As I write, the football season has just finished and it’s now the transfer period. Lot’s of football players will be on the look out for a better offer. Some will be willing to abandon a club that they’ve played for over many seasons, that has looked after them well and where they’ve enjoyed the devotion of the fans in order to turn out for their team’s deadliest rivals. Why? Well it may be in the hope of winning trophies, getting an international call up or simply a better pay deal.
A look at the text (Read Galatians 1:6-10)
(V6) Paul is amazed, shocked disturbed at how quickly the Galatian believers have been led astray. I guess that the reference to “the one who called you” could suggest personal rejection of Paul himself but in fact, it is God the Father who has called them to follow Christ and into his family. This means that it is the Gospel itself they are being transferred from to a different Gospel.
(V7) There isn’t really a different Gospel because there isn’t anything else that is truly good news. Instead, what happens is that people distort/corrupt the good news so that its joyful goodness is lost. Notice that Paul, sees the agitators actions in distorting the Gospel as intentional.
(V8-9) No-one regardless of status, not even apostles nor angels, is authorised to change the Gospel because the good news message belongs to Jesus himself. Paul uses strong words for those who attempt to distort the Gospel, they are to be “anathematised” or declared cursed. In other words, they should be treated as outside of God’s people, they are to be disciplined and excommunicated from the church. This is because what they do is harmful. This is repeated for emphasis.
(V10) Paul sets his own approach up in contrast with the agitators. Who is he trying to please, God or people? If the latter, then he no longer serves Christ. The point is that Paul willingly identifies with Jesus, the one considered cursed and afflicted by people, in contrast to those who seek honour and strength from a human perspective but are in fact under the curse of judgement.
Digging Deeper
There seems to be a tendency in some contemporary approaches to Galatians to assume that the agitators in Galatia were well intentioned but misguided. So, it has been suggested that their position arose out of a desire to encourage holiness, unity and assurance. From this perspective, the problem was not with the suggestion that Gentiles should be circumcised, this would not have been a problem for those who truly understood the nature of the sign. However, Galatian believers misunderstood the sign and so it became a burden and a distraction to them.
Paul’s tone, the urgent switch to rebuke, the expressed shock and his explicit denunciation of those involved are not hyperbolic here. It is clear that he sees the intent of at least the core group of agitators as malign. They were not merely naively getting things wrong from good motives. Their motives were wrong and hence they were under a curse.
It is important that we treat false teaching seriously. It is not just an intellectual failing but a moral one too. Of course, it is true that people can be in error, mislead or misunderstanding Scripture out of good motives. However, we need to be alert and on the watch for deliberate false teachers who sadly are wilfully seeking to lead people astray for personal gain. Adding rules to the grace of the Gospel enables false teachers to impose a guilt burden on others and so create dependency cultures.
Sadly, too often we see false teachers given the benefit of the doubt and actively promoted. They are given airtime in interviews and enabled to write articles, speak at conferences and publish books. This should not be so.
A Look at ourselves
The crucial question for you and me is whether or not we might be tempted to look around for “the better deal.” False teaching and alternative Gospels are often attractive because they seem to offer ways of guaranteeing assurance and blessing. Yet, if the promise is not from and not abut Christ and Christ alone then it will prove empty and futile.
Faithroots 