Galatians Part 2: Jesus Plus Anything Means Nothing

The elders talk periodically about the fact that each one of us as Elders has, David calls it our song. It's the thing that God has given us that, when we talk about that thing, we seem to get filled with a particular passion. This subject matter around what we're covering in Galatians—the idea of the Gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ—is mine. This is the thing that provokes my spirit; this is what gets me excited more than anything else in all of Scripture. This right here is the thing that will cause me to continue to talk until somebody tells me to shut up. So, feel free to tell me to shut up. I probably won't, but you can feel free!

Last week, we talked about the intro to this book, and we laid the historical and cultural groundwork for what Paul is talking about in this book. But I made a mistake, and I want to call myself out on it because I called somebody else out on it later. Sometimes I say stuff like—I start talking fast, and then things come out of my mouth. Later, somebody's like, “You said this,” and I'm like, “No, I didn't.” Then I watch the tape back, and I'm like, “Oh, I did.” I have no memory of saying that; in fact, I thought I said something completely different.

My wife, Shannon, is leading the Women's Bible study on Wednesday nights, and they're covering the book of Galatians. They all showed up—there were like 20 women in my living room on Wednesday. I got kicked out! Then they all left, and I came back into the living room, and they had a whiteboard with all this stuff on it. It was amazing to see everyone's observations. I was like, “Hey, you got something wrong there, babe.” She was like, “What did I get wrong?” I said, “The Galatia is not Greece; it's Turkey.” I said that on Sunday—I said it multiple times. She said, “Actually, you said Greece multiple times.” I haven't gone back and looked at the tape, but I've done that enough times to know that she's probably right. So I just wanted to correct myself because I corrected her: Galatia is what we now know as Turkey, not Greece. Amen!

All right, here we go. We laid that groundwork last week—the historical and cultural groundwork. We talked about Paul's missionary journey and how he went to these churches, got kicked out of town, planted the churches, and went back to Antioch. When he gets back to Antioch, there are these guys there, and they're debating about whether or not the Gentiles who come to faith in Jesus have to also keep the Jewish law. In Acts, it says that Paul and Barnabas had no small debate with them. Basically, what he's saying is there was a brawl—not a physical one, but this was the debate that makes us feel uncomfortable. Right? Maybe not Luke, but the rest of us. This is the debate that makes me, as a non-confrontational person, just want to say, “Hey guys, can we all just love each other?” But it's important; it's really important.

The book of Galatians is written back to those churches that he planted and established because these guys he's debating had been going to those churches and teaching them, “Yeah, Paul only told you part of the story. Now we have this other thing that you also need to know and believe as well.” So the book of Galatians is written to those churches to combat what those other people had told them. Paul is saying, “This is what I told you; this is what I received from Jesus himself. Nothing else matters except this.”

What he says in this passage is that he's astonished that they are so quickly deserting this thing. What's this thing? The Gospel of Jesus Christ. He says, “I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting—not just the gospel; he actually says, ‘Who are they deserting?’ Jesus. They're deserting him who called them.” This isn't just like, “Oh, you guys got your theology wrong.” He says, “You're deserting your savior.” That's a serious, serious accusation.

To understand why Paul is speaking so incredibly harshly in this moment, we have to understand what exactly it is that he's talking about. So that's what we're going to cover today. The first thing we re-affirm is that these are young churches—these are relatively new believers. That's why he says, “I'm astonished that you're so quickly deserting him who called you.” He calls it a destructive different gospel—a different gospel. He's saying, “Jesus Christ gave something to me that I gave to you, and you're now believing something else—a different gospel.”

So what we have to understand—two things: number one, the good news of Jesus is singular and unique. The good news of Jesus is singular and unique; there is no other faith like it. There is no other gospel. He talks about the fact that there are other gospels—there are other proclamations. The gospel just means good news. There are other proclamations of good news. The problem is that if we're going to believe—if somebody comes to me and says, “Sam, you just won a million dollars,” it matters whether or not that proclamation of good news is actually true, right? So if we are going to believe something for eternal life, it matters whether or not it's actually true, correct? Yes!

So that's what Paul's attacking. Paul's attacking the idea that there are other gospels out there—there are other things being proclaimed as the good news that he says are not. We have the responsibility as Christians—and this is where I burn deeply for us. We have the responsibility as Christians—not just me; each one of the Christians in this room. If we have come to faith in Jesus, it is our responsibility to know and to defend what is true. My job is to provoke you, to stir you, and to teach you, but it is your job as well as mine to know the truth, to defend the truth, and to proclaim the truth. This is what Paul's doing; he's setting an example for us.

