Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Mark Daniels: Welcome to Hear the Word of God, the online and broadcast teaching ministry of the Reverend Eric Alexander.

Reverend Eric Alexander: It would help you to have your Bible open at Galatians chapter one. We are going to begin today a new series of sermons on Sunday mornings on Paul's letter to the Galatians. It just happens that this is the one New Testament letter that we have never really studied systematically, either on Sundays or on Wednesdays, throughout at least my 15 years in St. George's Tron. It is a part of the New Testament which is full of relevance for us in so many ways, particularly in the present climate of the Christian church. It may be a matter of considerable importance for us in our own personal Christian lives to be studying it just now also.

The area called Galatia in the New Testament would be better known to us as the eastern part of Turkey. There, the Apostle Paul evangelized in his first missionary journey. You can read the record of it in Acts 13 and 14. He went through several towns whose names would probably be familiar to you, like Perga, Pisidian Antioch, and so on. There, the Apostle with Barnabas, his companion, not only preached the gospel, but as was their constant custom, they planted churches. All over this area of ancient Galatia, modern Turkey, there were churches which were planted by the Apostle. When Barnabas and he had finished their journey, they retraced their steps, as it were. They went back through these churches to see how they were, to establish them, to help them to grow, to encourage them, and to ordain elders there so that they might have some continuing church life and pastoral care.

The Apostle had been the means under God of planting these churches. They were, as he would have said, his spiritual children. There is no relationship quite like that. If you know what it is like to have been there when someone was brought to faith in Jesus Christ, and in some sense therefore to look upon them as spiritual children, there is a very special kind of bond and relationship between a spiritual parent and a spiritual child, just as you would find in the natural sphere.

There is no doubt whatsoever that when the Apostle Paul wrote this letter to this group of churches in the area called Galatia, he was, to put it mildly, upset. He was deeply distressed indeed. There was something that had disturbed the Apostle to the very foundations of his being. Here, as you might have noticed in our reading of the first nine verses this morning, he uses probably about the most intemperate language that you find the Apostle using anywhere in his letters.

He says in verse six, for example, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel." In verse nine, "As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned." Or, as in some of the less refined translations, "let him be accursed."

The question arises: what is it that is disturbing the Apostle Paul? What has upset him? It is not simply that people had disagreed with certain opinions that Paul expressed. It is not that he has taken the huff because some others who are now teaching these Galatians, his successors indeed, are not agreeing with all Paul's policies. Nor is he upset because they don't like him personally. I think that might be true, but that's not what really upsets him.

What upsets him is that there have been teachers who have come into these churches in Galatia who have distorted the truth of the gospel. The Galatians have been infected by some kind of doctrinal virus which threatens to destroy them. Paul's language is therefore strong. His concern is deep. The reason is he is talking about the eternal safety of his own spiritual children.

Let me give you a parallel to the situation. If you were to be, or could think of yourself as, the parent of a child whom you had to leave in the care of someone else, and you had left instructions with that person that they had to have hot milk every night before they went to bed. If you found that they were getting cold milk every night, you might raise at least one eyebrow, but you would not be annoyed, upset, or distressed because that's just a different way of serving the same thing, and you wouldn't be greatly worried.

But if you discovered that they were offering your child a glass of cyanide or arsenic, you would not respond by saying, "Well, I am a tolerant kind of person, broad-minded, and not likely to get into a stew about minor details, and everybody has a different view of these things." You would immediately, of course, become extremely intemperate. You would become quickly distressed and realize that something urgently needed to be done about this situation because the physical safety of your physical child was at stake.

Paul's concern is that the spiritual safety of his spiritual children is even more important. This is why he departs from his usual form of introducing a letter, which he usually does by introducing himself and bringing a greeting, and then by congratulating the people to whom he writes on their spiritual progress or thanking them for their prayers and assuring them that he prays for them. Instead of all this, he launches straight into the problem in verse six. "I am astonished," he says, "that so quickly," that is, so soon after they had been converted, "you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to another gospel."

What is the problem that Paul is addressing in these first few verses? We need to understand it if we are going to understand the rest of Galatians. The problem concerns the very nature of the Christian message. It is really the issue of what is the Christian gospel. A subsidiary problem was the problem of the Apostle Paul's authority as an apostle. But there is no doubt whatsoever that, as is almost always the case, the personal attack on the Apostle was a means of undermining the gospel which he preached.

