2. False teachers and faithless Galatians
After greeting his readers, in every other epistle Paul goes on to pray for them or to praise and thank God. Only in the epistle to the Galatians are there no prayer, no praise, no thanksgiving and no commendation. Instead he addresses himself at once to his theme with a note of extreme urgency. He expresses astonishment at the fickleness and instability of the Galatians. He goes on to complain about the false teachers who were troubling the Galatian churches. And then he utters a most solemn, fearful curse upon those who dare to change the gospel.
1. The unfaithfulness of the Galatians (1:6)
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ. The Greek word translated deserting (metatithēmi) is an interesting one. It signifies ‘to transfer one’s allegiance’. It is used of soldiers in the army who revolt or desert, and of men who change sides in politics or philosophy. For example, a certain Dionysius of Heracleia, who left the Stoics to become a member of the rival philosophical school, an Epicurean, was called ho metathemenos, a ‘turncoat’.
It is of this that Paul accuses the Galatians. They are religious turncoats, spiritual deserters. They are turning away from him who had called them in the grace of Christ and are embracing another gospel. The true gospel is in its essence what Paul called it in Acts 20:24, ‘the good news of God’s grace’. It is good news of a God who is gracious to undeserving sinners. In grace he gave his Son to die for us. In grace he calls us to himself. In grace he justifies us when we believe. ‘All this is from God’, as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:18, meaning that ‘all this is of grace’. Nothing is due to our efforts, merits or works; everything in salvation is due to the grace of God.
But the Galatian converts, who had received this gospel of grace, were now turning away to another gospel, a gospel of works. The false teachers were evidently ‘Judaizers’, whose ‘gospel’ is summarized in Acts 15:1: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ They did not deny that you must believe in Jesus for salvation, but they stressed that you must be circumcised and keep the law as well. In other words, you must let Moses finish what Christ has begun. Or rather, you yourself must finish, by your obedience to the law, what Christ has begun. You must add your works to the work of Christ. You must finish Christ’s unfinished work.
Paul simply will not tolerate this. What? Add human merits to the merit of Christ and human works to the work of Christ? God forbid! The work of Christ is a finished work; and the gospel of Christ is a gospel of free grace. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, without any addition of human works or merits. It is due only to God’s gracious call, and not to any good works of our own.
Paul goes further than this. He says that the defection of the Galatian converts was in their experience as well as in their theology. He accuses them not of deserting the gospel of grace for another gospel, but of ‘deserting the one who called’ them in grace. In other words, theology and experience, Christian faith and Christian life, belong together and cannot be separated. To turn from the gospel of grace is to turn from the God of grace. Let the Galatians beware, who have so readily and rashly started turning away. It is impossible to forsake it (the gospel) without forsaking him (God). As Paul says later, in Galatians 5:4, ‘You have fallen away from grace.’
2. The activity of the false teachers (1:7)
The reason why the Galatian converts were deserting God who had called them in grace was that some people are throwing you into confusion (7b). The Greek verb here (tarassō) means to ‘shake’ or ‘agitate’. The Galatian congregations had been thrown by the false teachers into a state of turmoil – intellectual confusion on the one hand and warring factions on the other. It is rather interesting that the Council at Jerusalem, which probably met just after Paul had written this epistle, were to use the same verb in their letter to the churches: ‘We have heard that some went out from us without our authorisation and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said’ (Acts 15:24).
This trouble was caused by false doctrine. The Judaizers were trying to ‘pervert’ or ‘distort’ (neb) the gospel. They were spreading what J. B. Phillips calls ‘a travesty of the Gospel of Christ’. As a matter of fact, the Greek word (metastrepsai) is even stronger still. It could be translated ‘to reverse’. In this case, they were not just corrupting the gospel, but actually ‘reversing’ it, turning it back to front and upside down. You cannot modify or supplement the gospel without radically changing its character.
