📖 Galatians Intensive — Unit 1: No Other Gospel

Text: Galatians 1:1-10

Welcome to our study of Galatians. Of all Paul's letters, this one is written in the greatest hurry and the deepest alarm. There is no thanksgiving at the start, no warm word of praise as in his other letters — he goes straight from his name to a cry of astonishment: "I marvel that you are turning away so soon." Something precious was being lost in the churches of Galatia, and Paul knew that if it were lost, the gospel itself would be lost with it. That precious thing was grace. From the first verse to the last, Galatians is Paul's great defense of the gospel of grace against a counterfeit that was creeping in to replace it. So this is where our whole course begins, and the question of this first unit is the most important of all: what is the true gospel, and how do we know a false one when we see it?

An Apostle — Not From Men

Paul opens by staking his authority: "Paul, an apostle (not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead)" (Galatians 1:1). This is not pride. The troublemakers in Galatia were whispering that Paul was a second-rate apostle who had watered down the message to make it easy. So Paul answers at once: his gospel did not come from men and cannot be edited by men. He received it from the risen Christ Himself. This matters for everything that follows. If the gospel were a human invention, men could add to it or change it as they pleased. But it is God's own message, and no man — not Paul, not an apostle, not an angel — has the right to alter it.

The Gospel Defined: Grace

Before Paul confronts the false gospel, he names the true one. He greets the churches with "grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father" (Galatians 1:3-4). There is the gospel in a single sentence. It is grace — God's free and unearned favor — and it rests entirely on what Christ has done: He gave Himself for our sins. The good news is not advice about what we must do to climb up to God; it is the announcement of what God has done to come down and rescue us. Christ "gave Himself." The work is finished, the price is paid, and it is received not by earning but by faith. Hold this firmly, because every false gospel we will study in this course attacks it at exactly this point.

No Thanksgiving — A Letter in Alarm

Now comes the shock. Where every other letter of Paul pauses to thank God for his readers, this one does not. Instead: "I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel" (Galatians 1:6). Notice what they are turning from: not merely from a doctrine, but from Him — from God Himself, who had called them in the grace of Christ. To abandon grace is to abandon God. And notice the words "so soon." The poison works fast. It had been only a short time since they believed, and already the counterfeit was pulling them away.

A Different Gospel — Which Is No Gospel

Paul calls the new teaching "a different gospel, which is not another" (Galatians 1:7). There are not two gospels, a Paul-version and an improved version. There is one gospel, and anything else is not a gospel at all but a perversion of it: "there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ." Who were these troublers? They were teachers, later called Judaizers, who did not deny Christ. They were happy to add Him to their message. But they insisted that faith in Christ was not enough — that to be truly saved a man must also keep the law of Moses, beginning with circumcision. In other words, they preached grace plus works. And Paul says that grace plus anything is no longer grace, and a gospel of grace-plus-works is no gospel at all.

Every false gospel is grace with something added, grace with something taken away, or grace traded for something else. Galatians 1 gives the church both the gospel and the test by which every counterfeit is exposed.

Let Him Be Accursed

Then Paul says the most severe thing in any of his letters, and he says it twice: "But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8-9). The word translated accursed is anathema — devoted to destruction, cut off from God. Think how strong this is. Paul does not say, "if a false teacher comes." He says, "even if we — even if I, Paul, myself — or an angel from heaven should preach another gospel, let him be accursed." No messenger is so high, no credentials so impressive, that they can overrule the gospel of grace. The message is fixed; the messenger is not above it. This twofold curse is the measuring rod for our entire course: whenever we weigh a teaching, ancient or modern, this is the standard we hold up — does it preach the gospel of the grace of Christ, or does it preach another?

Not Seeking to Please Men

Paul ends this opening with a question that exposes the heart of the matter: "For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ" (Galatians 1:10). The false teachers softened the gospel to make it pleasant and to win a following. Paul will not. A gospel trimmed to please people is a gospel that has stopped being the gospel. The servant of Christ must speak what God has said, whether men love it or hate it.

Inside the Circle: One Gospel, Many Differences

It is vital to see exactly where this curse falls — and where it does not. Paul pronounces anathema on those who pervert the gospel itself, who change the way a sinner is made right with God. He does not pronounce it on every disagreement between believers. Picture a circle. At its center stands the gospel — that Jesus lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, rose again the third day, and that we must repent, believe in Him, and make Him Lord — together with the essential doctrines that guard it: the Trinity, one God in three Persons, and the authority and infallibility of Scripture. Whoever holds what is inside that circle holds the one true gospel, and is a brother or sister in Christ.

Around the outside of the circle lie many matters on which true Christians, who rest on the same grace, have long differed: the mode and meaning of baptism, how we keep the Lord's Supper, foot washing, styles of worship, spiritual gifts, how a church is governed, the roles of men and women in leadership, and the details of the end times. These are not small or unimportant questions, and we should study them with care. But they are not the gospel, and to differ over them is not to preach "another gospel." A Baptist and a Presbyterian may disagree about baptism and still embrace as brothers, because both rest on the grace of Christ. We must not hand out the curse of Galatians 1 to everyone who differs from us; Paul reserves it for those who change the center.

By contrast — and this looks ahead to the units to come — some movements do not merely differ on the outside matters; they reach into the center and change it. When a group denies the full deity of Christ, or remakes the one God into something other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or sets a new revelation beside the finished work of the cross, it has crossed the line Paul draws here. That is why later in this course we will weigh Mormonism, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the prosperity gospel by this same standard. The test never changes: not, "do they differ from us?" but, "do they preach the gospel of the grace of Christ, or another?"

So we begin where Paul begins. The gospel is grace — Christ who gave Himself for our sins, received by faith alone. Any message that adds to that grace, takes away from it, or trades it for something else is a different gospel, and a different gospel is no gospel. This is the truth the rest of Galatians will defend, and it is the test we will carry into every unit of this course.

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