Galatians 1:6-10
No Other Gospel
The Christian faith is not politically-correct and astonishingly so by today’s standards. Indeed, it doesn’t even try to be. It makes claims that are ruled immediately out of order in any of our nation’s dominant institutions: education, business, entertainment, government, and any number of faux churches that dot our land. The Christian faith says things like: 1) Jesus is the only way to salvation (John 14:6); 2) There is such a thing as sin; 3) Sex outside of one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage is immoral; 4) There is a hell and many will be found there; and finally, 5) There is only ONE gospel and none other. And this list is composed of just a few exclusive non-negotiable and offensive claims that the Christian faith unapologetically makes. Indeed, the Christian faith is so offensive that many churches which have ceased to be churches are ashamed of these claims and essentially say that the Bible really doesn’t mean what it says and must be reinterpreted according to modern understandings.
Paul here speaks of “a different gospel” which really isn’t a gospel since there is no other. It seems from the letter that some Jewish Christians from outside the church were telling their Gentile Christian brethren that they had to be circumcised and keep other ceremonial laws of Moses to be saved. (These are called Judaizers.) And Paul came unglued. Christians were liberated from such law-keeping to walk by the Spirit, and no one had experienced this liberation more than himself—the former church persecuting Pharisee and uber Mosaic law keeper. And so he takes these churches to task for “deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ.”
What a statement: Deserting the Lord! And yet to preach a gospel other than the gospel of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is to desert the only gospel whereby God saves men from damnation. We have other gospels today but they are naturally different from those of Paul’s day. Whereas legalism was the problem then, antinomianism (anti-law) is the problem now. And so in an effort to make the gospel more appealing, it is treated as if it were a patient needing medical care in which cancerous parts (e.g., the items I listed above) are surgically removed and replaced with the prosthetics of diversity, tolerance, feminism, and then sprinkled with the pixie dust of “love” which means “don’t judge but affirm me regardless what I do with my body or in bed.” This doesn’t even amount to a false gospel but is an anti-gospel as it leaves people enslaved to their passions and desires. The Christian faith is what it is. Better to walk away than change it.