So the two chief characteristics of the false teachers are that they were troubling the church and changing the gospel. These two go together. To tamper with the gospel is always to trouble the church. You cannot touch the gospel and leave the church untouched, because the church is created and lives by the gospel. Indeed, the church’s greatest troublemakers (now as then) are not those outside who oppose, ridicule and persecute it, but those inside who try to change the gospel. It is they who trouble the church. Conversely, the only way to be loyal to the church is to be loyal to the gospel. The best way to serve the church is to believe and to preach the gospel.
3. The reaction of the apostle Paul (1:8–10)
The situation in the Galatian churches should by now be clear. False teachers were distorting the gospel, so that Paul’s converts were deserting it. The apostle’s first reaction was one of utter astonishment: I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ (6). Many evangelists of later generations have been similarly astonished and distressed to see how quickly, how readily, converts relax their hold of the gospel which they seemed to have so firmly embraced. It is, as Paul writes in Galatians 3:1, as if someone has bewitched them, cast a spell over them; and this is, in fact, the case. The devil disturbs the church as much by error as by evil. When he cannot entice Christian people into sin, he deceives them with false doctrine.
Paul’s second reaction was anger over the false teachers, upon whom he now pronounces a solemn curse:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!
(8–9)
The Greek word twice translated curse is anathema. It was used in the Greek Old Testament for the divine ban, the curse of God resting upon anything or anyone marked out by him for destruction. The story of Achan provides an example of this. God said that the spoil of the Canaanites was under his ban and so was to be destroyed. But Achan stole and kept it for himself.
So the apostle Paul desires that these false teachers should come under the divine ban, curse or anathema. That is, he expresses the wish that God’s judgment will fall upon them. The Galatian churches, it is implied, will surely then not give such teachers a welcome or a hearing, but will refuse to receive or listen to them, because they are people whom God has rejected (cf. 2 John 10–11).
What are we to say about this anathema? Are we to dismiss it as an excessive outburst? Are we to reject it as a reaction which is inconsistent with the Spirit of Christ and unworthy of the gospel of Christ? Are we to explain it away as the utterance of a man who was the child of his age and knew no better? Many people would, but at least two considerations indicate that this apostolic anathema was not the expression of personal venom towards rival teachers.
The first is that the curse of the apostle, or the curse of God which the apostle desires, is universal in its embrace. It rests upon any and every teacher who distorts the essence of the gospel and propagates such distortion. This is clear in verse 9: ‘As we have already said, so now I say again: if anybody is preaching . . .’ There is no exception. In verse 8 he specifically applies it to angels as well as human beings, and then also adds himself: ‘But even if we . . .’ So single-minded is Paul in his passion for the gospel that he even desires the curse of God to fall upon himself, should he be guilty of perverting it. The fact that he includes himself like this clears him of the charge of personal spite or animosity.
The second consideration is that his curse is uttered deliberately and with conscious responsibility to God. For one thing, it is expressed twice (8 and 9). As John Brown, the nineteenth-century Scottish commentator, writes: ‘The apostle repeats it to show the Galatians that this was no excessive, exaggerated statement, into which passion had hurried him, but his calmly formed and unalterable opinion.’ Then Paul goes on in verse 10: Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. It seems that his critics had accused him of being a time-server who suited his message to his audience. But is this outspoken condemnation of the false teachers the language of a people-pleaser? On the contrary, no-one can serve two masters. And since Paul is first and foremost a servant of Jesus Christ, his ambition is to please Christ, not other people. It is therefore as ‘a servant of Christ’, responsible to his divine Lord, that he measures his words and dares to utter this solemn anathema.
We have seen, then, that Paul uttered his anathema both impartially (whoever the teachers might be) and deliberately (in the presence of Christ his Lord).
Yet somebody may ask, ‘Why did he feel so strongly and use such drastic language?’ Two reasons are plain. The first is that the glory of Christ was at stake. To make human works necessary to salvation, even as a supplement to the work of Christ, undermines his finished work. It is to imply that Christ’s work was in some way unsatisfactory, and that we need to add to it and improve on it. It is, in effect, to declare the cross redundant: ‘if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ (Gal. 2:21).
