November 13
Acts 14:21-28; Galatians 1:1-3:23
Gospel. Gospel. Gospel. This is the repeated refrain of Paul throughout the book of Galatians. He knows if the church loses the gospel, then they have lost everything ─and they are on the verge of losing it. In Galatia, a lot of things had been added to the pure gospel message. They had placed Jewish tradition, law keeping, morality, and a host of other things alongside the work of Jesus. In adding to the gospel, they had made it more difficult for people to come to faith in Christ. The bar was not simply faith in Christ, it was faith plus having to jump through several hoops. The modern church is often guilty of the opposite pendulum swing, which is to take away from the gospel. Often Jesus gets removed from the gospel, so people only understand something about a nebulous God who offers us some vague sense of an afterlife. This viewpoint is described by H. Richard Niebuhr as “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
If we remove the ideas of judgment, sin, kingdom, Christ, and his sacrificial death; then we have nothing to offer people. We are to stand firm upon the simple truth Jesus died and rose from the dead for our sins. Our salvation is based on nothing more and nothing less than this.
Father God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you that he died and rose from the dead for my sins. Help me to communicate this clearly and never add or take away from it. Amen.
How are you or others you see tempted to add or take away from the Gospel?
Gospel. Gospel. Gospel. This is the repeated refrain of Paul throughout the book of Galatians. He knows if the church loses the gospel, then they have lost everything ─and they are on the verge of losing it. In Galatia, a lot of things had been added to the pure gospel message. They had placed Jewish tradition, law keeping, morality, and a host of other things alongside the work of Jesus. In adding to the gospel, they had made it more difficult for people to come to faith in Christ. The bar was not simply faith in Christ, it was faith plus having to jump through several hoops. The modern church is often guilty of the opposite pendulum swing, which is to take away from the gospel. Often Jesus gets removed from the gospel, so people only understand something about a nebulous God who offers us some vague sense of an afterlife. This viewpoint is described by H. Richard Niebuhr as “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
If we remove the ideas of judgment, sin, kingdom, Christ, and his sacrificial death; then we have nothing to offer people. We are to stand firm upon the simple truth Jesus died and rose from the dead for our sins. Our salvation is based on nothing more and nothing less than this.
Father God, thank you for Jesus. Thank you that he died and rose from the dead for my sins. Help me to communicate this clearly and never add or take away from it. Amen.
How are you or others you see tempted to add or take away from the Gospel?
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