THE ONE TRUE GOSPEL
Meditations in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians
Chapters 1 & 2
1 - PAUL'S GREAT CONCERN

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IN SEEKING to meditate upon the letter to the Galatians it is necessary to understand the great concern of Paul in writing this letter which is opened up to us in the first two chapters. This concern is always relevant in the life of the church, and I believe is exceedingly relevant for the church of today. The concern of Paul was the purity of the Gospel which was being preached and believed within the church of God.

These days there is no very deep concern over this matter and as long as the preaching is sincere and roughly in line with general Christian thought, this is felt to be enough. There is today a very great fear of being too definite about true teaching. It is felt either to be rather arrogant to be sure of what is right, and thus quite wrong to say someone else may be wrong. On the other hand it is feared as bringing division into the church if we are too dogmatic about what is the true Gospel. Paul sees the matter in a totally opposite way. For him it is not arrogance to be sure, and it is a matter of what is pleasing to God and not what is pleasing to mankind that is important. It is also the safety of human beings and their salvation that is uppermost in the apostles mind, after his chief concern for the glory of God and to be obedient to the revelation of God.

PAUL'S GOSPEL

I have made the title of this section of our meditation 'Paul's Gospel' because we are discussing the revelation given to Paul expressed in this letter to the Galatians. However, the Bible makes quite plain that Paul's Gospel is very much the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Bible.

Paul understood only too clearly that our position before God depends on righteousness, righteousness being that character of God which is essentially his. Unless we have this holiness, that is a righteousness comparable to God's, we have fallen short of God's requirements, and are under his judgement, and God cannot be friends with us and we cannot be friends with God. If we are to be reconciled to God we must obtain a righteousness that is like God's righteousness.

Whatever we may say outwardly we all understand this very well inwardly. This understanding is expressed in the fact that we think in terms of our doing good as the means by which we please God and gain his favour. This is what Paul calls the righteousness which is by the law (ch.2:16). There is the law or standard of God before us. We then seek to keep that law in order to be righteous enough to be accepted by God. The problem then arises, if we are willing to face the issue squarely, that any righteousness we are able to produce falls lamentably below the righteousness of God. We find we can't keep the law perfectly in action or thought. When we regard the failure of the past there is no way we can remedy this failure in anyway.

Paul's Gospel is the only Gospel that answers this terrible dilemma. His Gospel is that God has stepped in with love and grace; and he himself, in the person of his Son, has provided that righteousness which meets his standards, and this he gives to sinners without condition or cost. The righteousness we need must be provided by another human being, so Jesus had to become incarnate. For the righteousness to be of sufficient value to be available for all, it must be provided by one who is God as well as man. So "God sent his Son. born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4:4) Then in his life Jesus lived God's righteousness completely for us, and in his death he fulfilled all righteousness by paying the full punishment for the sins of the whole world. So Paul says in Romans 1:16,17 that he is not ashamed of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ because in it is salvation from all our failure to keep God's law. How? Paul declares that in the Gospel a righteousness of God or from God has been revealed. In other words Jesus has, by his doing and dying, worked this righteousness which is available as a free gift to all who will believe it is for them. So in Christ we have a righteousness that allows us to have fellowship with God and be in his love forever, because it is a perfect righteousness that meets all the demands of God's holiness.

This is what Paul calls being justified, that is accounted by God just and righteous, by faith (ch.2:15,16).

THE EXCLUSIVENESS OF PAUL'S GOSPEL

Paul speaks in chapter 1 verses 6 to 10 in a way totally unacceptable to the Christian world today. He is totally exclusive, and exceedingly condemnatory of any view but the one he preached on this matter of what the Gospel is. He calls down a curse on anyone who promotes or teaches anything that is not exactly the Gospel he has preached. There is to Paul only one right Gospel and everything that deviates from that Gospel is error and very dangerous.

Why is he so adamant? The answer is very straight forward. In this Gospel which he preaches is the only righteousness that meets Gods requirements. If we add to this Gospel or take away from it, we are renouncing this righteousness and turning to some other inadequate righteousness, usually some combination between righteousness we work and which God provides.

