Sunday 9th February – Only One Gospel – Pastor Adrian Kitson

Galatians 1:1-9, Gospel, Only One Gospel, pastor adrian kitson

Paul, an apostle – sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead – ²and all the brothers and sisters with me,

To the churches in Galatia:

³Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, ⁵to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

⁶I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – ⁷which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. ⁸But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! ⁹As we have already said, so now I say again: if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

What is it to be a ‘real Christian’? What does a ‘real Christian’ do? What does a ‘real Christian’ look like to you? What do you think you need to really be sure you are totally right and true and full in being who you say you are – a ‘Christian’?

Clean record.
Positive attitude
Able to pray at a single bound.
Hard worker
Successful in life and love

A ‘real Christian’: That is the question Galatians deals with.

After his own miraculous conversion to the gospel of Jesus on that Damascus road (Acts 4) Paul was called to be ‘An apostle to the Gentiles’. He did this calling by preaching, teaching and caring with this good news of Jesus. Though him the Spirit planted churches – small groups of converts to Jesus all over the Mediterranean world.

Paul would come to a place, preach Jesus as crucified and resurrected Messiah to anyone who wanted to hear. He would train up some ‘elders’, ‘presbyters’, ‘pastors’, and ‘deacons’ or ‘teachers’, authorise them in the community and hand it over to them. He would keep in touch with letters.

So, he writes to local churches in this area called Galatia (a province of Roman rule).

It is now northern and central Turkey.

He writes only about 15 or so years after the Resurrection of Jesus. He writes to deal with some division and disunity around social and racial difference among them.

He says this disunity is stemming not from social or racial difference but from bad teaching – teaching that there are two classes of Christians – the real ones and the less than real ones …

Across this region, some people are insisting that to be a ‘real Christian’, you must also adopt Jewish practice – dietary laws, moral law (10 commandments) and circumcision.

We need the ‘gospel + something else’ to be a real Christian; to live a fully God-pleasing life. In this case: gospel + Jewish custom/Law.

The letter begins fairly normally.

Paul identifies himself

Paul, an apostle – sent not from men nor by a human, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead – ²and all the brothers and sisters^[^a^] with me,

Three things pop out to me in this little greeting:

Certainty of calling is critical for the community of the gospel,

Paul is a ‘sent one’; an ‘apostolos’. He is sent not just by some human group or authority but by the resurrected Jesus himself.

That invites the question of these other so called ‘teachers’. Who are they and who called them?

Calling and teaching and everything is founded on the resurrected Jesus, not just theories about God.

Luther makes the point here that good teaching and those who teach it is not founded on theories of God’s creation or his attributes or even extensive bible history but on THE thing; the central thing; the gospel thing – the resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God for forgiveness and freedom. Paul says it. He is called;

… by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead

3. Faithful teachers are not mavericks – doing their own thing. They live in the discipline of the community.

Paul reminds them he is not a maverick (like these other teachers are). He greets these people with;

²… all the brothers and sisters with me,

And then a blessing for those to whom this letter is addressed:

Again, not theoretical or general but direct and to the heart from God’s heart.

³Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

Grace: underserved favour and acceptance for sinners;

Peace: a peace gifted to people by this sheer grace – not by human achievement or success.

Grace and peace real: from Someone – not just ‘the universe’ or ‘God’ or ‘the heavens’. No, a person we have a relationship with:

God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then, an acknowledgement of where these people live:

… the present evil age.

Remember? a world where…

Nobody ever drifts toward the gospel. On the contrary, self-trust is the religion of the fallen heart.

(Michael Horton – Galatians Commentary by Luther, p2

They and we still live in a world that is not neutral. We live with a broken heart in a broken world urged on by a broken angel (The Accuser): a heart and a world always pulling away from, rejecting, disrupting, destroying Jesus and his gifts.

But the Father, Son and Spirit are here too!

Self-trust is the religion of the fallen heart.

but ‘Jesus trust’ is the religion of the redeemed heart.

