There Is Only One Gospel
Galatians--The Heart of the Gospel--Series
A Sermon By Jim Hammond from Galatians 1:6-9
There is only one Gospel,
and by that I do not mean to exclude Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John. We
call these the four Gospels, but they are each proclaiming the one Gospel
To say there is only one Gospel is to say that there is only one message
from God that tells us how we can be made acceptable to a Holy God, having
our sins forgiven so that we can live with Him for eternity.
Peter Said it this Way:
Acts 4:12 Salvation is found in
no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which
we must be saved."
Jesus Said it This Way:
John 14:6 Jesus answered,
"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me.
Exclusivity Irritates People Today
This claim irritates people like nothing else. This
claim has been called narrow-minded, bigoted, snobbish. When you talk
about the exclusive claims of Christianity today, you offend people. Any
institution today that attempts to be exclusive is suspect. There are
male only colleges that are controversial because it excludes females.
When any group says you can’t, it makes people mad. So, if there is no
girls’ wrestling team at the high school, we can’t say no to the girls who
want to wrestle against the boys. I feel sorry for the boy who has to
wrestle against the girl. If you know much about wrestling holds you can
understand this.
Perhaps there are some here who are seekers of truth
and there is something in you that chafes at this exclusive claim. It
presents a barrier to your faith in Christ. For you, in a world of
seemingly endless options it seems odd that God would only provide one
way.
I believe Jesus was telling the truth. I also
believe he was saying it not out of arrogance but out of compassion. I
believe that once you get to know Jesus, his claim actually makes the best
sense.
Paul believed Jesus’ claim, and it is actually Paul’s
exclusive statements that we are going to study this morning.
Today we are going to
study how Paul Said It:
Galatians 1:6-9 I am astonished
that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of
Christ and are turning to a different gospel--
7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are
throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of
Christ.
8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel
other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!
9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is
preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be
eternally condemned!
Pop culture today disagrees with Paul, the
Bible, and God. But I believe there really is only one Gospel. If what I
am saying, along with Paul, Peter, Jesus, and the Bible as a whole is
true, that there really is only one Gospel, then we had better understand
it because it is the most important truth that people could know.
Focus: Just because
all religions are to be equally tolerated does not mean they are equally
true.
I agree with our nations
laws that religions should be equally protected under our constitution,
but that does not mean that I must agree that every religion is good or
true or right.
The Church of the Aliens
Let’s say there was a new
faith called the Church of the Aliens, and the guru of this faith had lots
of money and bought TV time to teach his religion. He teaches that a long
time ago in a galaxy far, far away was an extremely advanced
civilization. It was a wonderful advanced civilization, but one day at a
huge celebration several hundred of these superior and intelligent beings
ate some tainted veggie dip, and as a result, a virus hopelessly scrambled
their formerly advanced brains.
The wise men of the
planet tried to treat the victims but nothing improved their strange
thoughts and behaviors. These very sick citizens of the planet became a
problem to the other residents and began to negatively affect the advanced
civilization. And so, teaches the guru, this advanced civilization
determined that what would be best for them, and best for their world,
would be to send these severely affected beings to an asylum planet where
they could roam about freely and act insane and not affect their own
wonderful planet. They reasoned that everyone would be happier this way.
The asylum planet they chose was Earth.
As you can guess, the
guru then tells us we are all descendents of these aliens. You want
proof? Just read history books, look at a paper, watch the News on TV.
Need I say more? According to this guru, WE are the aliens with scrambled
brain. The guru says he has been in contact with the advanced aliens and
they believe they are getting close to finding a vaccination to give to
those who are affected in order to bring all the alien insane into their
right mind, and back to the right planet.
Good story? I wouldn’t
put it past some people to believe it. And it is okay to defend their
right to believe something, but just because the constitution protects
their rights to believe this unverified made up story does not make what
they believe true.
True religion is not
about what works for you, but about what is true. Today we want to focus
on the Gospel Truth.
I. THE GOSPEL IS INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE
How Dare We…
·
How dare Christianity have a book that claims to be God’s
Word?
·
How dare we say the Bible claims to be better than all other
religious books?
·
How dare we say our Savior is THE Way, THE Truth, and The
Life, and that there is NO other way to God except through Jesus?
·
How dare we say salvation is exclusively through Jesus?
We dare say so because we believe it is
true.
We dare say so because we don’t believe
the exclusive claim needs to be offensive.
We dare say so because we believe the
orientation of the claim is actually inclusive more than it is exclusive.