The Gospel of Paul is very humiliating because it takes from us all our glorying. We have to confess that our righteousness is inadequate, and that our efforts are also. We have to come before God acknowledging not only that we are sinners fallen from God's favour, but that is all we can be in and by ourselves. We have to come with no offering, but instead just throw ourselves on the mercy of God.

The Gospel of Paul, on the other hand, is very strengthening and comforting because when we humbly receive it we know we are reconciled to God forever, because this righteousness which is made a gift to us can never be tarnished or reduced. It cannot be because it is already worked out and it is the righteousness of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. We can say with confidence that we possess eternal life, which is fellowship with God forever.

THE AUTHORITY OF PAUL

Paul, having spoken in this definite way which we observe in the opening of chapter one, anticipates the criticism that he is a self opinionated and arrogant person, and the criticism that why should he set himself up as one man questioning the authority of so many others. Why is he, Paul, to be listened to before the other teachers who had come into Galatia?

Paul makes two points. The first one is that he received his calling as an Apostle and his understanding of the truth of the Gospel directly from God. He speaks of the fact that after he had been called by God into faith, God led him into a period of understanding for more than three years in Arabia, where God revealed to him the truth of the Gospel. He did not consult other men. He only saw Peter and James, and then for only a very short time. This is all in the latter part of chapter one.

We may find this argument strange and perhaps unconvincing, because we depend wholly on the Bible for our revelation, and people who talk of private revelations are suspect. Things were different, however, for Paul. He had the Old Testament, and this he extensively studied as we have evidence of in the use he makes of it even in this letter to the Galatians. During the period in Arabia he was being taught by God the right way to understand the Old Testament. But further, the New Testament had yet to be written. Jesus had told his Apostles in John 14 to 16 that they would have special revelation from the Holy Spirit to hear and understand things they had not been told while Jesus was on earth, and to interpret what they remembered Jesus to say, and be able to write them down for the benefit of the church in the future. Paul as an apostle received this special and unique revelation. This is his authority.

Further Paul tells how he went before the chief apostles in Jerusalem to tell them the Gospel he was preaching to the Gentiles, and which God was so manifestly blessing. When he did this he received the total endorsement of the apostles in Jerusalem for his preaching, without any criticism or requirement. Plainly the church of the New Testament understood Paul's Gospel to be the one and only true Gospel. This is related by Paul in the first part of chapter 2 of Galatians.

There is a further evidence of his authority in these first two chapters of this epistle, and it is the testimony which Paul gives that God blessed this preaching and manifestly showed that it was the Gospel of God by the people who believed and were blessed by the preaching and witness of Paul. As Paul says in the beginning of chapter three, God sealed the truth of Paul's Gospel by giving the Spirit of God to dwell in the lives of the believers.

PAUL'S CONSISTENCY

Paul could never be accused of being inconsistent, and that he changed his teaching over time, or that he watered it down when he came up against opposition. Paul realised that this issue of the way we are made right with God is so crucial that there could not be any compromise with anything that would change it in any way. This consistency of stance is seen in verses 11 to 14 of chapter two of Galatians.

Paul came to Antioch to find that Peter who believed and agreed that salvation was totally free and without any works, either moral or religious, and upheld this doctrine by eating with Gentile Christians and not requiring any part of the Jewish law from them; when some people from Jerusalem came to Antioch, he was afraid of their criticism and so he changed his tune and separated himself from those Gentile Christians who did not keep any part of the Jewish religious system. By this Peter was undermining the Gospel of free salvation by grace and received through faith. He was suggesting that there was something imperfect in the faith of these Gentile Christians.

Paul saw (Verse 14) that Peter was acting contrary to the truth of the Gospel and he was not afraid to rebuke him publicly. It had to be public and to his face, because what Peter had done was not a private matter and effected the life and faith of others, and indeed the whole church.

Today we find it very difficult, even if we see the Gospel being compromised, to stand up and rebuke wrong doctrine and those who preach it. This is not a matter of being contentious and awkward. It is a matter of life and death. The only Gospel that saves is the Gospel of grace proclaimed by Paul. Any other teaching, if it deviates in anyway from Paul's Gospel, is bringing eternal danger to souls.

