s? First, such believers could reap a curse when they stand before the Lord at the Judgment Seat of Christ.

As we read in 1 Corinthians 3:14,15, “If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.”

Second, to be accursed also carries the idea of being separated and cast out in life.

In Joshua 6:18, Joshua says of Jericho, “…keep yourselves from the accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a curse, and trouble it.”

Similarly, Paul’s statement, “let him be accursed,” speaks of the need for believers to recognize and separate from those who proclaim a mixed gospel today, lest they influence us to become accursed as we too begin to proclaim the gospel in error.

The opposite of a curse is a blessing, so a ministry that faithfully proclaims the gospel of pure grace according to Paul has the blessing of God today.

This is the case even if the number and size of the church is small. Numbers and sizes of churches mean nothing when it comes to revealing the blessing of God. We walk by faith not by sight today.

Paul’s words are so serious, so solemn, that in verse 9 he reiterates the statement. But Paul turns from the hypothetical to the actual as he repeats his admonition.

Paul is not referring to the previous verse when he writes, “As we said before.” The repetition of his statement is actually a reminder of a warning he had given them earlier when he ministered among them.

The word “now” is an adverb of time, implying a lapse of time and a contrast between the present and the past. So when Paul writes, “As we said before,” he is referring to a previous visit when he had warned them of this.

This makes his point even stronger and the Galatians’ defection from Paul even more inexcusable.

Verse 8 is written from the standpoint of the apostle and his fellow laborers, referring to the gospel “which we have preached unto you.” Verse 9 is from the standpoint of the converts, referring to the gospel “that ye have received.”

The gospel for which Paul was so jealous was the gospel that they had accepted, the gospel that had freed them from their sins and had given them life eternal.

The verse also convicted the Galatians by reminding them that they had “received” Paul’s gospel, so why hadn’t they stood for it?

The element of a hypothetical situation is removed, from “though” or “if” by any chance anyone should preach in verse 8, to a more direct, matter-of-fact, or as-is-the-case “If any man preach any other gospel unto you…” in verse 9.

The element of improbability is also lessened by removing “we or an angel from heaven,” and replacing it with “any man” or anybody. But the anathema remains. The anathema remains upon any man who proclaims any other gospel than Paul’s.

People’s eternal destinies are at stake as we consider the importance of what gospel is to be made known and believed. If the gospel for today is confused or mixed, people are in danger of not trusting Christ alone, and thus being eternally lost.

Galatians 1:10: “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”

In light of all Paul had written up to this point, and especially in light of the two anathemas he had pronounced on any who did not preach his gospel, Paul asks rhetorical questions: “Do I persuade men? Or do I persuade God? Do I seek to please men?”

Paul sought only the favor of his God. Therefore, he didn’t soft-peddle or compromise the truth so as not to offend men. In seeking only to please the Lord, Paul firmly stood for his gospel of pure grace.

We too need to stand fast and uncompromising for the gospel of pure grace, knowing that this pleases God. We need to be alert and vigilant against subtle or blatant attacks against the gospel of grace.

In verse 10, a convicting point was driven home to the Galatians: Who were they trying to please? Man or God? Often people are more interested in pleasing their denomination, spiritual leaders, friends, or family, more than pleasing the Lord.

The Galatians were making concessions, trying to please men, and they were turning away, deserting Paul and perverting his gospel.

Paul says, “if I yet pleased men,” or if I were still trying to be a people-pleaser like during my unsaved days as a Pharisee, “I should not be the servant of Christ.” Upon his salvation, Paul truly lived for an audience of One. So should we.

As Christ’s servant, Paul’s will was lost in his Lord’s. He sought only to please his Master, not men.

In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his now famous 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. The act brought him attention that he had never sought.

Luther challenged the theology of the religious leaders of his day in regards to justification by faith and the authority of Scripture.

Four years later in April 1521, in Worms, Germany, at the Diet of Worms, Luther stood before King Charles V and papal representatives.

At the Diet, Luther was asked whether he acknowledged authorship of a list of works which had been determined to be in error. He did. He was then asked whether he was willing to recant the errors contained in them. The following is his answer:

“Your Imperial Majesty and your Lordships demand a simple answer. Here it is, plain and unvarnished.

“Since I put no trust in the supported authority of pope or of councils, since it is plain that they have often erred and often contradicted themselves, unless I am convinced of error by the testimony of Scripture or by manifest reasoning, I stand convinced by the Scriptures to which I have appealed.

“My conscience is taken captive by God’s Word, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us, nor open to us. I cannot and I will not recant anything. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

Like the Apostle Paul, Luther sought to please God only and to stand for Him and His truth. To stand for God’s Word, rightly divided and Paul’s gospel, we must have the mindset of Paul to seek only to please God and not man.

We will likely be rejected by people for it, but our consciences too must be taken captive by the Word of God so that we stand for the truth in God’s strength and for His glory.