When you survey this passage along with two other passages from the Apostle Paul located in Romans 1:16 – 17 as well as 1 Corinthians 15:1 – 6, you will quickly find out that the Apostle Paul was intensely devoted to the message of the gospel.

When you survey those two passages, along with the one we are studying today, you will find a man who speaks with great intensity to the church in Rome when he says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Rom. 1:16 – 17). He speaks with equal intensity to the church in Corinth when he says, “Remember the most important thing I said to you… the gospel” (1 Cor. 15:1 – 6).

And now he speaks with even greater intensity to the church in Galatia when he says things like “I am astonished (in shock) with you” because you are becoming a deserter (v. 6), and regarding those who preach a false gospel he says twice over, “Let him be accursed” or cutoff from God (vv. 8, 9), and in regards to whom he aims to please he says, “I would not be a servant of Christ if I am trying to please man” (v. 10). Deserters, false preachers, and pleasers are all in the cross hairs of the Apostle Paul as he contends and fights for the centrality of the one true Gospel.

Suffice it to say, the Apostle Paul believed that the gospel was the most important message a person could ever hear and believe. If you wanted to experience the apostle Paul with the full intensity of a lioness protecting her cubs, just call into question the gospel he preached, and you would catch a really intense earful. The very first thing that the Apostle Paul implies is that we should not desert the God whom we claimed has saved us. Look at the text with me…

6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – 7not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But 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. 9As 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. 10For 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.

#1: DO NOT DESERT THE GOD WHO SAVED YOU (VV. 6 – 7)

Does it seem crazy to you to think that you might be in danger of deserting the God whom you claim has saved you? Think about it, you attend church gatherings, you might give some of your time, talent, and treasure to the church, maybe you even go the extra mile to straighten out some of your morality and ethics issues, and maybe for a little icing on the cake, you take a loud stand against everything LGBTQ, the abortion industry, the porn industry, and you try to vote based upon some Biblical values. Would Paul dare step into your home and call you a deserter?

In verses 6 – 7, Paul is literally dumbfounded over the fact that the Galatians are in the process of deserting the God whom they claimed had saved them by grace through faith in the person and work of Jesus alone according to Scripture alone when he says, “6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – 7not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Does it shock you to hear Paul using such strong language with professing Christians in his day?

Would it surprise you if he were to use the same intense language with you today? If the apostle Paul asked every one of us to explain the message of the gospel, could we explain it faithfully, or would we get a tongue lashing for beginning to desert the God whom we claim has saved us?

Paul is not merely sad or mildly displeased with the Galatians; he is literally in a state of shock over the fact that they are becoming deserters, they are beginning to play for the other team, they are beginning to commit high treason. He is in shock because the people who once received the message of the gospel of grace are now showing signs of being imposters who do not believe the gospel.

They are beginning to believe a false gospel that is being preached by false preachers who are literally turning the gospel upside down into an unrecognizable distortion of the real thing.2 Speaking of false preachers… what does Paul say about these false preachers? This leads me to the second implication of our text. Contained inside of Paul’s next few sentences is the serious implication that we should not be connected in any way to any false preachers.

#2: DO NOT BE CONNECTED TO FALSE PREACHERS (VV. 8 – 9)

How would you know if you were connected to a false preacher if you cannot fully articulate the message of the gospel? This is a very serious question because it is all too common among professing Christians, to add all sorts of secondary things (even really good secondary things) to the message of the gospel as if those secondary things are the main thing. As I said last week, the statistics are very high concerning professing Christians who cannot fully articulate the gospel.

One commentator says that “We worship in a church of many gospels. There is the gospel of material prosperity, which teaches that Jesus is the way to financial gain. There is the gospel of family values, which teaches that Jesus is the way to a happy home. There is the gospel of the self, which teaches that Jesus is the way to personal fulfillment. There is the gospel of religious tradition, which teaches that Jesus is the way to respectability. There is the gospel of morality, which teaches that Jesus is the way to be a good person.”3

That same commentator goes on to say that “What makes these other gospels so dangerous is that the things they offer are all beneficial. It is good to be prosperous, to have a happy home, and to be well behaved. Yet as good as all these things are, they are not the good news [they are not the gospel]. When they become for us a sort of gospel, then we are in danger of running away from the only gospel there is.”4

Along these same lines, Pastor Ray Ortlund comments that there are a number of things that can take place of the gospel in our hearts and minds such as: “a passionate devotion to the pro-life cause; a confident manipulation of modern managerial techniques; a drive toward church growth; a deep concern for the institution of the family; a clever appeal to consumerism by offering a sort of cost-free Christianity Lite; a sympathetic, empathetic, thickly-honeyed cultivation of interpersonal relationships; a determination to take America back to its Christian roots through political power; and a warm affirmation of self-esteem.”5

Please hear me when I say this… all of the things that I just mentioned are not necessarily bad things and in fact many of those things are things that Christians should care about deeply. But they should not be the dominating thing in your heart and life because the only thing that should dominate your heart and life is the message of the gospel.

This is why the apostle Paul emphatically implies that we should not be connected to false preachers; we should not be connected to anyone who makes any of the things I have listed into the main thing. Notice how harsh Paul sounds in verses 8 – 9 when he says, “8But 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. 9As 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.”

The overriding message here is that anyone – no matter who it is – that makes secondary things into main gospel things or worse makes the main gospel things into unimportant things, such as the importance of repentance from sin, the reality of eternal separation from God in a literal place called hell, or even those who reject the person and work of Christ at the cross, the empty tomb, and the promise of Heaven, when anyone adds to or subtracts from the message of the gospel, Paul says they should be “accursed”.

