I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed. (Galatians 1:6-9)You know how it is. You give the kids specific instructions and don’t even get very far from the house and they have already broken your rules. You show someone how to do something and turn your back and when you look again they have bollixed it up so bad that it is almost amazing to you.
Paul felt he had give the Galatian church all the teaching they needed to do great things. Then he left. And he says that he hardly got out of sight and they had messed up.
So quickly. So fast. The error had come in and it took root far faster than the teaching.
And what was the error? It was legalism
The apostle Paul had taught all his ministry in Jesus that we are saved by grace, not by works. But people came along behind him and told the churches he had been with that he was wrong. We have to do stuff in order to be saved. They told the churches that there were legal requirements God had made that if we didn’t keep them we would be lost.
In their case, it was often a blend of Old and New Testament stuff that they taught. They had to be circumcised, the had to keep certain feast days, etc.
The same thing happens today, only with a bit of a different twist. Someone preaches grace and someone else says, Wait, there is more you have to do. You also have to be baptized, you have to sing a certain way, you have to not celebrate certain holidays, you have to – the list goes on.
The problem is, there is nothing you can do to be saved. If there was, then Jesus died for nothing.
The Bible plainly says that we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-10). We believe God and he saves us. There are no formulae, no creeds to be kept, no rituals to keep, no anything to do that will ensure our salvation. Instead, what God says is that we do the things we do because we are saved, not in order to be saved.
There is a whole world of difference there. But the problem is it is hard to accept the fact that there are no written rules to be kept to ensure salvation.
The Bible is not a list of rules. The Bible is a guideline for a God-pleasing life. There are no boxes to be check, nor blanks to be filled in.
The only thing that God requires is faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). If we do that, we will be pleasing.
It sure is hard, though, not to add new things. It is one of the easiest things we can do. Especially when added under the rubric “My church believes in…”
It does not matter what our church believes in. What matters is what God says.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.