Galatians 1 ~ The Fellowship of the Gospel

Last Sunday was a special Unichurches Together combined service. We looked at the 1st chapter of Paul's letter to the Galatians back in 50 AD (such as those in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra). While Paul usually starts his letters off with a greeting followed by thanksgiving, the stark difference here is Paul's expression of his astonishment at the Galatian's turning to a different gospel so quickly (verse 6) in place of the usual thanksgiving. This different gospel (verse 6) is not another gospel but rather a "gospel plus" where rules such as circumcision, food laws, works, and tongue-speaking are added on to distort the gospel of Christ (verse 7). The problem becomes apparent when the gospel of grace is destroyed as gospel plus is added to it.

The dangers of such false teaching is that it has the basic truth i.e. salvation through faith in Christ, BUT regulations are added in, making it seem that faith alone is insufficient. Such disparity threatens to ruin the commonality of the gospel and disunite Christian fellowship. Paul warns us to shun away from such teaching, even if he was the one to preach the false gospel (verse 8). The gospel truth remains as the one first heard by the Galatians as Paul originally preached to them, as recorded in Acts 13.

Paul acknowledges that this truth is not man's gospel (verse 11) but one received through a revelation of Jesus Christ (verse 12). The truth is not an easy one to swallow and will not please everyone, being the sinful beings that we are. The temptation to water down the hard truth so as to make the gospel more attractive and to draw more people to it is in common existence but we must never resort to it - people need to learn AND accept the entire gospel truth as it is.

As Christians, how then do we let our lives be changed by this truth about Jesus? In Paul's case, we see how he formerly persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it (verse 13) but turned 360 degrees when he was called to be set apart for God by preaching the faith he once tried to destroy (verse 23). Such is the kind of change that we need to adopt now that we have been saved and are now His stewards charged with the responsibility to share this true gospel with others that they too may call Jesus their personal Lord and Saviour.

Will you be the change?