Chapter 1: What is the core message of the gospel according to Derek Thomas?
For Christians, there can always be a temptation to think that we contribute something to our salvation.
Belief that certain styles and certain rules, man-made rules, rules of a certain religious tradition, and unless these are kept and kept rigorously and kept to the full, there cannot be an assurance of salvation.
When we add additional requirements to the gospel, we distort it. It becomes, as the Apostle Paul put it, a different gospel. It's an era which dates back to the first century, to one of the earliest churches, and it reminds us of our own tendency to add works to the gospel.
This is the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and we're starting a series on the gospel as our featured teacher, Derek Thomas, turns our attention to the book of Galatians. And until midnight tonight, you can request this series. It's titled, No Other Gospel, along with a copy of R.C. Sproul's commentary on Galatians when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org.
Well, here's Ligonier Teaching Fellow, Derek Thomas, to begin our study.
Well, hello. We're going to take a tour of what I think is one of the most exciting letters in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul, and that's Galatians. It's a short letter, six chapters. We're going to cover it in 14 sessions. This is Paul, the young man, rather than Paul in the pastoral epistles as a a man 20 years older than he is here.
And here he comes across passionate, zealous, sometimes right on the edge. Something's happening in the church in Galatia that's upsetting him, and he doesn't spare anything. And at one point says that some witches have cast a spell on them, and they're retreating from the gospel.
We can't think of Galatians without thinking of the Reformation and Martin Luther and a wonderful commentary that he wrote on Galatians that was hugely significant. It was in part telling folk where he was in his journey and his understanding of justification by faith and the gospel. And in another sense, it was a vehicle to propel the Reformation on a certain path
One thinks a hundred years later of John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners where he recalls that it was Luther's commentary on Galatians that affected him and brought about eventually the wonderful book Pilgrim's Progress, which next to the Bible is the most important book for Christians to read.
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Chapter 2: How does adding requirements distort the gospel?
And Paul is passionate about wanting to defend what's at the very core, what is of the very essence of the gospel, and that is the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, apart from the works of the law. Paul had come to Galatia. This is perhaps a couple of years, two or three years after he first visited Galatia. Galatia is… Modern Turkey, think of it that way.
There's a scholarly debate as to whether Galatia was in the north or whether Galatia was in the south. It's kind of boring as a topic, but I think it's in the south and it includes places like Lystra and Derby and places like that. And something has gone on in the church at Galatia since Paul left. And Paul had preached the gospel, but now something has happened.
People have come in, Judaizers have influenced them. They've deviated from the purity of the gospel.
And so let's dive straight in, and the first thing I want us to see here after Paul's introduction, and it's a typical introduction in which he does his usual salutation and so on, and then in verse 6, this, "'I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.'"
And so the first thing I want to see is a precise formulation of the gospel. The gospel Paul preached, he says in verse 1, "...came to him from the risen, resurrected, ascended Christ." The apostle says that he received this gospel. It was shown to him. It was revealed to him. And now he summarizes it in four brief phrases.
First of all, he says to us in verse 4, "...who gave himself," he's talking about Christ, "...grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself." a voluntary act of condescension on the part of Christ. He gave Himself. It's reminiscent of what is a core, I'm going to say, mission statement that Jesus Himself uses in Mark chapter 10.
The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. And that phrase is a combination of several Old Testament passages, including one from the fourth servant song in Isaiah 53. And I think that becomes a kind of early... confessional statement on the part of the early church.
Before there was a New Testament, how did the early Christians know what to believe? And they formed little catechesis, little statements of doctrine, especially doctrine about the gospel. And one can imagine here, verse 4, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever.
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Chapter 3: What historical context is important for understanding Galatians?
And that sounds like something that could be a little sort of catechism statement. What is the reason why Jesus came into the world? And they would repeat something like this, and Paul perhaps is implying it here because he's formulated this statement. So the first thing, Jesus gave himself, and then for our sins.
And Paul uses this little preposition, huper, in Greek, which is a preposition of substitution. And it occurs fairly frequently in the writings of the Apostle Paul to describe the atonement, to describe what it is that Jesus did in giving Himself, in dying upon the cross. He was dying in our place, who gave Himself for our sins.
that the atonement was an act of substitution in order to deal with our sins. So, at the heart of the gospel is a problem, and the problem is sin. The gospel addresses the problem of sin, first of all. The gospel is not Jesus makes you happy or Jesus makes you content. That's true, but that's not the gospel. The gospel deals with sin. It deals with transgression.
It deals with the fact that we've broken God's law, that we've severed our relationship with our heavenly Father. And then a third aspect, to deliver us from the present evil age. There are two worlds. And there's this world and there's the heavenly places. There's the world to come. It's a parallel world. It's a world where the body of Jesus is.
