We'll read from verse one just
to give us the context. Paul, an apostle, so it's Galatians
chapter one and verse one. Paul, an apostle, nor of men,
neither by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who
raised him from the dead. And all the brethren which are
with me unto the churches of Galatia, Grace be to you and
peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, who
gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this
present evil world according to the will of God and our Father. To whom be glory for ever and
ever. Amen. I marvel that ye are so
soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ
unto another gospel. Which is not another, but there
be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have
preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before,
so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto
you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I
now persuade men or God? Or do I seek to please men? For
if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading to us. I want to just continue in our
little study of Galatians. this evening and just reflect
a little bit on some of these verses at the start of the chapter
once again. I think this epistle to the Galatians
is a challenging and confrontational letter, which is not, of course,
to say that other portions of scripture are not challenging. However, Galatians teaches us
of the uniqueness of this gospel that we have from the Apostle
Paul in his epistles and in his preaching. And I think it confronts
us all with the possibility of erring in the truth and being
deflected and distracted from the essential gospel of grace. And Galatians teaches us to be
ready to examine what we believe and to be critical, not of one
another, but of our own assumptions and our own actions and motivations. It's very easy to find fault
in other people's faith and in other people's conduct. But Paul's
epistle brings the question of knowing and cherishing the true
gospel right to the door of each of us personally. Now it's interesting to just
realise both who the speaker is and the audience to whom Paul
is speaking. These people had been taught
by Paul himself. They had heard the gospel in
its purest, simplest, most authoritative form, right from the lips of
an apostle. They had sat at the feet of one
of the finest preachers and teachers ever gifted to Christ's church. And yet, within a short period
of time, the apostle is writing to them in amazement that they
had slipped back into a false conception of what it means to
serve and worship God. The good opinion he had of the
purity of their faith had been shaken. Let me say that another
way. These people knew the true gospel
and yet they were still tempted and indeed prone to depart from
the truth and to err in the way. If they could, then so can we. Paul marvelled that the Galatians
were so soon removed from God the Father and the Holy Spirit
who called them to faith and to experience the grace of Christ. Here we see the Trinity at work
in salvation. And Paul certainly was the preacher,
but I think he is pointing beyond himself, seeing himself as the
mere tool used in the hand of God to illuminate and draw these
Galatian brothers and sisters to himself. And this is really
our first point. By this we learn that spiritual
faith is a divine work in the soul of man. Yes, there is a
general call to faith in the gospel, but the person, the one
who calls new life into being is none other than God himself
who makes the new creature, who brings to life that which is
otherwise dead in sin and bestows faith as a gift. It is God who
gives wisdom. It is God who reveals Christ. It is God who gives us a knowledge
of the truth. It is God and not man who effects
the new birth and who brings about conversion. And another
lesson that we have from these opening verses is that Paul's
concern and surprise is the neglect by which the Galatian churches
had moved away from the distinctiveness and uniqueness of the grace of
Christ. They had heard that, they had
learned that. And yet, it's almost as if something
within them, something innate, something inherent in the human
soul always wants to be striving to do something for itself to
please God. Grace is the heart of the gospel. And in the context of God's justifying
mercy, Grace is contrary to works of any kind on the part of the
sinner. Now the Galatians knew this,
they had learned this. Paul had preached that and taught
that and they had received it during his ministry. When Paul
preached the grace of Christ to them, he was preaching that
salvation was wholly and exclusively a divine work of grace in which
the creature had no part or contribution except as a passive recipient. But we also learn that it's possible
for true believers to be removed from the simplicity that is in
Christ and to be robbed of the peace and the comfort and joy
of true faith. And that's not to say that these
saints had lost their faith or indeed that they had returned
to an unsaved state. The Lord will never lose one
of his little ones for whom he died. But the Galatians had taken
their eye off of Christ. Instead of looking to Christ
for all their righteousness and acceptance with God, they were
being tempted by these other preachers to look to themselves,
to look to their own works, to look to their own righteousness.
