Where Did This Gospel Come From?

Galatians 1:11-12

“For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12).

In 49 AD a delegation of Judean religious teachers came to the predominately Gentile church at Syrian Antioch and started teaching the Christians that those who were not circumcised as followers of the law of Moses could not be saved from their sin by simple belief in Jesus (Acts 15:1). They were part of a conspiracy to undermine the Gospel of grace sending emissaries of the lie to the daughter churches planted by the church at Antioch (Acts 15:23).

The most vulnerable to the lie were the fledgling assemblies of the Roman province of Galatia. Paul and Barnabas had planted these churches on their first missionary journey (Acts 13-14). One historian describes the inhabitants of Galatia: “Fickleness is the term used to express their temperament. Their religious tendencies were marked by passion, ritualism, and mysticism.” (Lightfoot, The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians)

Paul’s response is swift and strong. He will not tolerate this false gospel—that works are essential to salvation—to take root in the lives of these new Christians and churches. On the eve of the Jerusalem Council, Paul writes his most passionate letter, reminding the church of the real basis of our salvation.

In the first section of the epistle proper (1:11-2:21) Paul defends his apostleship. He begins by vindicating his gospel. The source of the gospel he taught was divine, not human. Paul received his gospel and the commission to preach it directly from the Lord Jesus Christ on road to Damascus (1:11-12):

Like the sweetest water from a high mountain spring, the gospel Paul taught refreshes because of its divine source—direct revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus told Paul to offer deliverance from darkness, Satan and guilt by faith in Him!

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Cheap Grace!

A new reader of this blog is really getting beat up. Like me, this person emphasizes the grace that is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord as the defining and sustaining dynamic of the Christian faith.

The response to his writings? “When are you going to say something about obedience, commitment, and morality?”

The unspoken charge? “You just want the Christian life to be easy and cheap!”

I assure you that is not what grace-teachers believe. There’s nothing cheap about grace, nothing soft about grace, nothing easy about grace.

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I’m convinced that eternal life is a gift freely given to all who believe in Jesus.

Whenever I say this someone will protest, “That’s cheap grace!”

Really?

What’s cheap about an absolutely innocent 33 year-old man in the prime of life walking up a hill with a cross on his bloody shoulders?

What’s cheap about this man who could have called down legions of angels submitting to the Roman soldier who pounded stakes into his limbs?

What’s cheap about this man hanging on that cross while religious people spit on him and shouted insults?

What’s cheap about this man calling out to His Father in heaven to forgive his tormentors?

What’s cheap about this man crying out to His Father that it is finished?

What’s cheap about the tears and wailing of his mother and followers at the foot of that cross?

And what’s cheap about God and His Son, Jesus, agreeing in eternity past that this is what would have to happen if they wanted to express their love and offer their life to sinners?