Moralism is Not the Gospel (But Many Christians Think it Is)

One of the most amazing statements by the Apostle Paul is his indictment of the Galatian Christians for abandoning the Gospel. “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel,” Paul declared. As he stated so emphatically, the Galatians had failed in the crucial test of discerning the authentic Gospel from its counterfeits.

His words could not be more clear: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed!” [Gal. 1:6-7]    Continue at Al Mohler

Witchcraft Exposed (and Defeated)

Galatians 3:1 “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? (literally, who has put the evil eye on you or brought you under their spell) It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” 

 

Witchcraft is a dark, forboding, demonic force. It is easy to recognize in its various outward forms. However, there is a subtle form of witchcraft that this verse in Galatians exposes. Witchcraft, in its overt and visible manifestations seeks to do its damage to the people of God. Yet by stealth and through the means of false teaching, witchcraft also seeks to obscure the message of the cross in the Church. 

Paul rebukes the Galatians, saying in so many words, “What’s wrong with you people? Who has brought you under their spell? You saw the cross. It was so very clear to you. What? Can’t you see it anymore?”

Let me state it once again, witchcraft seeks to obscure the message of the cross in the Church. 

What Paul writes is intriguing. How could he make this comment, “It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified”? How could Paul suggest such a thing? 

Did Paul forget who it was he was writing to? Did he have some mental aberration and think he was writing to the Christians at Jerusalem and not in Galatia? The Galatian Christians were not at Golgotha to see the Lord crucified.  Continue at John Samson

The Pain and the Gain of True Holiness

I’ve been struck again by the wonderful depth and simplicity of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, this time with respect to his treatment of the spiritual struggle in the final chapters. Justification is not a process or a reward for those who are victorious in battle. Rather, it is a completed verdict that is rendered on the sole basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness. Precisely on this basis, we have a lot of work ahead of us. It will be a battle; we’ll win some and lose some. However, the war itself has been decided. We live from Christ’s victory over sin’s guilt and power toward Christ’s victory over sin’s presence. In the meantime, it’s choppy waters.

What pain and what gain? First, it’s crucial to notice that Paul is not talking about justification but sanctification here. The pain is perpetual struggle, warfare, and battle between the Spirit and the flesh, not between justification and condemnation. All of those who are justified are in Christ and therefore are indwelt by the Spirit. In the old covenant, provision for atonement was made in the sacrificial system of the Temple that the Spirit filled with his glory. And yet, in the new covenant the law is written on our hearts, our sins are forgiven, and the Spirit indwells us as his temple. Yet this very indwelling of the Spirit arouses the flesh to arms. Paul is not saying that we walk in the Spirit in order to be justified, but that those who are justified are in the Spirit and therefore must “walk by the Spirit” (Gal 5:16). 

Seeking to bring the church back under the old covenant, Paul’s opponents in Galatia had not even realized that the heart of the law is love. Like his gospel, Paul’s law is too simple. His critics demanded that Gentile believers be circumcised, keep kosher, and “observe days and months and seasons and years” (4:10). In the meantime, they looked down on others (especially Gentiles who didn’t act like Jews). Like Jesus in his exchanges with the Pharisees, Paul not only blames his opponents for confusing the law with the gospel but for setting aside God’s law (summarized by love) to obey their own rules, programs and ceremonies. The result of this false righteousness was disregard for God’s law under the pretense of fulfilling it. Legalism bred arrogance; instead of building each other up in the gospel and love, they were biting and devouring each other over who was “in” and who was “out.”  Continue at Michael Horton

Grace for Recovering Pharisees

Pastor Bruce Brock of Faith Community Church in Tucson, Arizona, is a dear friend of mine. God has used him greatly in my own life, and over the last decade or so, we have taken something of the same spiritual and theological journey in discovering and embracing the doctrines of grace together. 

He kindly sent me his sermon notes for this last Sunday, based on Galatians 1:1-6. I thought others may enjoy reading them just as I did, so produce them here. Enjoy!:

Galatians is one of the earliest of Paul’s letters and an early defense of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It precedes the Jerusalem Council where the early church leadership all got on the same page concerning salvation by God’s free grace – Acts 15:4-11. The churches in Galatia (Lystra, Derbe, etc) were from Paul’s first missionary journey – Acts 14. 

