False Teaching

The text

Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me.

Galatians 4:15 KJV

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

Galatians 1:6–7 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the sermon

The Galatians had received the gospel with such joy that they would have given Paul their own eyes; then teachers arrived who told them that faith in Christ was not sufficient — circumcision must be added — and their blessedness vanished. Lloyd-Jones uses their story to expose a cause of depression that comes from outside the believer: false teaching.

It takes two forms. One is the outright denial of the gospel. The other, more dangerous because more plausible, professes the gospel and then insists on something more: Christ plus a rite, Christ plus a day, Christ plus a particular experience or gift. The tests he proposes are searching. Authority comes first — a teaching must be judged by the apostolic word of the New Testament, never by feelings, by experience or by results, since error can produce real happiness and impressive statistics. Ask whether a teaching is less than the apostolic message or an addition to it; be suspicious of any claim to revelation beyond Scripture; and trace a teaching out to its logical end, which often shows that it secretly denies the sufficiency of Christ.

One final test is decisive. Such teaching always requires a believer to deny his own earlier experience of grace and to write off centuries of faithful Christians who lacked the new essential. The cure is the one Paul gave the Galatians: come back to Christ alone and glory in nothing else — not even in one's own orthodoxy.

Key points

• False teaching either denies the gospel or, more subtly, adds a requirement to it.
• Judge every teaching by the apostolic Scriptures, never by feelings, experience or results.
• Beware of claims to revelation beyond what the apostles delivered.
• Follow a teaching to its logical conclusion to see what it quietly denies.
• 'Christ plus' always forces believers to disown their own past experience of grace.
• The cure is to glory in Christ alone.

Illustrations the preacher uses

• Paul withstanding Peter to his face at Antioch over table fellowship with Gentiles.
• A woman troubled about whether good unbelievers could be saved by their works, answered by tracing the implication that Christ's death would then be unnecessary.
• Whitefield and Wesley as evidence that Spirit-filled saints have lacked various modern 'essentials'.

Related Scripture

• Galatians 1:6–9
• Galatians 3:1–3
• Galatians 5:1–6
• Galatians 6:14
• Acts 10
• 2 Corinthians 11:3–4

For reflection and discussion

1. How can you distinguish genuine Christian teaching from a subtle 'Christ plus' addition when it sounds spiritually attractive?
2. Why is it dangerous to judge a teaching by the happiness or results it seems to produce?
3. Can you think of a present-day example where faith in Christ is quietly supplemented with a required extra?