Galatians 1:8,9 - If anyone preaches another gospel let them be accursed

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.

Zechariah 6:1-8 - Go, patrol the earth

6:1-4

Zechariah gets another vision. As before, we get a description of the vision followed by a question. The key elements of the vision are four chariots coming out from between two mountains of bronze. The four chariots have horses of different colours, though these colours may be of no great importance.

6:5,6

There are some similarities between this vision and the one seen in chapter 1 (1:7-17). Each coloured horse is sent in a different direction. God is reminding Zechariah that He has sent out his horseman into all the world.

6:7,8

The “strong horses” refers to all of them. The vision has them pawing the ground, eager to go and get on with their task. They were then released to patrol the earth. The north is the direction from which most attacks on Israel came, and we are told that God’s Spirit is set at rest. So what is all this about, what is the point of it all? Probably that while Israel seemed to be at the mercy of international events, of nations more powerful than her, God was still in control.

Galatians 1:7 - There is no other one

1:7

“which is really no gospel at all”. Seeking to change by our own efforts promises life, but delivers nothing, it is no gospel at all. Now, when we live by grace, when God works in us, we will work, in fact we will work harder than we have ever worked before. Just think about your own life, about the parts where things do work fairly well. I find two things are present in these areas. On the one hand there is a gratitude to God, a knowledge that it is only by His grace that this area works well, and with this is a joy. On the other hand it is an area where I will devote much effort, being prepared to pay a price. The two go together. In Galatia there were people who were telling them that they needed to work in order to make progress, in the sense of work without grace. We will get into the specifics of what they taught as we work through the book, but here Paul is talking in generalities, so we will look at the general principle. These people were causing confusion and perverting the gospel of Christ. Do you know, if we tell people they need to make progress by work alone (bearing in mind my comments about how grace and hard work go hand in hand) we will only cause confusion in their lives, and we are not presenting the gospel. Also, note that Paul here is talking about the gospel in their ongoing lives. The gospel is not just about the initial point of conversion it is about the whole of life.

Zechariah 5:5-11 - Woman in a basket

5:5-8

Zechariah then gets another vision, almost immediately. On hearing the first vision the people might think “well at least I don’t do that sin”, and maybe we don’t. But this vision involves the “iniquity of the people throughout the land”. The vision is of a basket, it has a lead cover on it. No one is quite sure what the lead cover represents, but inside the basket is a woman. Now why is a woman representing the “iniquity of the people”, this is a bit unfair isn’t it? Well, later in the vision women are shown in a more positive light! However, the woman may be a figurine and may represent idolatry.

5:9-11

And here are the women shown in a positive light. They are taking the sin away from the land, and the basket and its sin will set in that place in Babylon. So we see God removing sin from the land. It is a consistent feature in the Bible that when God gets involved in the life of a person or a nation He removes sin from that person or nation. If we wish to see God at work in our land then we need to appreciate that part of that work will be God removing sin from the land. The view of God’s love that many have, even people in the church, is one that is totally unbiblical and ungodly, for so often it is a sin affirming view. We should also note that the picture here of sin being set in place in Babylon is consistent with the place that Babylon has in Revelation.

Galatians 1:5,6 - I am astonished

1:5

If we want to bring glory to God then we need to believe in Christ, and we need to trust in Him alone. God has presented Christ as the only way to Him, so to seek to approach God by any other means is to insult God. When we trust in Christ God’s name is truly glorified.

1:6

We do not appreciate the tone of this letter. It was common in letters of the day to express appreciation of the people and maybe offer up a prayer for them. Indeed, this is the pattern in Paul’s other letters. This was true even in the letters to the Corinthians, where almost everything that could be wrong was wrong. Here there is no commendation at all, but Paul dives right into addressing the issue. This shows how serious a matter he considered it to be. We are called to “live in the grace of Christ”. Sometimes, perhaps even frequently, Galatians is viewed as talking about how we are saved, and saying that we are saved by faith not by works. Of course, we are saved by faith not by works, but the letter is more about how we are to live. The Galatians had already made a “profession of faith”, as Paul will state later, they had made a good start. It wasn’t about “how to be saved” in the initial salvation sense. Rather it is about how to be saved in the ongoing how to live sense. They were “turning to a different gospel”. And it is so easy for us to do the same. We realise there is some area in our life where we need to improve (or even get started!), and we will seek to bring this change about by works. One common area where we do this is evangelism. Most of the church in the West is pretty hopeless at this, so if we try to change things we do so by a combination of making people feel guilty about not doing enough evangelism, and by giving people “training” or techniques. And this does not work, If it did work the west would have been won long ago!

Notes on Acts Chapters 11-20

Notes on Acts Chapters 11-20 are now available on Dundee Believer.

Galatians 1:3,4 - Who gave himself for our sins

1:3

“Grace and peace” is the common greeting in Paul’s letters. This grace and peace comes from “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. Grace and peace could be described as key blessings of the gospel, and they come from God Himself. They are not the product of a set of ideas nor even of a way of life, they are a direct gift from God. It is so important that we realise that the gospel is not about a set of ideas, it is not a philosophy, it is gift from God. Once again we have God the Father and Jesus Christ mentioned together and given equal status. People sometimes say that New Testament does not support the doctrine of the Trinity. This is nonsense. The word trinity is not in the New Testament, but the doctrine of the Trinity seeks to encapsulate what the New Testament does say about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And unless we assume that they are distinct and co-equal, then the New Testament does not make any sense at all.

1:4

“who gave himself for our sins ...”. Notice that this is clearly referring to Jesus. The previous verse has said “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”, this is more implicit evidence that the New Testament writers clearly thought that Christ was God. There are those who say that the divinity of Jesus was a concept that was not held by the early church, but only developed much later. Such notions are without foundation and are totally inconsistent with the Biblical evidence. Much of the letter is focused on how we are to live, with particular emphasis on whether Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised or not. Christ has given himself for our sins, there is nothing we need to do, indeed nothing we can do, to rescue ourselves. We have been rescued by the only one who could do so. And it is Christ who has rescued us from “the present evil age”. Observance of the Law could not and cannot do that, and there is no need for it to do so. Everything is in Christ and in Christ alone. Moreover, this plan was “according to the will of our God and Father”. The Judaisers would have argued that the Galatians needed to get circumcised in order to really please God. This was not true. Total salvation in Christ and in Christ alone is God’s plan.