In verses three to five of the passage we read this morning, Paul outlines the gospel message for them, and you can see it. This greeting, "grace and peace to you" and so on from verse three, is really a concentrated exposition of the gospel. I don't intend to unpack it all to you this morning, but it does repay careful study. He says the gospel is concerned with Christ's sacrificial death. That is the core of the Christian gospel. Wherever you begin, you need to come quickly to this central issue of the Christian faith. If you are explaining the Christian message to a total stranger, this is the place that you must home in on speedily.

The Christian gospel is focused upon the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ as the savior of sinners. Paul focuses upon that. Do you notice he tells us four things about it? The thing that was really at stake in Galatian churches because of these false teachers was the last of them, but let me point out the other three to you first.

The first is the nature of Christ's death is that it is a sacrifice for sins. "Grace and peace to you," that's Paul's customary greeting, "from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins." Now that is the nature of Christ's death. It is a sacrifice for sins. He gave himself to die in our place, to take upon him as the sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament took upon itself the sins of the people, laid symbolically upon its head by the hands of the priest. This is what Christ is fulfilling. He died as a sacrifice for sins. That's the nature of Christ's death.

The object of his death, in the next phrase, is to rescue us out of this present evil age. Verse four, "who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age." Now this is how Paul sees the work of Christ upon the cross. It is a rescue mission. He has come to rescue or free or release us out of the bondage of Satan, who is the prince of this world and who in this age has captured men and women as his subjects. Now Jesus Christ has come not only to sacrifice himself as an offering to take away the guilt of our sin, he has come also to rescue us from out of the dominion of Satan. That's the object.

The origin of Christ's death, thirdly, is in the will of God the Father. You notice how he points this out to us at the end of verse four, "who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father." So from before the beginning of time, it was the plan and purpose of God, and this is where the cross of Christ has its origin, to die in our place in the person of His Son.

The nature of Christ's death therefore is that it's a sacrifice for sins. The object of it, to rescue us out of this present evil age and therefore from the dominion of Satan. And the origin of it is in the will of God the Father. But the fourth thing is the key to what Paul is really focusing upon in this letter: the basis of Christ's death is that it is a gift of free grace. And the word "grace" at the beginning of verse three is not merely a greeting like "Dear Galatian Christians." It is a theological term which defines for us the basis upon which God saves sinners through Jesus Christ. He does it as a gift of free grace.

Notice what he says: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins." And in verse six, when he is telling them how amazed he is that they have deserted this gospel, he says, "I am astonished you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ." Now it is around this word "grace" that the whole of the Christian message gathers. It's here that the confusion had been sown in the churches at Galatia.

The gospel as Paul preached it, you see, you can read this in Acts 13 and 14, but the gospel as Paul preached it was a gospel which said that salvation had been achieved for us, gained for us entirely by what Christ had done on the cross. When Paul comes to proclaim it, salvation is a free gift of God to sinners. All we do is to receive it. There is nothing we can do to earn it. There is nothing we can do to add to it. There is nothing that we may subtract from it. Christ has gained salvation, and he gives it to us. That's the gospel of grace. The gift of God is eternal life.

The problem in the churches in Galatia was that that pure gospel of grace had been corrupted and they had been thrown into confusion. Notice how he says, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion." Now confusion was what reigned in the church in Galatia. You will realize how topical that is today. There is no question whatsoever that in the Christian church in Britain this morning, let's focus on ourselves in the Christian church in Scotland today, there is confusion.

What's the confusion about? The confusion is about what the gospel really is. What is the message of the Christian faith? I could prove that to you very easily. Indeed, one of the Sunday papers proved it not terribly long ago by going to churches all over Scotland and stopping people when they came out to ask them, "If somebody came from another world and asked you what the Christian message is, what would you say?"

There were many different replies. The most popular one was: the Christian message is that you do good to your neighbor and serve God as best you can, or that you live by the golden rule, "Do to others as you would like to be done to by them." Eighty percent of the people who answered, answered in these terms. That, they said, is what the Christian gospel is.

I can still remember when I first went to Ayrshire, going to a meeting of ministers of which I was the junior member. I sat quiet and said not a single word. But they were discussing what the gospel was. One of my senior colleagues said, "Well, the simplest way I can put it, I remember this so vividly, the simplest way I can put it is if you do your best and live up to your own lights, God will never keep you out of the many mansions."

