This past Wednesday in our weekly Prayer Gathering on Zoom, we read a few passages from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. And if there’s one thing Galatians does, it’s putting eternal things first.
Paul’s letters typically begin with cordial expressions of thanks—gratitude to the Lord and appreciation for the church to which he writes. But not Galatians. Instead, he begins with a bold warning:
“Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed” (1:8-9).
You see, people in the Galatian churches were veering toward an alternative “gospel”—and it seems that this errant message overemphasized rules and minimized faith. So Paul sets them straight: “A person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ,… by works of the law no one will be justified” (2:16).
Paul even took Peter to task because his “table manners” were at odds with the gospel. When Jewish-Christian church leaders from Jerusalem visited the Galatians (in central Turkey), Peter withdrew from sharing meals with Gentile Christians—he couldn’t be seen with those unclean people! In response, Paul rebuked Peter openly because his “conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel” (2:14). Peter was “preaching” heresy by his actions.
Just think: careless Christians can contradict the gospel not only by how they talk (i.e., speaking heresy), but also by how they eat (i.e., by erecting social walls between believers and thus insinuating that the grace of God alone is not enough to make another person my brother or sister in Christ). Such divisive behavior is anti-gospel.
To be sure, faith leads to good works (5:6). But words or actions suggesting that we come into God’s favor by anything we do are wrong, dead wrong: they clash with the genuine good news of saving grace as God’s gift to us received by faith alone!