In verses 1 through 5 that we covered last week, there was something that I didn't cover because I wanted to talk about it today. Paul touched on the two historical realities that represent the heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We can go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah; those are elementary things.” The first and foremost is that God sent his son to do what? To die for our sins, to reconcile us to God through his death. Then God the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit, did what? Raised him from the dead. Those two historical and theological spiritual truths are central and key to what we believe is true. They are unbelievably key and unbelievably important.

So we need to be vigilant. This is something that we need to take seriously—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday—every day. Our faith is centered on something, and it matters what our faith is centered on. It matters because it's easy to drift—especially in the world today; it's easy to drift.

So what I want us to understand as we look at these verses and this idea that a different gospel, a false gospel, could infiltrate a church is that those same false gospels, different gospels, could possibly infiltrate our church, and maybe they are. How well do we know the truth? How well do we know the truth? Because here's what I want us to understand: It's easy to read the Bible, and it's easy to read and see—because we have the benefit of hindsight—right? It's easy for us to look at, for example—man, for years I would read the book of Exodus. I would see the Israelites seeing the plagues on Egypt and then marching out of Egypt and having the Red Sea parted for them. All along the way, they would experience a miracle—a work of the Lord that they see with their physical eyes. Like, this can't happen! The ocean doesn't just separate like this so we can walk through it. That doesn't happen! This is clearly something that God is doing. It happens again and again and again, and five minutes later, what are they doing? Whining and complaining.

I read that and I go, “What a bunch of idiots! What is their problem?” Then five minutes later, I'm forgetting the promises of God, and I go, “Oh yeah, I'm just like them.” It's easy for us to read this book. It's easy for us to read the book of Galatians and go, “Yeah, I'm with Paul; what's wrong with them?” But how often—how often are we perusing humanistic lies on Instagram and believing them more than we believe the words of God? We're no different. And if we believe we are, we set ourselves up to fall.

Now, here's the thing that we have to understand. We're going to get into a couple of these different gospels because I want us to be able to see and recognize things. But here's—before we get into them, I just want to present this to you because what's going to happen in your heart as I say some of these things, you're going to go, “Yeah, but…” Some of these things are going to sound good. I want us to understand that that's what makes them so easy to slip in: they are partially true.

So that partial truth tugs at our heartstrings a little bit because it sounds good. Then before you know it, we are way over here, and we're getting a letter from an apostle going, “Bro, what's your problem?” And we're like, “What?” Here we go.

The first one we'll call the self-help gospel. Historically, it's also called the picture gospel. This is the gospel—this is the different gospel—and each one of these gets played out in many different ways. So we have to train ourselves to be able to see these things because every culture is different. The way that these things pop up in our cultures will look different. So I'm just giving you the boiled-down version of them, and hopefully, we can then go out into the world and go, “Oh, there it is! Oh, there it is! Oh, there it is!”

So the self-help gospel would boil down to this idea that Jesus's death on the cross was more of a moral illustration and example for us to follow. People that believe this gospel and promote it will spend a lot of time talking about the life of Jesus. They won't spend any time talking about his death and resurrection because they believe that what Jesus did first and foremost was give us an example to follow. So if we would just be enlightened through the life of Jesus and through his goodness and divinity, then we can just be enlightened along with him, follow him, and do what he did. We can care for the poor, welcome the immigrant, and do all of these things.

We can do all these wonderful things, and we can have peace with everyone because that's what Jesus did. Despite the fact that that's not what Jesus did, and despite the fact that that's not what the gospel is and it's not what the gospel has ever claimed to be. Can you think of areas of your life—maybe on Instagram or people that you have talked to, or maybe something that you've emphasized or heard somebody else say, or been to a church? All these things are all around us.

They're all around us! Anytime somebody talks about the condemnation of sin, and somebody else responds with, “Yeah, but that's not really the message of Jesus.” Yes, it is! That is unbelievably central to the message of Jesus: the condemnation of sin and setting us free from the penalty of our sin. When we minimize that and maximize something else, we are heading in a different direction, and that direction takes us to a place that Jesus himself does not exist. That's why Paul says to the Galatians, “You're deserting your Savior; you're believing something that's not true.”

It would be like if I believed that my wife was 5'1", had blonde hair and blue eyes. I love her so much! It's not her. She's 5'4", has brown hair, and brown eyes. This matters.

