Galatians 1
Paul is “astonished” (6) that the Galatian Christians are “deserting”
him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel . . .
This partial sentence summarizes the entire letter and is worth our reflection.
By “different gospel” Paul is referring to the teaching of the Judaizers, as they followed Paul from city to city. They taught that in order to be justified before God, one needed to keep the Mosaic law, most vividly pictured in the command to be circumcised. This was not that different from modern-day Mormonism, which say both, “We believe in grace,” and, “Oh, by the way, here are all my works.” This is, as Paul would say, both a “different gospel” and, at the same time, no gospel at all (7), because there’s no good news in it. Once you have smuggled in your own works, you have obliterated grace. And then you’re cooked.
But note how Paul puts it. When anyone departs from the only gospel there is, he is not just believing something different. It is much worse than that. It is desertion. Defection. A form of adultery. That’s because it’s not defecting from words on a page, or from an ideology or philosophy, but from a person. When they turned to another so-called gospel, they were deserting “him who called you.”
Every philosophy in human history experiences the death of its founder. Only one founder lives today and forever - Christ, raised from the dead. Every other philosophy can be rejected, and it’s nothing personal. But not so with Christianity. Christ lives. He reigns. He is King. Thus any defection from his gospel is like a soldier deserting his unit in battle or a citizen of one country defecting in order to join its enemy. Or it’s like one spouse leaving the marriage and in doing so breaking their marital covenant.
We must note one other thing. Paul is stern and pointed here. Later in the letter he will be so indignant that his grammar will drop out (chapter 3). But in all of it, he speaks with fiery love. That’s hinted at in v. 6 when he reminds them that God called them by grace - as opposed to naked demand, or by emotional manipulation, or by appeals to duty. God only calls people by His amazing grace. And that grace is only found in Christ.
September 25