All going well as Paul breaks into a little word of high praise to this Jesus and the Father…

… ⁵to whom be glory for ever and ever.

Amen! the Galatians say.

But then – ‘Pow!’

⁶I am astonished … !

Woah. Big word. No time to mess around!

This is serious. This is Paul the parent. He is like a parent confronting a teenager over discovering the use of drugs in the house or the steeling of money at school or the bullying of another kid at the skate park….. “I am astonished, perplexed, concerned, surprised and maybe a bit angry at your behaviour!”

Why so blunt and forceful? Because,

^{6 …} you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – ⁷which is really no gospel at all.

This is dangerous. The gospel is never the gospel if anything is added to it. The gospel of Jesus’ dying and rising for forgiveness and freedom in him plus anything else (in this case Jewish custom/Law) as the means by which we are forgiven and approved of by God sucks all the good news out of the good news!

Taking hold of another gospel other than the one Paul taught them is also deserting Jesus. It is pinning your life back on yourself, or the world, or someone else, not him.

This ‘gospel +’ belief shows a ‘confusion’ that will lead them down a really bad path – a pathway back to imprisonment, back to a grace-less and hope-less life; back to never knowing if you are a ‘real Christian’; if you have done enough, been good enough to be truly accepted by God. Paul is strong because he loves these people!

But he angry at those peddling the gospel + stuff.

Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

Now, it seems easy for us to see this. But this gospel + Old Testament Law way may not have seemed like a bad idea. For these ancient people, keeping some food laws and worship ceremonial laws and even circumcision was probably not as weird as we might find them.

Galatia was a pagan Roman province, and before that it was just another ancient pagan society full of gods and idols and food laws and ceremonial laws of all kinds.

Keeping the gods happy was in everyone’s interests. Sure, circumcision was a particular Jewish tradition, but everyone kept food laws and ceremonial laws of some kind.

It would be a bit like people now keeping a vegan or vegetarian diet or religiously keeping special celebration days now.

Maybe the ‘gospel +’ way is not a deliberate rejection of Jesus but more like a slide; a slide back into the familiar marks of Jewish faith for the Jewish people – or maybe a move into the more visible marks of another new Faith for the non-Jewish people – either way this is more likely to be Christians trying to please God, not wanting to reject Jesus!

Paul is strong to stop that slide!

Are we sliding?

The gospel + certain clothing; You can’t wear that and be a real Christian!
The gospel + a certain ethnicity; you can’t be Jewish or white or black or Asian or African and be a real Christian
The gospel + a nationality; You have to be Australian or American or German or….to be a real Christian
The gospel + ceremonies: you have to have set buildings, and furniture and ways of praying and sharing and singing and observing things to be a real Christian.

Adding to the gospel is departing from it.

⁴you are trying to be justified by the law, [and so] have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:4)

Maybe the way to identify your own tendency to ad a ‘+’ is to note how you are hard on yourself and others.

The gospel + hard work. I have to keep working for God.

The gospel + no moral failures. I cannot make mistakes.

The gospel + no laziness. I need to be on top of everything all the time.

The gospel + expected body image. I have to keep a certain shape or look or age or….

The gospel + successful farming or business or results or career. If I am not successful that means I am not pleasing God enough.

The gospel + your age – old or young. I have to be a certain age to be of best value to God.

The gospel + church observance. As long as I turn up and do my bit it will keep God happy….

Friends – these things are prisons. But here is our freedom:

The grace of God in this man, Jesus – his hard work, his perfect human live, his broken body, his raised body, his cultivation of my soul by his Word and Sacraments, his observance of me setting me free to worship him in everything.

Amazingly, He says he will never desert us.

I will be with you to the very end of the age’ says Jesus (Matthew 28)

In practical terms, Luther puts this golden gospel comfort like this:

So, by God’s grace, and only his gospel grace in Jesus, we remain free in the gospel today!

No need for gospel +, just the one and only gospel. But for sometimes confused or sliding Christians like us: