1:8
Angels were held in high regard by many Jews, sometimes given a wrong place. This is why the beginning of Hebrews stresses the superiority of Jesus to angels, and why there are other mentions of giving the wrong place to angels in other of Paul’s letters. Here Paul says that even if an angel preaches a “different gospel” they should be accursed. They didn’t have quotation marks in those days (or “scare quotes”), but if they did I would guess that Paul would put “gospel” here in quotation marks. So we see here the importance of the gospel. Today, particularly in charismatic circles, a good way to get people’s attention is to say an angel told you such and such a thing. Indeed, Joseph Smith claimed to have received a message via an angel and so we got Mormonism. Look, of someone comes and says “an angel told me ...”, or “I had a vision of an angel and the Spirit told me”, or even “I believe God told me ...” the first thing we should do is completely ignore the bit about an angel, or even about God telling them. The first thing we should do is test what they say against the Bible. If what they say is not Biblical then I don’t give two hoots about who or what you claim to have seen or heard, you are deceived, and may even be a deceiver.
1:9
Paul then reiterates the general principle. Paul and his co-workers had preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. So if anyone comes preaching something different their teaching is to be completely ignored. Sometimes people will say the gospel is OK as a “simple faith”, but now we need to be more sophisticated. In the spirit of Paul, let such a person be accursed.
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