anathema

A Different Gospel

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6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

10 For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. – Galatians 1:6-10 ESV

Paul can’t believe what he is hearing. It had probably only been a few months since he visited the province of Galatia and helped launch the first house churches. But now he has received word that those who had accepted Christ were beginning to abandon the gospel message they had delivered to them. But it’s not that they’re walking away from the faith altogether, but that they’ve traded in the gospel for a new and improved version.  It seems unlikely that Paul had been unclear when he told the Galatians about  Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Since his commissioning by Jesus Himself, Paul proclaimed the gospel in countless towns and villages around the Mediterranean Sea. He had developed a very effective ministry strategy that resulted in thousands of people coming to faith in Jesus, and the message he shared with the Galatians was the very same one he had shared in Corinth:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. – 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 ESV

The heart of the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. That is what Paul believed and that is what he preached. He had had a personal encounter with the resurrected Jesus after His death, so he knew the resurrection was true. He was also a firm believer in the gospel’s transformative power because it had radically changed his life. So, when he received news that the believers in Galatia were “so quickly deserting” the gospel for a “different” one, he was shocked and saddened. This news left him with no other choice than to confront the believers in Galatia and those who had led them astray.

The phrase, “so quickly deserting” is actually one word in Greek – μετατίθημι (metatithēmi), and it means “to transfer one’s self or suffer one’s self to be transferred” (“G3346 – metatithēmi (KJV):: Strong’s Greek Lexicon.” Blue Letter Bible. http://www.blueletterbible.org).

Under the influence of others, the believers in Galatia had begun to transpose or translate their allegiance from the gospel that Paul had preached to another version that the Judaizers were promoting. Paul called it ἕτερος (heteros) – “another” gospel – that was different in nature, form, class, and kind. It wasn’t an expansion of Paul’s gospel, but it was a different gospel altogether. It was a distortion or perversion of what Paul and the apostles had preached. Yet those who were preaching this contrary gospel didn’t make that distinction. They were promoting it as the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were pawning it off as the real thing, which made it so dangerous.

Paul was so adamant in his stance against these purveyors of counterfeit gospels, that he desired them to be “accursed” – ἀνάθεμα (anathema). In essence, Paul was delivering them over to God’s judgment. The Greek word Paul used means “a thing devoted to God without hope of being redeemed” (“G331 – anathema (KJV):: Strong’s Greek Lexicon.” Blue Letter Bible. http://www.blueletterbible.org). These are strong words from Paul and they convey just how seriously he took the matter. For Paul, the gospel was not something to be toyed with, added to, expounded upon, or distorted in any way.

Paul was not in the ministry to win a popularity context. He wasn’t interested in telling people what they wanted to hear or delivering his own version of the truth. He was out to preach the good news of salvation made possible through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was determined to preach a message of life change and transformation. His was a message of faith, not works. It was based on the law of the Spirit of life, not the Mosaic law. The gospel that Paul preached made man completely dependent upon the grace and mercy of God. No one could save themselves. No one was capable of earning favor with God through human effort, and anyone who taught that man could achieve righteousness and earn justification with God apart from faith in Christ alone was preaching a false and deadly gospel.

Paul wasn’t out to please men. If he had been, he wouldn’t have preached the message he did. No one likes to hear that they are sinners and that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23 ESV). No one enjoys being told that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 ESV). Who wants to be told that they are under God’s wrath and totally incapable of doing anything about it? And yet, that is the message Paul preached, repeatedly and unapologetically. He wasn’t tickling ears or trying to win converts with a Your-Best-Life-Now message. He was telling them what they needed to hear: the good news of God’s grace made available through the death of His Son.

Paul passed on his dedication to the purity of the gospel message to Timothy, his young protégé in the faith.

Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear. They will reject the truth and chase after myths. – 2 Timothy 4:2-4 NLT

Since the day that Jesus commissioned His disciples to take the gospel to the four corners of the earth, there have been untold numbers of counterfeit gospels that have tried to turn people away from the truth regarding faith in Christ alone. The situation in Galatia was not new and it didn’t catch Paul by surprise. Everywhere he turned, he had to counter the words of those who would add to the simplicity and purity of the gospel message, and the same thing is still taking place today.

