Devoted to
Destruction (1:6-9)

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. (1:6-9)

Throughout history God has devoted certain objects, individuals, and groups of people to destruction. Of ancient Jericho He declared, “And the city shall be under the ban, it and all that is in it belongs to the Lord; only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in the house shall live. . . . But as for you, only keep yourselves from the things under the ban, lest you covet them and take some of the things under the ban, so you would make the camp of Israel accursed and bring trouble on it” (Josh. 6:17-18).

But “Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, from the tribe of Judah, took some of the things under the ban,” and because of his disobedience, “the anger of the Lord burned against the sons of Israel” (7:1). Because he disobeyed and attempted to selfishly salvage something from what God had previously devoted to destruction, he brought tragedy on his fellow Israelites, and they could no longer “stand before their enemies” (v. 12). After Achan, his family, and all his possessions were destroyed, “the Lord turned from the fierceness of His anger. Therefore the name of that place has been called the valley of Achor to this day” (w. 25-26). Achor means “trouble” and symbolizes the destiny of those who try to take advantage of that which God has condemned.

The New Testament speaks of two general categories of people whom God devotes to destruction. The first category is “anyone [who] does not love the Lord” (1 Cor. 16:22). The second is false teachers, who in Galatians 1:8-9 Paul twice calls accursed. Jesus warned His disciples that “false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matt. 24:24). False teachers are children of their “father the devil, and . . . want to do the desires of [their] father,” who “whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Paul reminded Timothy that such people in the leadership of the church at Ephesus he had “delivered over to Satan, so that they may be taught not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20).

In the early days of the church, Elymas the magician opposed the preaching of Paul and Barnabas and in particular tried to keep the Roman proconsul Sergius Paulus “away from the faith. But Saul, who was also known as Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, fixed his gaze upon him, and said, ‘You who are full of all deceit and fraud, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, will you not cease to make crooked the straight ways of the Lord?’” (Acts 13:7-10). In that rebuke Paul exposes four characteristics of false teachers: they are deceitful, children of the devil, enemies of righteousness, and perverters of the gospel.

Among the chief characteristics of Satan and his followers is deception. Paul warns that in the end times the Antichrist will come “in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thess. 2:9-10). John tells us of “the great dragon [who] was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world” (Rev 12:9; cf. 13:14; 20:3, 10).

Satan and his demon emissaries do their deceptive work usually through human beings and most often through religious leaders. Among such religious leaders are those who pose as Christians, whom Paul describes as “false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ” (2 Cor. 11:13). “And no wonder,” Paul goes on to explain, “for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness” (w. 14-15). Paul acknowledged the human agents used by Satan when he spoke of the “deceitful spirits” who propagate “doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars” (1 Tim. 4:1-2).

Satan has effectively accomplished his most destructive deception through demon-energized false teachers who pose as God’s spokesmen. It was when their own priests and prophets compromised God’s truth that the Israelites were most prone to idolatry and other pagan practices. It was false teachers claiming to preach the gospel who were most successful in weakening the early church, epitomized by the legalistic Judaizers who wreaked spiritual havoc on the churches of Galatia. It was false teachers within the church of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries who gradually turned biblical theology into the various forms of modernism and liberalism. Today even the tenets of Eastern mysticism and occultism are finding their way into the church, often under the guise of spiritually “neutral” philosophy, psychology, or self-image improvement.

In the life of the churches, Paul feared nothing so much as false doctrine, since it is the underlying source of ungodly behavior. His deep concern for the spiritual welfare of the Corinthian believers would be fully as apropos for the church today. “I am afraid,” he wrote, “lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” by one who “comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted” (2 Cor. 11:3-4).

To the Ephesian elders on the beach at Miletus, Paul said, “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things” (Acts 20:28-30).

Satan’s primary target for false teaching is the doctrine of salvation, because if people are confused about that they have no way of coming to God in the first place and thus remain under Satan’s influence and control. He teaches lies about church organization, Christian living, the Lord’s return, and many other things. But his first concern is to undermine the heart of the gospel, which is salvation by grace, made possible through the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Peter warned his readers, “There will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned” (2 Pet. 2:1-2). The most destructive of all heresies is “denying the Master,” the Lord God incarnate.

False prophets are also more interested in popularity than in truth. Their concern is not to serve the Lord and minister to His people but “to make a good showing in the flesh” (Gal. 6:12) and to gain a following for themselves (Acts 20:30). They are in their work for money; and “in their greed they will exploit you with false words,” Peter says, because their hearts are “trained in greed” (2 Pet. 2:3, 14).

Since they have no true spiritual life and power to subdue the flesh, false prophets are sinful in private life, and sometimes even in public, “having eyes full of adultery and that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls” (2 Pet. 2:14). As in Jeremiah’s day, they commit adultery and “strengthen the hands of evildoers” (Jer. 23:14). Peter refers to them as “unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge. . . . They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions,. . . accursed children; forsaking the right way they have gone astray. . . . These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error” (2 Pet. 2:12-15, 17-18). Religious ceremonialism, ritualism, and legalism cannot restrain the flesh, so people who rely on such outward props contain only evil in their lives, which eventually breaks any self-imposed restraints they try to use on themselves.

It was such accursed false teachers, specifically the Judaizers, who were plaguing the Galatian churches. The book of Galatians is Paul’s only epistle in which he has no word of commendation for those to whom he writes. After his brief salutation he immediately launches into the reason for his writing: his extreme concern and perplexity about the false teachers who were undercutting the gospel of grace he had so carefully preached and expounded while he ministered in Galatia. He was deeply grieved that the truth of God’s sovereign and gracious offer of redemption through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ alone was being corrupted by the teachings of salvation by works, namely, that a Gentile had to become a Jew surgically and ceremonially before he could become a Christian and that all Christians had to obey and honor the Jewish law and traditions in order to obtain and maintain righteousness from the Lord.

In Galatians 1:6-9 the apostle gives three features involved in his strong opposition to that grave and damning heresy: his wonder, his wisdom, and his warning.

PAUL’S WONDER ABOUT THE GALATIANS’ DEFECTION

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; (1:6)

Paul could hardly comprehend that the Galatian believers were already abandoning his apostolic teaching. He was amazed (thaumaz, a strong word, meaning to be astounded) and bewildered. He could not fathom why they were so quickly deserting Him, that is, God, who called them by means of the grace of Christ. He was not surprised by what the false teachers were doing but was shocked by the favorable response they received from Christians in Galatia.

The apostle was especially surprised that the defection had come so quickly. (For an excellent treatment of the time sequence of Paul’s writings, see Galatians: The Charter of Christian Liberty, by Merrill C. Tenney.) Taches (quickly) can mean either easily and readily or soon, and sometimes both, as was probably the case with the Galatians’ deserting the true gospel. The believers apparently offered little and ineffective resistance to the false teachers and therefore were fickle in their allegiance to Paul and his teaching. They quickly and easily came under the influence of heretical doctrines.

The Galatians had been privileged to be taught by the greatest teacher the church has ever known apart from the Lord Himself; yet they readily rejected the truths of grace they had learned from him. There is still a great and urgent need for preaching and teaching that continually repeats the central truths of the gospel (see 2 Pet. 1:12-15). It is possible even for longtime believers to lose a firm grip on those truths and allow themselves to be weakened and perverted by ideas that purportedly improve on the pure and plain teachings of Scripture.

These Galatians were true believers who had come to salvation in the power of the Holy Spirit (3:3, 5; 4:6, 8-9). They were Christian brothers (1:2,11; 3:15; 4:12, 31; 5:13) who had become seriously confused.

The Galatian Christians not only were being confused and weakened in their confidence to live by grace but were actually deserting. The term behind deserting (metatithmi) was used of military desertion, which was punishable by death during time of war, much as in modern times. The Greek verb is reflexive, indicating that the act is voluntary. The believers were not passively being removed, as the King James translation suggests, but were in the process of removing themselves from the sphere of grace. The false teachers were accountable for their corruption of God’s truth, but the Galatian Christians were also accountable for being so easily misled by it to pursue legalism.

To desert the gospel of grace that Paul had taught them was not simply to desert a doctrine but to desert Him, the God who had called them to salvation. Called is an aorist participle and could be translated, “who called you once and for all” (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13-14; 2 Tim. 1:8-9; 1 Pet. 1:15). The call spoken of in the New Testament epistles is always an effectual call to salvation (see Rom. 8:30).

The only gospel of God is the gospel of grace, which is the gospel of divine redemption totally apart from any work or merit of man. “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul declared to the Ephesians, “and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast. For we are His workmanship” (Eph. 2:8-10). And it is continually that “grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:2). We live in grace from the moment of salvation, and if grace ever stopped, we would lose our undeserved salvation and perish in sin. The grace of Christ is God’s free and sovereign act of love and mercy in granting salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus, apart from anything men are or can do, and of His sustaining that salvation to glorification. It is absurd to accept a gracious salvation and then endeavor to maintain righteousness through human efforts, ceremonies, and ritual.

The Judaizers who plagued the early church claimed to be Christians, and much of their doctrine was orthodox. They must have recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah and even acknowledged the value of His sacrificial death on the cross—-otherwise they would never have gotten a hearing in the church. They claimed to believe all the truths that other Christians believed. They did not purport to overtly deny the gospel but to improve it by adding the requirements, ceremonies, and standards of the Old Covenant to the New But anything added to grace destroys it just as surely as does anything taken from it. When law—even God’s own law—is added to His grace, His grace ceases to be grace (cf. Rom. 11:6).