Number two—most of you have heard this one—is the Prosperity Gospel. Here are the terms and the words that get used: biblical words. These are words and phrases that are all throughout Scripture: victory, triumph, blessing, overcoming, freedom, abundance, conquering—all wonderfully true things twisted to mean something that they do not mean.

They teach that what God really wants is for you to be successful, for you to be rich, and for you to have good health—nothing bad to happen. This is what Jesus desired. Despite the fact that what Jesus said to his followers was, “What? Pick up your cross and follow me!” This is why Paul said, “It's no longer I who live; I've been crucified with Christ.”

There are ways in which these things are true because I believe with all of my heart that Jesus wants me to be free. I believe with everything in me, because it teaches in the Bible, that Jesus wants me to conquer sin. I believe with everything in me that he has already given me the victory. I believe that I will overcome. Every one of these things that we see here are true, but they are twisted and misapplied to take us somewhere that Jesus does not exist.

The flip side of this is just as troubling. The problem with these is because when you take these truths—these partial truths—and you remove them from the rest of the Bible, you get somewhere that is extremely harmful. Because what this then teaches people that promote the Prosperity Gospel don't actually say this very often, but if the desire for God in my life is for me to have health and wealth, then what if I don't? What if I'm chronically sick and poor and unsuccessful? What does that say about me? And what does that say about God?

When we believe things about God that are not true—that he does not proclaim about himself—we go to a place where he does not exist. We desert the one who called us.

Number three is the partial gospel. Again, like, if you were to look each of these things up, you'd probably find a dozen different titles for each of these, and so I just picked the ones that I thought sounded good. But this is the gospel of what we would refer to as easy believism. You see this everywhere. Here's what I want to confront, and I've said this in sermons before, but I want to actually explain what I mean by this: a mental ascent to the historical fact that Jesus lived, that Jesus died, and that Jesus rose again does not make you a Christian.

There are all kinds of problems with this. God is who he is. He is the creator of the universe; he is the ruler of the universe. So for us to be reconciled to a right relationship with him means something. This easy, partial gospel promotes the idea that all you have to do is pray a prayer, and then you're in. You can live your life any way you want. Following Jesus doesn't matter; recognizing God as who he is—the Lord of everything—doesn't matter; submission to him as the God of everything doesn't matter. You know why? Because I prayed a prayer.

We see it, and on the surface, what does it sound like? We're centered on the gospel, and we're only centered on the gospel. We're not going to add anything to it. All that matters is believing in Jesus.

But here's what I want to say: according to the Bible, believing in Jesus means something. This is what we just covered in the entire book of James: faith works. If faith doesn't work, then it's not faith. I could say all I want that I believe that if I step off this stage, I'm just going to walk right out there and not fall. I can say that all I want and insist that I believe it, but until I step out onto that stage, it's just empty words.

We have millions of people in this world, and we have millions of people in the Christian church—maybe people in this room today—who have believed in Jesus because they want fire insurance. God is not your insurance policy; he's God. 

If sin—okay, this is the nail in the coffin for this one—if sin is about me rejecting the rule of God in my life, salvation is about me submitting to the rule of God in my life. The way that happens is through the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Period. Each one of these gospels either add something or take something away.

The last one, we'll just call the performance gospel. The performance gospel is the idea that, you know, we—by the way, like 10 points if you were like, "Ah, this is what Paul's addressing in the book of Galatians," because that's true. It's the performance gospel that we believe in Jesus, he saves us, and now that you're in, here's the law—here's what you have to do in order to measure up. We see this everywhere, and it permeates our hearts just as much as the others do, maybe more.

It's really interesting to me that I believe Paul—well, I know that Paul's speaking prophetically when he says this in verse 8: "What does he say? Even if an angel from heaven appears to you and says something different." Why is that important? Well, we have two major world faiths today. In 610 AD, Muhammad claimed to receive a vision from the angel Gabriel. That angel Gabriel, who we see in the Bible, is the one that comes to Mary and says, "You're going to have a son." Muhammad claims that the angel Gabriel comes to him and gives him the Quran, and the faith of Islam is born. The faith of Islam is centered on what? The gospel of Jesus? No, a lot and a lot of work. Islam actually believes that Jesus didn't go to the cross; they found a lookalike and put him on the cross. They say Jesus actually just hung out in the back room for a while and then came back out and was like, "Surprise! I'm alive!"