There are many gospels today. Some are slight variations on the real gospel. Others are complete aberrations, distortions of the truth of God masquerading as hope. They tell people what they want to hear. They make false promises. They take salvation out of the hands of God and place it in the hands of men. Religious rule-keeping becomes the means of redemption. Self-effort replaces dying to self. Men become their own saviors and salvation becomes little more than an escape from the troubles of this life rather than the promise of eternal life. False gospels almost always show up in the form of either legalism or license. They promote self-salvation or self-gratification. They become all about living up to a set of rules or living as if there are no rules. Both are false. Both are dangerous. And Paul would have us avoid them like the plague.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Our Lord, Come!

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Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints—be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.

The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. – 1  Corinthians 16:15-24 ESV

Paul wraps up his letter with a somewhat random and meandering closing. First, he recognizes three individuals, Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus. They were among the first converts in Achaia, the province in which Corinth was located. Earlier in this letter, Paul indicated that Stephanas and his family were the only ones he had baptized in Corinth. “I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else” (1 Corinthians 1:16 ESV). It seems that Stephanas and the other two had made a recent trip to visit Paul and had been a source of encouragement to him. He was appreciative of their friendship and ministry, and wanted the congregation in Corinth to treat them with respect. He uses these three men as examples of the kind of leadership to whom the Corinthians should submit themselves. They were worthy of recognition. What stood out to Paul was their hearts for service and their attitude of humility as they ministered to him and their fellow believers in Corinth. 

Secondly, Paul sends greetings from the house church Asia, which was meeting in the home of Aquila and Priscilla. Paul had struck up a friendship with this couple after having met them in Corinth on one of his missionary journeys. “After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade” (Acts 18:1-3 ESV). They had fled Rome due to persecution and had ended up in Corinth. When Paul left Corinth for Ephesus, Aquila and Priscilla traveled with him and later settled in Ephesus, starting a church in their home (Acts 18:18-20). Again, these two individuals were examples of the kind of disciples Paul was looking to make everywhere he went. They were selfless and each had the heart of a servant. They were willing to open up their home, share their resources and give of their time in order to see that the gospel spread throughout the known world. And they used their trade as tentmakers to pay their own way. 

Paul puts the finishing touches to his letter with his own hand. He had probably dictated the rest of the letter, but wanted to sign off in his own writing in order to validate that the letter was really from him. And the final lines he penned are interesting in terms of there seeming randomness.

If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. – vs 22

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. – vs 23

My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. – vs 24

He calls for a curse, prays for God’s grace, and extends his love – an interesting combination of thoughts. And sandwiched in-between them is an appeal for the Lord’s return: “Our Lord, come!” This was an Aramaic expression and would become a standard greeting among believers in the early days of the church. Those in the church lived with a sense of the Lord’s eminent return. Belief that His coming could happen any day was a motivating factor in their lives. They lived with a sense of anticipation and eager expectation. And for Paul, the world become a place that consisted of either believers or non-believers, the saved or the lost. And if anyone refused to love the Lord, Paul’s response was to let them be accursed. As violent and harsh as this sounds, Paul is simply expressing the sad reality of their condition due to their rejection of the Savior. They were already under a curse, which carried the penalty of death and eternal separation from God. Paul was suggesting that their rejection of Christ was going to result in their rejection by God. His return was going to bring bad news and an even worse ending to their lives. But for Paul and the other believers in Corinth, the return of Christ was something for which they could and should look forward.

The author of Hebrews reminds us that we should have no fear of death and that we should eagerly hope for and in the return of Christ.

Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. – Hebrews 2:14-15 NLT

In the meantime, while they awaited the Lord’s return, Paul prayed that the grace of Christ would protect them. And he would continue to love them – sometimes in spite of them. He would write them, confronting and encouraging them in their faith, longing to see them face to face, so that he might strengthen them. As he said in his letter to the Romans, “For I long to visit you so I can bring you some spiritual gift that will help you grow strong in the Lord” (Romans 1:11 NLT).

A brotherly love (phileo) for Christ. The undeserved, sustaining grace of Christ. The selfless, Christ-like love (agape) of Paul for them. And the eager expectation of Christ’s return. These were all on the heart of Paul as he wrapped up his letter to the Corinthians. And they should be the passion and priority of every believer in the church today.

A Passion For His People.

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I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. – Romans 9:1-5 ESV

Paul was a proud, card-carrying Jew. His Damascus road experience had introduced him to his Messiah and justified him before God, but it had not eliminated or altered his ethnicity in any way. His identity as a descendant of Abraham remained unaltered, and his Hebrew heritage remained intact. In fact, Paul was proud of his background. He once described himself as having been “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee” (Philippians 3:5 ESV).