in order to add to their holiness and their sanctification and
to improve their standing with God. That's what they were being
taught by these false teachers. It seems as though in a few years
since Paul had been exercising this fruitful ministry in this
region of Asia Minor, another group of men, likely those that
we call Judaizers, had entered the region and begun to distress
the young believers with claims that their gospel understanding
as preached by Paul was fine insofar as it went, but more
must yet be added. And Paul calls these people troublers
or disturbers or perverters of the truth. And the force of his
language shows the strength of feeling that he had for gospel
purity. We might literally say sovereign
grace because Paul was contending here for the grace of Christ,
for sovereign grace. And it was as though these men
said to the Galatians, you've heard the good news from Paul
of God's grace in Christ. Now we've got more good news
for you. We've got something to add to
that. You've been justified by grace. Now you can be sanctified
by your works. But Paul is telling the Galatians,
that's not good news at all. Anything that distracts a believer
from looking by faith to the person of Christ for all our
righteousness and all our acceptance with God is bad news. It's not
good news. Anything that inhibits a believer
from resting upon the grace of God in Christ and dwelling upon
the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ is not good news to
our hearts and souls. It's bad news because it robs
us of God's blessing. It shakes our peace and it steals
our joy. Any doctrine which attributes
a believer's good standing before God to what we do, then it shows us that there is
no goodness in that doctrine. Any doctrine that attributes
a believer's good standing to the works of the law mixes grace
and works in the matter of salvation and reconciliation and there
is no gospel. Let me just say, this is why
we emphasise so much this distinction between law and gospel. The law is important. It has
its role, it has its place. It serves to demonstrate the
righteousness and the holiness of God, whose law it is. It serves
to expose and to weigh and to condemn sin in men and women
and show how far short of God's holiness we have fallen. But
it never makes us righteous and it never adds to our holiness. It neither contributes to our
justification or our sanctification. A believer's righteousness is
solely and entirely derived from Christ and all our holiness is
imputed to us by God and received by faith. Attempting to please
God by our works or our obedience to the works of the law or to
any degree is not a highway of holiness but a highway to trouble,
to loss and frustration. And then Paul gives us another
strong phrase. He's so adamant that the gospel
heard and received by the Galatians during his time with them was
in itself so total, complete and sufficient that he declares,
though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto
you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Now this language is what we
call an anathema, a curse, or a cutting off. And it could be
a cutting off from the ministry, a cutting off from the church,
or even a cutting off from grace and from Christ himself. And
it's intended by Paul to stress the impossibility of both the
apostle preaching a gospel different to what he had preached. There's
no way that Paul is going to change his message. And neither
is it possible for a true apostle or a true believer to be cut
off from Christ. Both are impossible. No angel
from heaven would ever preach anything different to what Paul
had preached. And Paul repeats this emphasizing
and confirming. It's as if Paul is saying, I
mean what I say here, let any other gospel, any altered, any
amended gospel, bring the speaker under the curse of everlasting
separation. And I think there's a little
lesson here that preachers ought to be aware of. We see from what
Paul is writing to the Galatians that the Galatians themselves
were not anathema for following these men, but the men were cursed
for preaching error. There's a price to pay for leading
men and women into error and robbing Christ's little ones
of their peace and rest in him. Any man that gets into a pulpit
doesn't have the gospel that the Apostle Paul preached, let
him be accursed for the damage that he is doing to the souls
of Christ's little ones. In verse 10 Paul tells the Galatians
that he's not interested in pleasing men or honouring men or gathering
men by human ideas and traditions. Paul's interest is simply declaring
the truth of God in Christ. And he supplies us with a very
clear evidence that the gospel of sovereign grace is true. He
says, every other religious teaching, every proposition, every scheme
known to man and taught by men, either invites or requires men
and women to do something to please and ingratiate themselves
to God. Every religion tells us how we
should live, what we must do and what God expects from us,
but not the gospel. And that's what makes the message
of grace in Christ unique. The gospel tells men and women
what Christ has done, what God in Christ has done for us at
the cross. and the gospel alone brings faith
to believe it. If the apostle were to preach
anything else, if he were to add or subtract anything from
what he had already taught the Galatians, by which grace was
compromised by the inclusion of works, then he would not be
a servant of Christ and he would not be a minister of the gospel. Let me leave with you three very
quick thoughts and then we're done. Let us, let you, let me
not become complacent in the faith. Don't look to our own
successes for comfort or our failures as a source of distress. We neither
enhance our standing with God by the good that we do, or diminish
our standing with God by the sin we commit. We are what we
are in Christ, and this is a perfection and a holiness that is his perfection,
and that alone is the ground upon which we stand before God.
And secondly, let us be jealous for this gospel, as Paul was. Let us not give ear to the Judaizers,
or space to the legalists and the workmongers who tell us what
we need to do to please God. Faith in Christ is all God requires
of us, and faith in Christ is what He gives. all God requires
of a sinner he first and freely grants to us by grace. And thirdly and lastly, let us
follow Paul in clearly distinguishing this gospel of sovereign grace
from all others that are in truth no gospel at all, And let us
declare with the Apostle, I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone
that believeth. Amen.