The Gospel In a Nutshell
Listen carefully to my
next sentence: “If you can get John 3:16 in your head, you’ve got it
in a nutshell.” Before I explain that sentence let me ask you, did
you hear an insult or a truth? If you can get this in your head, you’ve
got it in a nutshell. Those who hear an insult, believe I called their
cranium a nutshell. Those who hear a truth, heard me call John 3:16 the
gospel in a nutshell. It’s often only a misunderstanding that is
offensive.
Here’s the nutshell I was
talking about. The Bible does not teach, “For God so loved the world that
He gave the world many ways to himself.” What does John 3:16 say?
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have
eternal life.
Let me read it again
John 3:16
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son, that whoever (that’s the INCLUSIVE PART)
believes in him (that’s the EXCLUSIVE
part) shall not perish but have eternal life.
Definition of Gospel when used technically as Paul did here:
The Gospel is the Good News about who
Jesus is, what he has done, and how we can receive eternal life through
Jesus.
·
THE INCLUSIVE CLAIM OF
THE GOSPEL: that ANYONE
can receive the gift of salvation freely offered BY grace through Christ.
·
THE EXCLUSIVE CLAIM OF
THE GOSPEL: that it is ONLY by
God’s grace freely given through Christ’s Atonement that anyone can be
saved from their own sin.
Its Inclusive Claim
Offended Judaic Legalism then
The Judaizers didn’t think Gentiles could be included
until they became Jews, so they were perverting the gospel by saying you
can’t expect to be accepted by God through faith in Jesus alone. You also
have to be circumcised and begin to follow the Old Testament practices.
This teaching was a dangerous error that Paul condemned with the harshest
of language, calling it a “different gospel.” He says if you do this you
are abandoning God because you are abandoning the grace he offers. The
rest of the letter explains why this teaching was so wrong.
The old Judaic legalism was a dependence on
law keeping to be acceptable to God. But this was a fallacy to begin
with. One was never justified by the law, because all men sin and fall
short of the glory of God. All the law did was condemn, it does not save
anyone. The good thing the Law did was show us how far short we fall from
God’s standard of Holiness, but it does not help us achieve God’s standard
of holiness. Just because we teach our children right and wrong, does
that mean they always choose right from wrong? The fact is we don’t teach
our children to do wrong, they naturally do it. Education alone isn’t the
answer. We need a transformation, and knowing what is right doesn’t give
us the power to live it.
Paul wrote to the
Galatian churches with a great measure of frustration. There were some
who were offended at the INCLUSIVE part and so they were CHANGING the
EXCLUSIVE part, making it Law based rather than faith in Jesus based.
Galatians 1:8-9 But even if we
or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we
preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!
9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is
preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be
eternally condemned!
Eternally Condemned!
Wow that’s strong language. He is saying, let such a one who perverts and
twists the true gospel in this manner be anathematized, let them be
eternally condemned, let them be severely judged, let them be warned, they
are asking for the judgment of hell!
Many don’t like religious
teachers saying things so strongly as Paul! It rankles our pop cultures
sense of tolerance! But remember, Jesus also said things just as
strongly.
Matthew 23:15
"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and
when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.
It helps to know that the people to which such strong
language is addressed are not the down trodden who are looking for
answers, but the self righteous religious who are close minded and
refusing the correct answers while forcing their wrong answers upon
others.
Isn’t it funny how pop culture enjoys it when Jesus
condemned the exclusivist hypocritical religious Pharisee, but doesn’t
like it when his claim offends the hypocritical humanist philosophy of
tolerance?
Its Exclusive Claim Offends The New “Tolerance” Now
Paul doesn’t simply teach Christianity because
Christianity is Good, as if it were a good option among many. Paul
proclaims Christianity as TRUE.
Even Christians are
falling for this different gospel. It goes something like this when a so
called Christian articulates it, “My faith is Christianity. It’s a
wonderful faith that meets my needs. But Christianity is only one of many
ways to God. All the ways are good. If you would like to know about my
faith I can show you what I know, but I can’t say Christianity is better
than your faith. You will have to decide what’s best for you.”
The Danger of the “Many Ways” lie
It isn’t logical. Nobody believes this
nonsense about anything else, so why do they believe it about God?
Examples
Would you go to a dentist
who believed there were Many ways to do a root canal, and each way is
equally valid? If your dentist said, “You know there are many ways to the
root. I can go in directly through the tooth in your mouth, or I can go
in through your nostril, or I can go in through your ear, or I can drill
in through the back of your neck and work my way back to your gum.” I’d
be very nervous with a dentist who believed there were many ways to do a
root canal.
Would you go to a
mechanic that believed there are many ways to fix your car and each way is
equally valid? If the mechanic told you, “Your tires need to be replaced
on your car right away but we don’t have them in stock, but there are many
ways to fix your car so let’s go ahead and replace the radiator. After
all, as long as we are sincerely working on the car it does not matter
which way we go to solve the problem, all roads lead to a solution.”,
would you keep going there? No. The reason people keep going to a
mechanic is that they give the right solutions to the problems.