After his Damascus Road encounter with the resurrected Jesus, Paul received a commission to take the gospel to the Gentiles. But Paul never abandoned his desire to share the good news about the Messiah with his fellow Jews. The book of Acts records that, virtually every place Paul traveled on his missionary journeys, the first place he went was to the local synagogue.

Paul and Barnabas traveled inland to Antioch of Pisidia. On the Sabbath they went to the synagogue for the services. – Acts 13:14 NLT

The same thing happened in Iconium. Paul and Barnabas went to the Jewish synagogue and preached with such power that a great number of both Jews and Greeks became believers. – Acts 14:1 NLT

While Paul’s assignment from God was to take the gospel to the Gentiles, he never lost his desire to see his fellow Jews come to faith.

Paul and Silas then traveled through the towns of Amphipolis and Apollonia and came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As was Paul’s custom, he went to the synagogue service, and for three Sabbaths in a row he used the Scriptures to reason with the people. He explained the prophecies and proved that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead. He said, “This Jesus I’m telling you about is the Messiah.” – Acts 17:1-3 NLT

As a former Pharisee, Paul was highly knowledgeable of the Hebrew Scriptures and understood that the Jews were God’s chosen people. That’s why he wrote, “They are the people of Israel, chosen to be God’s adopted children. God revealed his glory to them. He made covenants with them and gave them his law. He gave them the privilege of worshiping him and receiving his wonderful promises. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their ancestors, and Christ himself was an Israelite as far as his human nature is concerned” (Romans 9:4-5 NLT).

The Jewish nation was the divinely ordained conduit through which God’s grace and mercy were to flow to all mankind. God had sovereignly orchestrated that His Son was born into a Jewish household. Jesus was a Jew, but not only that, He was the fulfillment of God’s long-awaited promise for a Messiah or deliverer.

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. – Isaiah 7:14 ESV

And Jesus was the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. – Galatians 3:16 ESV

Paul knew that the church in Rome was likely comprised of a blend of both Jews and Gentiles, and it would be easy for the Jews to be seen in a negative light. After all, they had rejected the Messiah and were complicit in His death. Peter made that fact painfully clear when he addressed the Jews in his sermon on the day of Pentecost.

“The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.” – Acts 3:13-15 ESV

But despite his harsh accusation, Peter was quick to offer them an opportunity to repent of their sin and accept Jesus as their Messiah.

“I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.” – Acts 3:17-20 ESV

Both Peter and Paul longed to see their fellow Jews accept Jesus as their Savior. Paul has already stated in this letter that all men stand before God as guilty of sin and worthy of death. But he also made it clear that Jesus died so that all men, both Jews and Gentiles, might come to a saving knowledge of Jesus as their God-appointed deliverer.

Paul felt so strongly about his desire for the Jews to be saved that he was willing to be damned or cut off from Christ if it meant that his fellow Jews might come to faith.

I would be willing to be forever cursed—cut off from Christ!—if that would save them.  – Romans 9:3 NLT

The Greek word Paul used was anathema, and it refers to “a thing devoted to God without hope of being redeemed, and if an animal, to be slain; therefore a person or thing doomed to destruction” (Outline of Biblical Usage). In a sense, Paul was saying that he was willing to give up his salvation if it meant that more of his Jewish brothers and sisters would come to faith in Christ. Of course, Paul knew that sacrificing his salvation could not redeem anyone, but his statement expresses his deep longing for them to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus as their Messiah.

Despite the Jewish nation’s initial rejection of Jesus, there were many who had come to believe in Him, and their path to salvation was the same as everyone else’s. They had to come to Christ by faith alone; their Jewish heritage could not save them. When it came to God’s assessment of their sinfulness, their coveted position as Abraham’s descendants could not earn them special favor with God.

Remember, Paul started out this letter with his thesis that the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16 ESV).

One of the hardest things for a Jew to do was to let go of his pride and trust in his own self-righteousness and accept the free gift of God’s grace offered through His Son’s death on the cross. Paul knew this firsthand, which led him to quote the words of God found in the book of Exodus.

For God said to Moses,

“I will show mercy to anyone I choose,
    and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”

So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it. – Romans 9:15-16 NLT

Paul longed for Jews to come to faith in Christ; he deeply desired their salvation. But he knew that there was only one way for them to be saved, and he made that way known to Timothy, his son in the faith.

…there is only one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time. – 1 Timothy 2:5-6 NLT