In 1823, Joseph Smith comes out of the woods and claims that an angel gave him the completed Bible on golden tablets that he then misplaced, and the faith of Mormonism is born. That now claims to be Christianity. And I'll just say this: probably 50% of what you run into on social media that claims to be Christian content is Mormon content. This is how sneaky our adversary is. We have to be vigilant. We have to know and understand that there are partial truths which are lies bombarding our faith every day. It comes from out there, and it comes from here.

When we see those things, when we hear those things, the voice of the serpent whispers to us. This is exactly what happened in the garden. When the serpent comes to talk to Eve, he asks her questions. She responds with, "Here's what God said." And then what does the serpent say? He twists the words of God. He doesn't deny them outright; he presents a question and then a twist, and she falls for it. Adam fell for it, and we fall for it. We're no better than the Galatians.

We fall for it in our hearts because we want to believe that certain things are true. I want to believe I'm standing here right now, and I confess to you that I want to believe that God wants me to be wealthy because that makes my life easier. But it's not true. I want to believe that I can believe in Jesus and live my life the way I want because I want to be the master and commander of my own life. But that's not Christianity; that's not historic. Over the last 2,000 years, from Paul to today, Christianity has not been that.

So I have to lay my desires and the things that I want to believe on the altar. I take them to the foot of the cross and I say to him again, "Lord, this is yours." And you know what he says? "I'll take those. You take life, you take mercy, you take grace. Come closer."

Here's how this idea of the performance gospel shows up for you and me. It's this idea that over the last probably 20 years, you've probably heard it before in different sermons. I've heard it from dozens of different preachers. It's a great big phrase, and we're going to explain what it means: moralistic therapeutic deism.

This idea suggests that we believe in God, and this God has this morality. Then when we operate within this morality, God owes us. This is how it works; this is how it presents itself in our hearts. I think everybody in this room at some level will go like, "Oh yeah, I get this." 

So you read your Bible for a week straight—how are you feeling? Feeling pretty good? Okay, you read your Bible—maybe you read your Bible for a year straight, didn't miss a single day, didn't miss church, didn't cuss at your wife, didn't have more than three beers with dinner—like whatever your thing is. Because we all do it. We all have this thing that if I just was able to accomplish this, then my spiritual life would be really alive. Just look inside your brain; what is the thing for you?

So you then do that thing, like you accomplish that thing, and you're feeling really good about yourself. Then maybe something bad happens to you. Your response, at some level, is going to be, "Well, what the heck? I did my part!" How many times have you said this or heard somebody else say this? "I did everything that I was supposed to do, and then X happened." My wife didn't respect me the way she should, or my kids didn't, or my coworkers, or my boss, or I didn't get this promotion. I did everything the right way!

Then the flip side: you go two months without praying or reading your Bible. You neglect church; you neglect gathering with believers. And what is your belief about how God views you in that moment? See, these questions reveal whether or not we're believing a performance gospel. Because if my performance dictates how God views me, then I don't believe that Jesus's death was sufficient. That's a scary thought.

This is why Paul is so insanely confrontational in this letter, because this is a big deal. He says, "You've deserted the one who called you. You've deserted your Savior because you're believing that what you do contributes to the death and resurrection of Jesus." Nothing you can do can contribute to his work, and nothing you can do can take away from it. That's what makes it so important.

Some of us are in danger; the Galatians were in danger. Some of us are in danger. Some of us have accepted a twist of the truth that has taken root in our hearts. Let me rephrase that: I think we all do this, okay? But sometimes those things take root, and they actually then grow and start to produce fruit. That's when the danger comes.

The body of Christ is designed as a living organism to help one another. We have to be able to recognize these things in our own hearts and in the hearts and the lives of those we love. We have to be willing to address them. We have to remain rooted in the truth of Jesus, that you and I—each of us—have rebelled against the almighty God. Jesus didn't die to make you feel better about yourself; he died to reconcile you and set you free from your own rebellion.

He did so by living a sinless life. He did so by taking the punishment for your sin and for my sin on the cross. He did so by then defeating death itself by three days later walking out of the grave so that you and I might walk in the newness of life.

Newness of life—freedom from sin—means not just freedom from the penalty of sin. We are set free from sin in three different ways. We are set free from the penalty of our sin through the act of Jesus's act on the cross and his resurrection. We are justified; we are set right. We now have a right relationship with God.

Then our sanctification takes place as we are set free progressively throughout our lives from the power of sin. As we grow, as we cling to the cross, as we grow in our walk with Jesus, we are continually and progressively set free from the power of sin in our lives.