II. Christianity’s Biggest Rival (Then and Now) is Moralism
The main competitor to
Christianity is not atheism (the belief that there is no God), and it is
not agnosticism (the belief that you cannot know anything for certain
about God), and it’s not Islam, or Buddhism, or New Age. Christianity’s
main rival is Moralism. Moralism is the view that I’m good enough, I’m
moral enough to earn my way into heaven. This is the presupposition when
someone says, “Hey, I’m just as good as the other guy. I’m not so bad
compared to a lot of the people I hear about on the news.” By the way,
that’s why religious scandal is such big news. People like to feel better
than the other guy, especially the other guy who thinks he’s good. The
person who thinks, “I’m pretty good, and I’m pretty honest, and certainly
I’m no axe murderer or serial killer” is in danger of moralism. This is
the dangerous lie that says, “I deserve to go to heaven because I’m a
pretty good guy.” It is people who believe this that view the exclusive
claims of Christianity as nonsense, worse than nonsense, they get angry at
the message they don’t correctly understand.
III. An Exclusive Way Is Not Bad When…
A.… you feared there was NO way and discovered there was ONE
way
If you are the kind of
person who knows you are prone to sin, and prone to wander from God, and
prone to ignore God in your everyday life, and at the same time you know
God is perfect, the Gospel—the fact that God has given us a way to be
saved--sounds like great news, not bad news. The great news is this, that
there is even one way for a sinner to be forgiven and accepted by a Holy
God.
God never said all roads
lead to him. In fact he has said just the opposite. It wasn’t the
followers of Jesus who decided the Christian faith is exclusive it was
Jesus himself who said so. Is it oppressive to find out there is only one
way to salvation? You might think so until you realize God didn’t owe us
ANY way and that the good news is that he gave us one way.
B.… it Is True
Illustration: The Doctor’s Prescription
Lee Strobel tells the following story:
“A few years ago I had
some friends who had a baby girl who developed jaundice—a disorder of the
liver that caused her skin and the whites of her eyes to turn yellow.
They took the child to a pediatrician. The pediatrician told them that
this is potentially a devastating condition, but that fortunately it is
easily cured. They had to put the baby under a special light, which
somehow stimulates the functioning of the liver. The light would cure
their daughter.
The parents could have
listened to this prescription and said to him, “That sounds too easy. Put
her under a light? How about if we scrubbed her with soap and water, and
dipped her in some bleach instead? Certainly, if we worked hard enough to
scrub her that way, we could get her normal coloring back.”
The doctor would have
looked at them and said, “No, you don’t understand. There is only one way
to cure your daughter.” They could have replied, “How about if we ignored
all of this and pretended that everything was okay? You know, the
jaundice is YOUR truth, Doc. It’s not our truth. If we sincerely believe
that, then things are going to turn out for the best.”
The doctor would have
said, “you’re going to jeopardize the life the life of your child if you
do that. There is only one way to cure her. You’re hesitant to pursue
that because it sounds too easy, but look at the credentials on my wall.
I’ve studied at medical school. I’ve used what I’ve learned to treat and
cure countless babies. Trust me in this.”
Would anybody accuse
those parents of being narrow-minded if they trusted that doctor with
credentials, and pursued the only course of treatment that would cure
their little girl? Of course not. That is not being narrow-minded. That
is acting rationally in accordance with the evidence.
Every person has a
terminal illness called sin. The reason that followers of Jesus cling to
him so tightly is because he is a great Physician who has the only cure.
We could try to scrub away our sins with good deeds. Friends, it will not
work. We can sincerely think that there are other ways of dealing with
it, but we would be sincerely wrong.[1]
C.… it is Inclusive
Are we narrow-minded for acting in accordance with
the evidence?
Are we snobbish to believe we are all needy sinners
and Jesus is the only answer to the sin problem?
Are we “holier than thou” when we believe Jesus
taught that being “holier than thou” was wrong and that everyone of us is
sinners with the same need?
The Gospel is unique. There is no other message like
it, because there is no other savior like Christ. There is no other
religion like Christianity. Christ’s claims are unique, but these truth
claims are backed by the credentials and credibility of Jesus Christ that
have not been duplicated by any other human being. That’s why when Jesus
said, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, history has not laughed.
History has been revolutionized by Jesus. How about you? Have you been
revolutionized by Jesus?
[1]
Lee Strobel, “Are There Many Paths to God?” Preaching Today Tape
179. A monthly sermon resource by Leadership and Christianity Today.
PTedit@aol.com
|