The false teachers were Jewish (Judaizers) and wanted to add circumcision, feasts, dietary laws, ceremonial laws to faith in Christ; they would add the Mosaic Law to the Gospel. Their logic was that Jesus is Messiah and He came in fulfillment of the Scriptures (OT), so it is reasonable to stay with what God gave us so long ago and simply add it to Christ.    Keep Reading>>>

Galatians, Gospel Indicatives, and Gospel Imperatives

At last week’s 9Marks @Southeastern conference, our conference host and seminary president Dr. Danny Akin delivered an overview sermon on the entire book of Galatians.  Get this: the sermon had two major divisions with 42 subpoints!  Don’t try this at home kids!

Essentially, Akin walked us through the book of Galatians commenting on the 29 indicative statements Paul makes about the gospel and the 13 imperatives that flow from them.  If you’ve been following the blog discussion of the relationship between indicatives and imperatives then you might be interested in this talk and the panel that followed.  Akin makes it plain that out of the “done” (indicatives) there flows a “do” (imperatives).

For those that are curious, here are the 29 gospel indicatives and 13 gospel imperatives Akin highlighted:

29 Indicatives
1. The gospel is rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1:1).

2. The gospel delivers us from the present evil age to the glory of Christ (1:3-5).

3. There is only one gospel and to desert it is to be damned (1:6-9).

4. The gospel is ours by divine revelation and not human imagination (1:10-12).

5. The gospel is grounded in a gracious election (1:15).

6. The gospel is constantly in danger of being lost and needs to be defended (2:4-5).

7. The gospel that saves Gentiles is the same gospel that saves Jews (2:7-9).

8. There are ethical imperatives that follow the gospel (2:11) and no ethnic distinctions in the gospel (2:12-14).

9. The gospel is good news that we are justified by faith in Jesus Christ and not by works of the Law (2:15-16).

10. Through the gospel, we are identified with Christ and His work on the cross (2:20).   Read the all HERE

Mercy Always Comes Running

I know that illustrations always break down at some level but I still think the following one makes a good (albeit, not perfect) point. At the very least, it’s kind of funny in a corny way!

A friend of mine recently told a silly story about a man standing at the gates of heaven waiting to be admitted. To the man’s utter shock, Peter said, “You have to have earned a thousands points to be admitted to heaven. What have you done to earn your points?”

“I’ve never heard that before: but I think I’ll do alright. I was raised in a Christian home and have always been a part of the church. I have Sunday school attendance pins that go down the floor. I went to a Christian college and graduate school and have probably led hundreds of people to Christ. I’m now an elder in my church and am quite supportive of what the people of God do. I have three children, two boys and a girl. My oldest boy is a pastor and the younger is a staff person with a ministry to the poor. My daughter and her husband are missionaries. I have always tithed and am now giving well over 30% of my income to God’s work. I’m a bank executive and work with the poor in our city trying to get low income mortgages.”   Keep Reading...

The Necessity of Harsh Words for False Teaching

How can Paul justify such language? And does this kind of language teach us anything about how to respond to false teaching? Or is it completely an apostolic privilege, off limits to us mere Christians?

Let's step back and see what Paul is doing. Anyone familiar with Paul's letter to the Galatians knows it is punctuated with this kind of exclamatory language. The shepherd is perplexed and heartbroken over the Galatians' apparent departure from the gospel once established, and he is livid, indignant toward the Judaizers who are leading them astray. If this were written today, we would be very tempted to chastize Paul for his tone -- and indeed, some do reject Paul's teachings today for this reason, among others (like alleged misogyny, etc.)

Galatians 5:12 shows us that Paul is being both rational and angry. It is possible to be both. Paul has not lost his temper, as harsh as his call for the heretics to castrate themselves is. (And let's not say it just sounds harsh. It is harsh.) Keep Reading>>>

Paul, to the Galatians

When Paul wrote to the Galatian Church to warn of the Judaizing heresy, he did not mention the fact that the Judaizers embraced Christ as Messiah and were probably in all other ways fully orthodox.

I am sure they believed all the Old Testament. Perhaps they would even affirm the true humanity and full deity of Christ. Perhaps even Christ’s substitutionary death for sinners on the cross, and even His resurrection from the grave… on and on we could go.

Yet the Apostle Paul never mentioned any of this in his letter to the Galatians. Why not? For the simple reason that there was no need to do so. That was because in spite of all the many vital doctrines the Judaizers would affirm, they added one thing to the biblical gospel (it happened to be circumcision in this case) and the gospel is not something anyone can mess with. Jesus + circumcision is not the gospel.

Paul’s reaction, and I might say, his Holy Spirit inspired reaction, was to warn of the false doctrine in no uncertain terms calling it for what it was, “a different gospel.”  Keep Reading>>>

Getting the Gospel Right