Another Gospel?

I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from Him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to change the good news about the Messiah. - Galatians 1:6-7 HCSB

Paul minces no words. He doesn't spend a lot of time greeting the church or dealing with preliminary issues. He jumps right into the problem... they've turned away from the Gospel and turned to "another" gospel. A different belief system. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? How dare these people!

Here's the thing. You do it too. So do I, because the church has a problem. It always has. It's the same problem that Paul dealt with. Good news...changed.

Changed how? Altered. Altered to "not be so good." Modified from a message of complete and total freedom from sin, accomplished by the undeserved, unmerited grace of God, to a mixture of grace and works.

You see, the Galatian people were drifting towards a tainted gospel. People came into their fellowship, espousing the necessity to keep the Jewish Law in order to be saved. "Sure, you need to trust in Jesus. But we can't just set aside the Law." Circumcision. Not just the saving grace of Jesus, but surgery. Paul was livid.

He was livid at how quickly they turned. How quickly they left "Jesus plus nothing" and switched to "Jesus plus something."

But that's the human tendency. It's our natural inclination, because we don't understand grace. We don't understand a God who loves us unconditionally. We can't fathom a God who would declare us righteous based on the merits of Another.

We must, we must, we MUST do something to contribute. So, like the Galatians, we have developed a belief system that mixes the grace of Jesus Christ with the works of man. We wrap it up in Christianese, such as "After all that Jesus did for you, how can you not live for him?" We preach moralistic, "how to get better" sermons that provide a series of steps and actions in order to achieve better behavior. We overwhelm our children and youth with "discipleship" that is nothing but "don't do this, don't do that." Then we wonder why they hit the door after high school and never look back.

It's because we've started believing another gospel. We've mixed grace and works.

Let me be blunt. If your good works become anything other than deeds done out of simple gratitude for what Jesus has done, then you have tainted the gospel.

Your good works don't save you. They also don't draw you closer to God after salvation. We tend to err on that second statement.

What's the remedy? Remember that it's Good News.

It's Good News. It really is. The Good News of the Gospel is that Jesus saves you, totally independent of your own behavior. We evangelicals are pretty cool with that.

But here's where the Good News gets even better... not only does Jesus save you by grace, but he empowers you by grace. He doesn't just leave you at the checkout line. He provides service after the sale!

He's not giving up on you. He's committed to finishing the work He started in you (Phil. 1:6). He's with you every day, every moment, for the rest of your life... providing you sustaining grace, healing grace, overcoming grace.

That's our God. That's Good News. It's better than you thought it was.

Join us next time, as we look at another aspect of the Gospel of Grace.

By His Grace,

Adam