PAUL ARGUES FOR THE GOSPEL

In the rest of chapter 2 of Galatians, from verse 15 to 21 Paul argues the Gospel case. In verses 15 and 16 Paul says that he and others had come to know and understand that we are not saved by anything we do, any keeping of the law, whether it be moral or ceremonial; but that we are saved only through the work of Jesus for us, and that is by faith in Christ and what he has done for us. Because what Christ has done is perfect and all-sufficient it does not need any addition from ourselves or anyone else. To suggest there is any addition is to dishonour Christ and to suggest that his work is not complete or is deficient in some way. If we begin to add our works of whatever kind to our salvation, then we are dishonouring Christ.

Verses 17 to 20 are not easy to understand as Paul is assuming understanding and so does not fill out his words. The meaning would seem to be as follows.

In verse 17 Paul is answering the accusation that the Gospel of salvation solely through faith in Christ is wrong or incomplete. If this accusation is found to be substantiated then Paul and those preaching the same Gospel as he did are found to be sinners. They were sinning in preaching an incomplete Gospel. This means in fact that Christ was wrong and sinful because he preached this gospel of free grace through himself. Paul says bluntly that this is all nonsense. In fact (verse 18) Paul states he is not sinning by preaching his Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ, without any addition of works done by us, rather he would be a sinner if he preached any other doctrine, because he would be spoiling the Gospel.

Verses 19 and 20 are verses where Paul gives a practical expression of what the Gospel has done for him and all who believe it. Firstly in the Gospel the whole law of God is met. The Law is applied to the sinner and condemnation pronounced, and death carried out, but because the sinner is in Christ by faith, the punishment is carried out upon Christ and the sinner also dies because he or she is in Christ when he died. We have been crucified with Christ.

The purpose of this is that we might be saved and able to live for God. Because our sin has been dealt with completely in Christ and by Christ, and the sinner that we were and are is condemned in him, God sees now no fault in us and accepts us, and so we can live for him in restored fellowship. Not until all our sin has been dealt with and the law of God totally satisfied can we live for God and be accepted by God. So if we are depending on our own works in anyway, we can never be accepted by God or live for him, because our sin is still being atoned for. We are still outside God's love. Thus works are useless and take away all the complete security which comes from trusting in Christ alone.

Paul then goes on to speak of the reality of the life which is ours through faith in Christ. As far as God is concerned it is no longer I who is living but Christ is living in me. God sees Christ and his righteousness and not us. The Christian then lives his life in this assurance and faith in his body. In the body, with the flesh still fallen and corrupt, we still fail abysmally, but this does not worry or upset us as far as our standing before God is concerned, because we live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. In other words we are resting in the loving and perfect work of Jesus for us, and knowing thereby complete reconciliation with God and eternal acceptance, so that our sins do not cast us down or destroy our peace. In love for God for such blessing we want to please him by overcoming our sins, but our sins do not effect out standing before God or our peace because we live by faith in Jesus and what he has done for us.

This verse 20 is not a statement of action we take to maintain our salvation or any work we do, but simply a statement of the blessing and security which believing in Christ gives us. Paul ends the chapter with the telling statement. If we feel that the grace of God in Christ is not enough and we need to complete our salvation in anyway whatsoever, then we are virtually saying that Christ died in vain. He wasted his time.

CONCLUSION

We must see the concern in Paul which prompted his letter and governed his writing to the Galatians. The Gospel was at stake. The security and spiritual well-being of the Galatian Christians was in jeopardy. The Gospel was being destroyed. Christ was being made redundant and thus totally dishonoured. People had come in and told the Galatians that they had started well by believing in Christ's work for them, but to complete their salvation they must add something to it themselves by their own work and effort.

Today the church is turning in all sorts of different directions, after this new scheme and that, in order to complete salvation and raise Christians to a new experience of victory and blessedness. All this is saying Christ died for nothing. There is desperate need today for a fresh and deeper understanding of the Gospel, the righteousness of God revealed to save us - the Righteousness provided by God, and worked by Jesus Christ as our second Adam, for in this is the true revival of the church.

With Paul's concern in mind we shall be able to see how he works this out in chapter three as he addresses the perversion of the Gospel that had crept into Galatia.