That word that the Apostle Paul uses twice here – accursed – (vv. 8, 9), literally means to be anathema or cutoff, or devoted to destruction, or left to rot in hell; he is literally arguing for their destruction and by way of implication is saying that the Galatians should not be connected in any way to these false preachers otherwise they too will be in danger of becoming “anathema”, cut off, devoted for destruction by the God whom they have deserted and hated as they run headlong into eternal separation from God in a literal living hell.6

This whole line of thinking for the apostle Paul brings us to the final implication of our text for today. This final implication brings into sharp focus the tendency we have to aim to please man over pleasing God.

#3: DO NOT AIM TO PLEASE MAN (V. 10)

Our aim should never be to please man, or to become wishy washy believers who toggle back and forth between two opinions because we are afraid to offend someone or to lose friends. If you and I aim to please man instead of pleasing God, we will wind up in eternal separation from God because we chose to worship what God has created in our pandering to man-pleasing instead of worshipping the one true God in Spirit and in truth (John 4).

It is obvious that the Apostle Paul had received the emails, the text messages, and the social media posts that laid out his opponents’ accusations against him. Since Paul was known for being all things to all people so that he might win a few with the message of the gospel, it would be easy for his opponents to accuse him of being a man-pleaser which in effect would diminish the authenticity of his gospel so that those false teachers could get these new believers to tack something onto their salvation – namely the secondary practice of circumcision.7

Of course, in Paul’s classic bold style, he does not ignore the criticism and the accusations but instead proves that he could care less about the opinions of some false preachers because his only aim is to please the one whom he will never desert. This is why in verse 10, he says, “10For 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. The questions the Apostle Paul asks here are rhetorical questions that have an obvious answer due to the fact that he is openly challenging his opponents therefore he could not be a man-pleaser; he must be a God-pleaser.

At the end of the day, if your sole aim here on this earth is to please the One who gave everything to save you from the penalty, the presence, and the power of your sin at the cross of Calvary, in light of the empty tomb, along with the promise of the hope of Heaven… if Christ is the One whom you aim to please above all others, then you will fight to maintain a proper understanding and a faithful application of the one true message of the gospel regardless of who your earthly opponents become.

APPLICATION…

By way of application, it has been said that the message of the gospel is the central message that is woven throughout the Bible from beginning to end; the gospel is literally what the Bible is about. But what is the gospel and why is it so important?

If the gospel is the message that is woven throughout the Bible from beginning to end, then it would seem that that particular message is of the utmost importance since it is the focal point of God’s written Word, the main point of God’s self-revelation to mankind. In one sense we could describe the message of the gospel as the message of what Christ has done to make a way for sinners to be made right before our Father in heaven; Jesus’ sinless life, sacrificial death, victorious resurrection, and imminent return, are definitely the focal points of the gospel with Jesus at the center.

I am obviously passionate about helping other Christians to understand and apply and hold onto the true message of the gospel. I would not want any of us to be guilty of deserting the God whom we proclaim has saved us. I would not want any of us to be connected to any false preachers. And I most definitely want all of us to live our lives with a sense of gospel centrality that motivates us to please God alone.

The only way I can think to help us do these things is to help us understand the gospel, apply the gospel, and believe the gospel. If you and I live our lives becoming more intimate with the message of the gospel, then when a counterfeit – a false gospel – looms on the horizon, we will know it instantly because we are so in tune with the truth. To that end, I want us to watch a short video that demonstrates and explains the gospel.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, that video has been one of my “go to” resources over the years in helping people to really get the gospel. You may have noticed some cards on your seats when you came in this morning that have the GOSPEL acronym printed on them.8 My hope is that we as a church family would spend the next few weeks (maybe longer if the Lord leads) in memorizing that little card. If we do this together, I would say that I would feel like we are all on the same page with a basic but faithful description of the gospel. Let’s recite it together out loud:

GOD created us to be with him.

OUR sins separate us from God.

SINS cannot be removed by good deeds.

PAYING the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.

EVERYONE who trusts in him alone has eternal life.

LIFE with Jesus starts now and lasts forever.

There are far too many within the church today who believe that the simple message of the gospel is merely the starting point by which you become a Christian and then you move on to deeper things as you become more mature as though the gospel is merely an evangelism tool that lays the foundation for the more advanced things of God.

This faulty thinking – unbiblical thinking – is the reason we have so many weak Christians in church today who not only can barely explain the gospel but have no orientation for applying the gospel to their daily lives because it is easier to begin to follow a list of dos and don’ts than it is to truly apply the gospel to our everyday lives.

May it never be said of us that we began to desert him who saved us out of our sin through the shed blood and broken body of Jesus. May it never be said of us that we willingly entertained, or heaven forbid, propagated a false gospel of moralism, legalism, American idealism, relativism, consumerism, or any of the other “isms” that are so rampant in our culture that so easily get attached to our “gospel”.

May it always be said that we strove hard to understand the gospel, believe the gospel, apply the gospel, and contend for the gospel as we lived our lives to bring honor and glory to the only one who deserves our attention in the crucified, risen, and returning Christ. – Amen!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 Philip, Graham, Ryken, Galatians, Reformed Expository Commentary, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2005), 18 – 19.

3 Ibid., 20.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., 20 – 21.

6 Ibid., 22 – 23.

7 Ibid., 24 – 25.

8 The GOSPEL Acronym is a resource from Dare 2 Share Ministries and can be found at: https://www.dare2share.org/resources/life-in-6-words/