A Warning From the Book of Galatians to Focus on the Gospel Alone

The following is an excerpt from the Storyteller Galatians Bible study week one.  

Paul typically began his New Testament letters with words of affirmation for his audience. He told the Romans they were “loved by God, called as saints.” The Corinthians were “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” The Ephesians were “faithful saints.” And he called the Colossians “faithful brothers and sisters.” The Galatians received no such pat on the back. Because they questioned the most essential teaching they’d received, Paul got straight to the point. He outlined his authority and cut to the chase. The appeal to his authority as an apostle is essential to the contents of the letter. An apostle is someone sent by God to exercise a specific kind of leadership in the New Testament church. Like the other apostles, the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to Paul and called him to the role of apostle. The gospel message is their message—salvation comes from Jesus alone.  

The gospel message Paul taught brings the grace and peace that Jesus offered and we all desire. In fact, we can’t experience those blessings any other way. The good news of the gospel begins with grace—the unmerited favor of God— given to us by His Son, Jesus. Peace is the implication of that grace. On our very best day, sin utterly defeats us. In our own ability, power, and ingenuity, we have no hope of rescue—ever. But we do have hope. Jesus died in our place to rescue us. The grace that rescues us from death gives us the peace of new life. We can’t earn our way to God—to try to is an exhausting pursuit. But Jesus provides another way. God came to us to call us to the kind of freedom that only He can offer. This is good news, for the Galatians and for us.  

We are all sinners saved by grace and seeking to step forward in the peace that grace brings. At the same time, we have expectations of ourselves and other Christians. If those expectations are founded in the grace and peace of Christ, we don’t need to apologize for them. The New Testament writers certainly didn’t. To say the gospel comes to us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ simply means the gospel comes to us as an unearned gift from God (by grace) because of our belief and trust in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (through faith in Jesus Christ). The real gospel is no more and no less than this. Any “gospel” that adds to or takes away from this is no gospel at all. The opening of the letter finds Paul amazed, and not in a good way. Not long after leaving Galatia, the church in that region turned to false teaching. They began listening to teachers who gave a message that conflicted with the gospel of grace. This “different gospel” added requirements of the Jewish ceremonial law to salvation. Paul didn’t water down what was happening. This was serious business, made clear when he used the word cursed to describe those who participated. Any teaching that is contrary to salvation by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ is wrong— even if that teaching is given by the most eloquent, persuasive, impressive, and intelligent person you’ve ever met. There are terrible consequences for every person who accepts a false gospel (Hebrews 2:1-4). Whether we add rules Jesus never intended or water down the truth to suit cultural norms of behavior, we are missing the richness that can only be found in the only gospel that saves.  

Paul probably wished he had a different story. It couldn’t have been easy to recount the horrific acts he had previously committed against Christians. But we see here in Galatians, in Paul’s other letters, and in Acts that he shared his story again and again. Why would he choose to publicly revisit the greatest regret of his life? Why would he risk the emotional vulnerability such transparency would invite? Why would anyone? Paul shared his story in its truest, ugliest form, because his story was a clear picture of the power of the gospel and the change Christ brings. The gospel freed Paul from a bad story and replaced it with a better story. By grace, God reached into Paul’s destructive heart and set him on the path of life. By grace, God called Paul out of darkness, revealed Jesus to him, and set him apart. As such, Paul’s story didn’t end in ugliness. It became a beautiful and powerful story. The gospel changed Paul’s life, and he fought to keep that message clear and available to all. Every Christian’s story is one of grace and power; it’s the story of abandoning the shackles of sin for the boundless hope of freedom with Jesus. The gospel is a God-inspired story, and it is also every Christian’s personal story. That’s true whether you are the greatest missionary the world has ever known or a new convert in Galatia where different teachings confuse your understanding. It’s true whether you grew up going to church every week or rejecting God entirely. None of us are the sum of our choices; we are the products of Jesus’s care for us. We are free to believe the gospel because the gospel story has the power to change our story. In this sense, we all have the same story—and each story reveals beautiful evidence of the power of God’s amazing grace.