Then someday, maybe five minutes from now or a thousand years from now—I don't know—he's going to come back, and we will be set free, you and I, from the presence of sin for eternity as we are glorified with him. This is the gospel. We cannot desert it; we cannot drift from it. We have to remain firm here, and we have to know it so well.

This is the defense that we have against the gospel. Paul's defense to the Galatians is to reaffirm the truth. We know the truth; we cling to the truth so that we can spot lies.

We know—husbands, you know your wives well enough that if somebody came into your house and it wasn't her, you would know it, hopefully. Why? Because you know her. How well do we know our Savior? How well do we know his truth? How well do we know his words?

You see, reading our Bible isn't just an exercise that good Christians do because that's what good Christians do. We read our Bibles to get to know him, to get to know his truth, to get to know his word, to build our lives on the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus himself said, "If my words, my teaching, my life, my death, my resurrection is your foundation, you will not be moved." These false gospels are setting their foundation on sand, and they are washed away. Then we rush to rebuild them, and they are washed away, and we rebuild them, and they are washed away. We see these all around us.

Think about this, for example. You could make this a different one, but I'll just call it part of the performance gospel. We could call it the gospel of politics. It also has in there a little bit of easy believism. How many times have we heard Donald Trump being called a man of faith because he claims he prayed a prayer once, despite the fact that—at least from the perspective that I can see—I have heard him say in an interview that he doesn't believe he has ever had the need to ask forgiveness? That says something, doesn't it?

If we know the truth, if we know the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we can spot things that aren't true. All of a sudden, being a good Christian means voting Republican? Is that what being a Christian means? No, being a Christian has nothing to do with that. Being a Christian has only to do with Jesus.

Now, our faith is going to—and has to—have implications about every area of our life, including our politics. So we have to know this truth and know it deeply and clearly so that when we start getting bombarded with all of this stuff—about how, you know, the left is saying Jesus would love everybody and be inclusive of everybody, and the right is saying that Jesus wouldn't kill babies—we're going, like, "Ah!" We need to know.

Otherwise, we will be pulled this direction, we will be pulled that direction. You have to know the word of God, and we have to know what's true and what's not true. So that in the middle of chaos—whether it's in here or out there—we can go, "No, I'm here, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do this. I'm going to live my life this way; I'm going to treat my wife this way; I'm going to treat my kids this way; I'm going to vote this way because of this truth that is central to everything in my life, and I'm going to submit to him."

If you want to talk politics with me, we can talk politics, and I'll give you some more specifics about this. I would love to. But this, Paul says, is of first importance: that Christ died and that he was raised on the third day. The implications of that are eternal, you guys—eternal!

You and I have been invited to experience the love and the grace of Jesus freely. We have been invited back into a right relationship with God, to be set free from sin, and no longer—as Paul's going to say later—no longer submit to a yoke of slavery of any kind, of any kind.

My elders had this conversation this week as we were talking. We want you to know the word of God so well because, listen, sometimes I say stupid stuff. Some of you know me really well; sometimes I say stupid stuff. And sometimes I say stupid stuff from this spot. I want you to know the word of God so well that you can come to me and be like, "Bro, you said something, and it sounded weird to me."

You and I each have this responsibility to know the truth, to defend the truth, and to proclaim the truth to a dying world. This isn't just about us. See, that's the other implication of the gospel. This isn't just about us; this is about a world that is enslaved to sin. You and I have been given the truth and the love and the grace of Jesus so that then we can take that truth to a dying world.

You see, the other way that we can take these true things and twist them is that we completely shut ourselves off from the outside world because of its evil influence. What we see in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the people of true faith walking out into that sinful world and having an unbelievable impact on it—sometimes through persecution and death. But their faith drove them to do it.

The Old Testament prophets are great examples; the New Testament apostles are great examples. We can look back through history, all through church history, and see men and women following Jesus, walking out into that chaos and taking with them the truth and the presence of God. That's for you and me.

So let's dig deep; let's plant these seeds of truth deep in our hearts. Let's let them grow strong. Let's water them in our own lives and in each other's lives. This is why we get together on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings to study his words and his truth so that then we can go out into the world, and we will not be swayed by any wind. We will not be moved because truth matters, and that's what Paul's addressing here.

My hope and my prayer for us is that we will know that the gospel is this: Jesus plus anything means nothing. Nothing. Jesus plus nothing is everything.