It's a world where angels and archangels and the church triumphant are to be found. This world is aching and groaning and travailing in birth, waiting for the renewal of all things. And it's under the dominion of Satan, the prince and power of the air.
And Paul is saying, we are going to be delivered from this present evil world, and we're going to be delivered, of course, into a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness will dwell. There's an aspect of the gospel that is about thinking about those things which are above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. He gave Himself.
He gave Himself for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age, and then fourthly, according to the will of your God and heavenly Father. The origin of the gospel is not simply Jesus.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians?
The origin of the gospel is God the Father. Think of John 3, 16, for God the Father so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. The gospel is not that Jesus makes a reluctant Father gracious to us.
The initiative of the gospel, the initiative to save, the initiative to bring us out of the clutches of Satan and into the arms of Jesus, safe and secure forever from the consequences of our sin, that initiative lies in the heart of our heavenly Father. And then in verse 6, I'm astonished. That you are so quickly deserting Him who called you in the grace of Christ.
And I wanted to emphasize that word grace because what is the gospel? And the gospel is a message of grace. That's going to be very important here in Galatians because Paul is deeply, deeply suspicious that many of them are moving away from grace and into something else, into law, into legalism. And we'll come back to that a little later. So, the gospel is about Jesus.
It's about the giving of Jesus for our sins to deliver us from this present evil age, and all of this is part of the sovereign will of our heavenly Father, and it's a message of grace. Then, secondly, if that's the formulation of the gospel, secondly, a passionate believer observation of the distortion of the gospel, and I want to focus on verses 6 and 7.
We've already mentioned verse 6 several times now, that he's astonished that they're so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. And then Paul has to sort of almost correct himself because there really isn't a different gospel if by that you mean that there are two kinds of gospels and you can take one or the other. No,
One is the true gospel, and the other is a false gospel. One is a gospel that saves, and the other is a gospel that actually will condemn you, and it's no gospel at all. It's not good news. You might call it the gospel, but it's not the gospel. It's a gospel that condemns. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
Paul is writing to Christians. He's writing to those who profess to be Christians in Galatia, and something has happened. There are those, and he mentions those who trouble you, those who want to distort the gospel. Who are these? They're Judaizers. They're fanatics for the Torah. They're followers of Moses.
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Chapter 5: What does Paul mean by 'a different gospel'?
You remember how John will say in the prologue of the gospel, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. That's a relative contrast, but it's made in absolute terms. John doesn't mean that there's no grace and truth in Moses, and he doesn't mean to say there's no law once we believe and follow Jesus. But relatively speaking, Moses is about law.
Jesus is about grace and truth. And Paul here wants to emphasize that point. grace and truth part of the gospel, and he's deeply suspicious that there are those among them who are leading them astray. They were folk who were concerned, for example, about what about Gentiles, Gentiles who come to faith? and they come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. But they weren't circumcised like the Jews.
They didn't observe Jewish food laws. They didn't observe the ceremonial calendar, Passover and tabernacles and so on. And were they to be…were these ceremonial boundary markers that identified Jewishness and Judaism and the religion of Judaism, were these things to be imposed upon the Gentiles? It's the issue that would be before the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15.
And since Paul doesn't mention that, that's why I think this is written before the Jerusalem Council. There were those who were saying that in order to be right with God, in order to be in a righteous standing with God, it wasn't enough to believe in Jesus. Yes, you need to believe in Jesus, but you need to believe in Jesus and. You need to believe in Jesus plus Jesus. Observe the law.
Plus be circumcised. Plus follow the dietary laws. Plus obey the Jewish calendar. And plus and plus and plus. And that's a damnable plus for Paul. It's Jesus only. It's salus Christus of the Reformation. By faith alone in Christ alone and apart from the works of the law. And those who are advocating the necessity to obey the law were preaching a different gospel. A gospel that isn't a gospel.
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Chapter 6: How does Paul define the gospel in Galatians 1:4?
A gospel that isn't good news. It's the gospel plus tradition. For us, it might be something a little different, a little more subtle. It's the gospel plus a certain degree of emotional reaction to your sin, a certain quality of repentance. The gospel plus the King James Version. The gospel plus women should wear hats in church. The gospel plus you must do it this way and not that way.
The gospel plus worship style that conforms more to prejudice than to principle. And so on, and it can be very subtle and it creeps in. And it creeps in by little gossipy statements that we make. You know that church that we went to or that group of Christians, you know they didn't do X or they didn't do Y. And these are not issues of first principle. These are secondary things.
They're issues of prejudice. And before long, we're saying you cannot possibly be a Christian unless you do X or you do Y or you do Z. And Paul is addressing that subtlety. It can creep in. The gospel plus a certain… moralistic, therapeutic deism, as some have termed it in recent days.
