Beginning of a series…
Paul had previous form in Galatia: he had been through Galatia on three separate missionary journeys. In fact, Acts 14:8-18 describes one such journey through Galatia when Paul and Barnabas were mistaken for Gods.
These were people who were eager to receive God’s Good News. But they were confused, just like sometimes we can be. Just What is the Gospel?
Sometimes we just can’t see the wood for the trees. And the treasure here for Paul is that the Gospel is Good News he is reminding the Galatians about it, and that nothing but this Good News is Good Enough!
It is Good News because it comes from God.
It is Good News because we don’t need to add to it.
It is Good News because it reveals God’s grace through Jesus Christ.
Paul seems angry in this letter, and well he may be. Some people had infiltrated the recent converts and were changing God’s Good News.
They were questioning Paul’s authority as an apostle.
They were making the Good News conditional.
They were, whether they knew it or not, denying grace and belittling the glory of God’s revelation through Jesus Christ.
Throughout this talk we need to be asking ourselves the so what question. For now, what situations does this remind you of? Are there times when you get distracted by things that get more coverage than the Gospel of God’s Grace? What about some of the ‘hot button’ issues that seem to plague our headlines both inside and outside the church? Do we ever ask the main question: Where is God’s grace in this?
Firstly: The Good News is from God…and it is the Best News!
The Galatians had started to believe the Judaizers who were saying that Paul was only coming on the authority of other people and therefore didn’t have the same status as the ‘true apostles,’ who had had real contact with Jesus. Paul is at pains to remind them who had sent him and therefore who he was speaking on behalf of.
vv1-2 - Paul an apostle…
When I was training to be a lawyer we were trained to represent the client but not to go beyond the instructions of the client. We could not do anything that our clients had not instructed us to do. Similarly, Paul is saying that, as an apostle, he is there purely to represent what Christ has told him to do. Like the Blues Brothers - he was on a mission from God.
Just like Paul, we have also been commissioned by Christ, our Good News is not from men or commissioned by men, but direct from God through Jesus. We must represent Christ and we need to do so faithfully.
At this very early stage in the letter he makes it clear exactly what message he, and all apostles of Christ have been sent to proclaim. The first words after his greeting are set to remind the Galatians and us of exactly what that message is.
vv3-5 - Grace to you and peace…
The message is good, the message is one of grace - something that is so important throughout this letter - and peace - the shalom or spiritual well-being that comes from right relationship with God. That Jesus gave himself for our sins according to the will of God. This message is a proclamation of God’s magnificent reconciliation of the world by his grace. It is no mere incident that Paul puts Jesus alongside God the Father twice in this passage.
And what has happened? We are taken from this age ruled by evil and we are moved into the age to come — we are now under God’s power and not Satan’s ‘While still living in this world, therefore, he [the Christian] enjoys already that life of the age to come. This is the victory of the cross to Paul.’ And this was according to God’s will - in other words ‘The action of the Son was the very proof of the Father’s love, as John 3:16 makes clear.’ ‘Christ came to fulfil the Father’s will and thus to reveal Him.’
How easy was it for the Galatians to forget this simple message of grace? How easy is it for us to forget the grace and peace that comes from God alone? This is Good News. But perhaps it is such good news that we can hardly believe that we need to do nothing to earn such grace.
The Good News then, is from God alone.
Secondly: We Don’t Need to Add to the Good News
It is this point that Paul is clear the Galatians are so quickly forgetting in their rush to ‘do the right thing’
vv6-9
This is a big chunk, so lets break it down. First, Paul is so astonished and confused that he does away with the pleasantries.
As a civil servant, we used to have a letter writing code. This would run from “it was good to meet and discuss X with you” to “we spoke” to “I am somewhat surprised by X” to “I was concerned to discover” this last one is the most worrying of the understated openings.
Paul’s “I am astonished” is like that, he withdraws from the normal thanks for their efforts and moves straight to the point. His other letters are much more formalised. Even Corinthians includes thanks to God at the beginning.
Second, they are at risk of perverting the Gospel. He has reminded them about the Good News of God’s Grace because they are at risk of accepting something else. The best news that there has ever been, that there will ever be, and it seems like the Galatians want to abandon it, because they just don’t get how good this news is! They do not see that there is no ‘in’ camp, or ‘out’ camp (as we learn later in Chapter 3), we are all deserving of judgement but we can all be saved by the grace of God, and there is nothing that we can do to make that happen other than to just accept it.
It is easy to see how this happens, today we are encouraged to have an ‘us and them’ mentality. Advertising, school playgrounds, work…
Thirdly, it is not our outward qualifications or works that make us worthy of God’s grace. This may sound cliched, and perhaps it is, but there is nothing that we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing that we can do to make God love us less. The people who are seeking to get them to add bits are DENYING THE GRACE OF GOD….they are saying that God will not love you unless you do X. In trying to make a camp of ins and outs they are forgetting that God so loved the world John 3:16. It is not we are only free from sin if we eat certain foods, or keep certain days special, or have bits of our anatomy chopped off.
We are free from sin only by God’s grace. Not by what we do, but by what he has done for us. It is as a result of this grace, not in order to achieve it, do things happen. Grace begets good fruits/works, works do not beget grace. Because then grace isn’t grace.
Paul reminds them of this point again and again through the letter. And it is a point that we need to hear clearly today. I know I can be quite guilty of judging who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’ but Paul is clear that this is not, was never, and never will be out job. We need to accept that God’s grace extends to everyone, even those that we find hard to accept ourselves. We need to stop adding to God’s Good News, there are no conditions, no strings attached to this.
By trying to change this, the Judaizers are therefore actually trying to stop the main point of the Gospel, and the natural consequence of not accepting and leading others into denying God’s grace is to be cursed, or damned as one translation of the Greek would have it.
So The Good News is From God, and The Good News can’t be changed…
Finally, The Good News reveals God’s Grace through Jesus Christ
The passage finishes with Paul solemnly stating how Jesus had been revealed to him. He uses solemn language to introduce this and is clear that he wasn’t taught the gospel, but received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. ‘This revelation of the suffering Messiah, God’s Son, and the Lord, is itself the gospel. And this no mere man can teach, however much he may desire to do it.’
The Good News points to Christ, the revelation of Christ in the Bible is the best revelation we will have and our understanding of the Gospel, therefore, needs to be centred on the person of Jesus, the Living Word. It is Jesus who models God’s grace for us and who we need to emulate. Paul is clear about this in 1 Corinthians 4:16 where he urges people to imitate him, because he tries to imitate Jesus.
Without Jesus at the centre, there is no grace, without the living word there are only empty words.
So, we have to remind ourselves that:
We are commissioned by Christ; That the Good News is unconditional; And that the Good News is Grace.
We do this when we remember that:
The Good News is from God - not from us
The Good News can not be changed, without stopping it from being Good News
The Good News is revealed in Jesus - We should seek to follow him.
And if we really hold those things dear, like Paul, we will accept no substitutes.