The second reason why Paul felt this matter so keenly is that the good of people’s souls was also at stake. He was not writing about some trivial doctrine, but about something that is fundamental to the gospel. Nor was he speaking of those who merely hold false views, but of those who teach them and mislead others by their teaching. Paul cared deeply for human souls. In Romans 9:3 he declared that he would be willing himself to be accursed (literally, to be anathema), if others could be saved as a result. He knew that the gospel of Christ is the power of God that brings salvation. Therefore, to corrupt the gospel was to destroy the way of salvation and so to send to ruin souls who might have been saved by it. Did not Jesus himself utter a solemn warning to the person who causes others to stumble, saying that ‘it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung round their neck and they were thrown into the sea’ (Mark 9:42)? It seems then that Paul, far from contradicting the Spirit of Christ, was actually expressing it. Of course, we live in an age in which it is considered very narrow-minded and intolerant to have any clear and strong opinions of one’s own, let alone to disagree sharply with anybody else. As for actually desiring false teachers to fall under the curse of God and be treated as such by the church, the very idea is unthinkable to many. But I dare to say that if we cared more for the glory of Christ and for the good of the souls of our fellow men and women, we too would not be able to tolerate the corruption of the gospel of grace.
4. Conclusion
The lesson which stands out from this paragraph is that there is only one gospel. The popular view is that there are many different ways to God, that the gospel changes with the changing years, and that you must not condemn the gospel to fossilization in the first century ad. But Paul would not support these ideas. He insists here that there is only one gospel and that this gospel does not change. Any teaching that claims to be ‘another gospel’ (av) is no gospel at all (6, 7). In order to make this point, he uses the two adjectives heteros (‘another’ in the sense of ‘different’) and allos (‘another’ in the sense of ‘a second’). In other words, there are certainly different gospels being preached, but this is what they are – different. There is not another, a second; there is only one. The message of the false teachers was not an alternative gospel; it was a perverted gospel.
How can we recognize the true gospel? Its marks are given us here. They concern its substance (what it is) and its source (where it comes from).
a. The substance of the gospel
It is the gospel of grace, of God’s free and unmerited favour. To turn from him who called you in the grace of Christ is to turn from the true gospel. Whenever teachers start exalting human beings, implying that we can contribute anything to our salvation by our own morality, religion, philosophy or respectability, the gospel of grace is being corrupted. That is the first test. The true gospel magnifies the free grace of God.
b. The source of the gospel
The second test concerns the gospel’s origin. The true gospel is the gospel of the apostles of Jesus Christ – in other words, the New Testament gospel. Look again at verses 8 and 9. Paul’s anathema is pronounced on anybody who preaches a gospel which is either other than the one we preached to you or other than what you accepted. That is to say, the norm, the criterion, by which all systems and opinions are to be tested is the primitive gospel, the gospel which the apostles preached and which is now recorded in the New Testament. Any system other than this apostolic gospel is to be rejected.
This is the second basic test. All who reject the apostolic gospel, no matter who they may be, are themselves to be rejected. They may appear as an angel from heaven. In this case, we are to prefer apostles to angels. We are not to be dazzled, as many people are, by the person, gifts or office of teachers in the church. They may come to us with great dignity, authority and scholarship. They may be bishops or archbishops, university professors or even the pope himself. But if they bring a gospel other than the gospel preached by the apostles and recorded in the New Testament, they are to be rejected. We judge them by the gospel; we do not judge the gospel by them.
So then, as we hear the assorted views of men and women today, spoken, written, broadcast and televised, we must subject each of them to these two rigorous tests. Is their opinion consistent with the free grace of God and with the plain teaching of the New Testament? If not, we must reject it, however impressive the teacher may be. But if it passes these tests, then let us embrace it and hold it fast. We must not compromise it like the Judaizers, nor desert it like the Galatians, but live by it ourselves and seek to make it known to others.