It's not so much now the purity of the gospel, but a belief that certain styles and certain rules, manmade rules, rules of a certain religious tradition, and unless these are kept and kept rigorously and kept to the full, There cannot be an assurance of salvation. Well, let me ask you a question. Are you passionate about the gospel, or are you more passionate about other things?
things that are very dear to you. I have plenty of prejudices. I have plenty of things that I'm more comfortable this way than that way. But are they fundamental things of the gospel? And we need to ask ourselves every day, are you passionate about the purity of the gospel? Paul is passionate here about ensuring that the gospel is pure. And then a third thing from this section.
And it's a personal imprecation of those who advance a different gospel. And do you notice what he says in verse 8?
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Chapter 7: What are the dangers of legalism in the church?
Even if we are an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. And then he repeats it again in verse 9. Let him be accursed. Let him be accursed. Anathematized, that's the word he uses. It's the strongest possible word. It's not that Paul just simply wants to wrap them on the knuckles and say, stop that.
No, he wants to anathematize them. He wants them under the ban of God's holiness. He wants them driven as far away from God's grace and God's love and God's embrace as it's possible to be. This is very strong language. This is Paul, yes, a young man, yes, full of zeal, full of passion. And let me pause and say, where did that passion go?
You had it once when you were young, when you were first converted in those first few years, and you were on fire for the gospel, and the fires have waned a little, and we've grown lukewarm. And you remember what Jesus says to the Laodicean church about growing lukewarm, that He will vomit them out of His mouth. Well, here's Paul. There's a place for condemnation.
This isn't Paul simply being ornery or prickly, or this isn't to be explained simply in terms of Paul's personality, or this was Paul on an off day. This was Paul, and he hadn't had his coffee when he wrote this letter, and things were going badly in his life. And so he's a little crotchety and a little prickly. No, Paul is saying there's a gospel, and there's a gospel that saves.
But if you add something to that gospel, if you say you must believe in Jesus and, then that's not a gospel anymore. That's something else. That's a distortion. It's about the absolute freeness of grace. It's grace and nothing else. It's none of your doing, not of works, lest any man should boast, Paul tells the Ephesians. There are wolves in the church. They're dressed in sheep's clothing.
And Paul is saying to the Galatian church, this young fledgling church, there are wolves among you.
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Chapter 8: How should believers respond to distortions of the gospel?
And you may be sitting next to them, and you may be in their Bible class, and they're teaching the damnable plus. They are wolves and you need to recognize them as wolves and you need to stop listening to them. False gospels are not to be tolerated. They are to be expunged from the church. So, what's the takeaway of this opening section of Galatians chapter 1 verses 1 to 9?
Be passionate about the gospel. Know what the gospel is. Preach the gospel to yourself every day. well-known individual now in glory. I met him 20 years ago at a conference. I was listening to him. It was like listening to the gospel for the very first time. I'd been a Christian for 20 years. I'd been in ministry for 20 years.
And yet when I listened to him, I thought, this is as though I'm hearing it for the very first time. And he said that little phrase, you've heard it many times, but it was actually the first time I'd heard it, preach the gospel to yourself every day. I have to be honest, the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning is coffee.
But then once I've had my cup of coffee, I preach the gospel to myself. Nothing in my hands I bring. Nothing. Not my obedience. Not the length of my discipleship. not the measurement of my repentance. Nothing in my hands I bring, nothing. Simply to Thy cross I cling. Preach that to yourself every day.
What a wonderful reminder. That was Ligonier Teaching Fellow Derek Thomas on this Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and I'm glad you're joining us today. Paul wrote to these churches to counter a group of people known as the Judaizers. He wanted to defend the truth. This church was facing a grave error, and the church in the 21st century is in just as much danger.
The gospel is being distorted in our day, and we need to be equipped to defend it. Dr. Thomas' series covers Paul's defense of the gospel throughout Galatians. And we'll send you this 14-message series, No Other Gospel, on DVD, along with a hardcover copy of R.C.
Sproul's line-by-line commentary on Galatians, when you give a donation before midnight tonight at renewingyourmind.org, or by using the link in the podcast show notes. Additionally, all of the messages and the study guide will be unlocked for you in the free Ligonier app.
So that's a video teaching series, a study guide, and a commentary, all on Galatians, when you give a year-end gift in support of renewing your mind and the global outreach of Ligonier Ministries. This offer does end in a few hours, so respond now while there's still time. Thank you. To understand why Paul was so passionate about defending the gospel, we need to understand his murderous past.
We cannot overemphasize the degree to which Saul of Tarsus almost extinguished the early church. He had it within his power, or at least almost from a human point of view, to actually put out, to snuff out the Christian church at its very infancy.
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