That's the gospel. I don't think we can look at the Galatians and say what a pity they were in such confusion because the confusion is rife in our own generation. But it's not just confusion like that. It is confusion that sometimes is more subtle about the gospel of grace. What Paul is concerned with in this letter, as we shall see, is that we are saved by what Jesus Christ has done in his death on the cross and by nothing else. I cannot add to it. So to say that salvation is through Jesus and anything else is always appalling heresy.

The reason it's so serious is not just that it's a different doctrine. The reason it's so serious is it is our eternal welfare that is at stake. Whenever you put that little conjunction "and" after Christ and his saving death, you imperil your soul. Now this is what concerned the Apostle. The truth of the matter is, you see, in the words of Archbishop Temple, that the only thing that I contribute to my own salvation is the sin which makes it necessary. Do you grasp that? The only thing that I contribute to my own salvation is the sin which makes it necessary. That's what grace means.

Now there are many people who imagine, and this is one of the reasons that there are some people who have never come to full assurance of salvation, they imagine that though Christ's death on the cross for my salvation is crucial, there is something else that I need to add to it. What Paul is saying is there is nothing, nothing that you can add to it. So he says, "I am astonished that you have been so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel. Some among you are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ."

Let me say to you again that Paul is intemperate, calls down the judgment of God upon these teachers because the issues are so important. Let me just point out one of them to you. Do you notice what he says in verse six? What he says is that departing from the truth and departing from God are always joined together. "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the gospel." No, that's not what he says. "I am astonished that you have changed your convictions about the truth." No, that's not what he says. "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to another gospel."

They have not only been deceived about the gospel, they have distanced themselves from God. I want to tell you this morning, my dear friends, from my own experience over 30 years as a pastor, whenever people turn from the truth of the gospel in all its biblical, apostolic fullness, they also turn from God. You cannot turn from the one without turning from the other. There develops in people's lives that sense of distance from God as they distance themselves from the gospel.

I was a conference a long time ago in London where people from every kind of theological background had come and every denominational background. They had met together because they wanted to consult with what they called conservative evangelical ministers. I was there as an observer simply. What they were saying was this: "We are greatly concerned about the spiritual state of our congregations. We find that people do not know God as we long that they might know them." One of them got up and said, "And let it be said, we do not know God ourselves as we long to know him." Many of us could have said we want to know God better, too.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the people who was asked to be present and he got up and said, "It is impossible to divorce your personal walk from God from your personal convictions about the Christian gospel and your attitude to the truth." The reason is very simple. The truth is not just a set of propositions. The truth is Christ. "I am the truth," he says. To depart from the truth is to distance yourself from him. I could show you many people in whose lives that is most tragically true. So Paul says, "You've been distanced from God because you've been diverted from the gospel."

It's not a matter of personalities. You will notice how Paul emphasizes this in verse eight. "Even if we ourselves or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned. As we have already said, so now I say again: if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than that which you accepted, let him be eternally condemned."

Now I have a commentary on Galatians, quite a lot, but I've got one particularly where the writer says, "Modern readers will recognize how un-Christlike is Paul's intemperate outburst." It would be possible for us to think that. "Let them be accursed," he says. "How un-Christlike is Paul's intemperate outburst."

Well, let me read to you some words of Jesus in Mark chapter nine and verse 42 because there Jesus is speaking about something very similar. "If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck." Now there's not a great deal of difference. The actual statement Jesus makes is if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble. It would be better for him, he says, if a large millstone were put round his neck and he was cast into the sea. It is as important as this.

I think the reason that some find that language intemperate and unacceptable, or even the reason that people like you and I may find it strange, is that we don't care the way the Apostle Paul cared for the glory of Christ in the gospel, or for the good of the souls of men and women who desperately need the right medicine. Come back to that child. If you were to say, "Well, I'm broad-minded enough to admit that cyanide may be something that the child should take," that would be because either you were very ignorant of the truth or you had absolutely no care for the child.

That's the issue. If we cared for the glory of Christ and the gospel more, we would find our hearts burdened in the way Paul's heart is burdened for the truth.

Mark Daniels: You are listening to Hear the Word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hear the word of God.org where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That's hear the word of God.org. You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I'm Mark Daniels, thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and Hear the Word of God.