This week, we are looking at the opening sections of a letter in the New Testament of our Bibles called the book of Galatians. Yesterday, we see Paul clearly communicate the message of the gospel. The message that reveals that God responded to our selfish rebellion and sin by sending His Son Jesus, God in a bod, who entered into humanity and allowed Himself to be treated as though He lived our selfish and sinful lives so God the Father could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life. The message that provides the opportunity for all humanity to receive the forgiveness of sin and enter into the relationship with God that they were created for by believing, trusting and following Jesus as Lord and Leader.
We ended by recognizing that normally when we read a letter in our Bibles that Paul wrote to a church, Paul usually begins his letter by thanking God and then transitions to express his thanksgiving for the members of that particular church or group of churches. Normally Paul will thank the members of a church for their love, their faith, their generosity, etc. So that is what we would think would happen here. Today, however, we see that is not where Paul goes next, beginning in verse 6:
I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
Now when Paul uses the word amazed here, this word literally means to be extraordinarily disturbed about something. What was so amazingly disturbing to Paul was that the members of the churches of Galatia were deserting God. The word deserting conveys the sense of changing one’s allegiance. And it wasn’t just that they were changing their allegiance so as to desert God; it was how quickly they were changing their allegiances and deserting God. Most scholars believe that Paul planted the churches in Galatia in 47-48 A.D. Yet, less than a year after returning from planting these churches, they were already bailing on following Jesus.
So what happened? What was causing them to change their allegiance and bail? Paul provides the answer in the second half of verse 6. The members of the churches in Galatia were running from God, who had called them to relationship with Him that was based on grace, or God’s transformational intervention and activity, for a different gospel. The members of the churches of Galatia were choosing to embrace and place their allegiance in another message that was proclaimed to be God’s good news to humans.
In verse 7, however, Paul confronts the members of the churches of Galatia by explaining that the message that they are embracing and placing their allegiance in was really not another gospel. But what does that mean? The word gospel literally means good news and refers to God’s good news that was to be proclaimed to humanity. Paul’s point here is that the message that they were embracing was not God’s good news. The message that they were placing their allegiance in was not from God.
Paul here is revealing the reality that there is only one message of the gospel and what the members of the churches of Galatia were embracing and placing their allegiance in was not it. What was happening in Galatia, and what still happens today, was that there were people who, as Paul says, were “disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” There were people in Paul’s’ day, as there are today, who were causing inward turmoil and confusion by preaching a false gospel. There were people in Paul’s’ day, as there are today, who wanted and desired to change and distort the message of the gospel.
Instead of proclaiming and embracing the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel, there were those in the churches of Galatia, as there are today, who were proclaiming and embracing one of two different forms of religion. Now the simplest definition of religion is this: religion is man’s attempt to do things for God in order to be right with God. And throughout history, humanity has tended to attempt change and distort God’s message of rescue through the message of the gospel into one of two different forms of religion.
The first form of religion is the religion of legalism. For the legalist, the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel seems just too easy, too simple. For the legalist, the idea that there is nothing that one can do for God in order to be right with God is too hard to swallow. The idea that forgiveness and a right relationship with God is solely based on placing one’s confident trust in what God has done for us through Jesus seems incomplete. There has to be more than faith in God’s grace. So what a legalist does is make a list of religious rules to follow in order to be right with God. Legalism is a religion that can call for faith in Christ plus works for God in order to be right with God. Or legalism is a religion that calls for works for God apart from faith in Christ in order to be right with God.
The second form of religion is the religion of license. The religion of license maintains that as a result of God’s grace, we can do whatever we want and still be right with God. We can lie, cheat, steal, sleep around and have friends with benefits, because at the end of the day, we are saved by grace. For the religion of license, the idea that forgiveness and a right relationship with God is solely based on placing one’s confident trust in what God has done for us through Jesus seems to give us license. The religion of license responds to God’s transformational intervention and activity through Jesus life, death, and resurrection by embracing the selfishness and rebellion that Jesus came to free us from so that we would instead live a life that reveals and reflects Jesus.
And it is here that we see Paul reveal for us a timeless reason why we are to vote no on religion. And that timeless reason is that we need to vote no on religion because religion is opposed to the gospel. Whether it is the religion of legalism or the religion of license, religion and the message of the gospel are diametrically opposed to one another.
The religion of legalism is opposed to the message of the gospel because legalism calls us to a life and a lifestyle that is based on our performance for God that will always fall short of being able to rescue us from the selfishness and rebellion that separates us from God.
The religion of license is opposed to the message of the gospel because licentiousness calls us to a life and a lifestyle that embraces the very selfishness and rebellion that separates us from God.
Tomorrow, we will see Paul respond to those who were proclaiming the false gospel of religion…
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