The most destructive dangers to the church have never been atheism, pagan religions, or cults that openly deny Scripture, but rather supposedly Christian movements that accept so much biblical truth that their unscriptural doctrines seem relatively insignificant and harmless. But a single drop of poison in a large container can make all the water lethal. And a single false idea that in any way undercuts God’s grace poisons the whole system of belief.

Paul would not tolerate a single drop of legalism being intermixed with God’s pure grace. To turn away from any part of the grace of Christ is to turn away from the power of God to that of human effort. Those who seek to sustain their justification in any degree by law have “fallen from grace” and “have been severed from Christ” (Gal. 5:4). Paul is not speaking of losing salvation that is already received but of polluting the pure stream of living grace by putting a barrier between oneself and Christ and therefore of being severed, or separated, from His power and from fellowship with Him. It is impossible to forsake grace without forsaking the Lord, so Paul called Timothy to “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 2:1) and testified to his own life in grace in 1 Corinthians 15:10.

The Judaizers were promoting a different gospel, a completely contrary and ineffective means of being right with God. Consequently, although they had “begun by the Spirit,” some of the true believers in Galatia were trying to be “perfected by the flesh” (3:3). Although they had “come to know God, or rather to be known by God,” they had turned “back again to the weak and worthless elemental things” (4:9); and although they had been “running well,” they were now being “hindered . . . from obeying the truth” (5:7).

PAUL’S WISDOM REGARDING THE FALSE TEACHERS’ DECEPTION

which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you, and want to distort the gospel of Christ. (1:7)

The distorted teachings of the Judaizers presumed to be a form of the gospel, but Paul declares that their “different gospel” (v. 6) was really not another gospel at all. There is only one message of good news, the gospel of salvation by God’s sovereign grace working through man’s faith. Any message that is either more or less than that is not the good news in any sense.

Another translates albs, which refers to something of the exact same kind. As already noted, much that the Judaizers taught corresponded to the true gospel. They no doubt affirmed that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament prophets, and a great miracle worker. They likely believed that He was crucified and resurrected and that salvation demanded belief in Him. But they also taught that to be right with God and to maintain that righteous salvation a person must conform to all the laws of the Old Covenant. In doing so, they undercut the power of the true gospel, God’s sovereign, saving, and enabling grace. By adding works to salvation they had subtly but completely undermined the gospel of God’s grace, of which there is really not another. This was bad news, since man cannot maintain his right relationship to God by self effort and good works. He will produce good works as a result of God’s saving grace and power working in him (Eph. 2:10; James 2:14-26), but he does not do good works to earn or keep salvation.

Because of their deception, false teachers such as the Judaizers are even more dangerous than those who openly deny “that Jesus is the Christ” and thereby clearly participate in the work of the antichrist (1 John 2:22). False systems labeled as Christianity always distort the nature and work of Jesus Christ. Those who deny Christ altogether are easily seen as the unbelievers they are; but those who claim to teach and follow Christ while undermining the gospel of His grace are immeasurably more dangerous—because they give the appearance of leading people to Christ while they are actually erecting barriers to salvation by grace.

Are disturbing is from tarass, which literally means to shake back and forth and therefore to agitate and stir up. Figuratively, it connotes deep emotional disturbance and refers to an unsettled mind. It is the word used of Herod when he heard about the birth of the King of the Jews (Matt. 2:3), of the disciples when they saw Jesus walking on the water (14:26), and of Zacharias when he saw the angel of the Lord (Luke 1:12). It was also used by Jesus in His command, “Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:1).

Although they were oblivious to it, the churches of Galatia were being shaken to their very foundations by the false teaching of the unregenerate Judaizers, who were acquiescing to the basic truths of Jesus Christ but who were spiritually disturbing and subverting the believers by adding works to grace, which is to utterly distort the gospel of Christ. Metastreph(to distort) carries the idea of turning something into its opposite, of reversing and thereby perverting it. The least bit of law that is added to the gospel of Christ reverses its character and turns it into that which is contrary to God’s gracious provision of salvation and sanctification based entirely on the merits of His sinless, sin-bearing Son.

Law does not moderately pollute grace but reverses and destroys it. As a means of salvation, the two are diametrically opposite and cannot coexist. Grace can be destroyed, but it cannot be modified. It can be rejected, but it cannot be changed. As Paul declares later in the epistle, “If you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law” (Gal. 5:2-4).

Whenever the gospel is perverted the church is unsettled. To change the message of grace is to stifle and eventually asphyxiate the church. Paul wrote to Titus, “For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach” (Titus 1: 10-11). The greatest enemies of the church are not those who openly contradict the Bible and denounce Christ but those children of hell who, proposing to speak in His name, subtly undermine and distort His true gospel with a system of works righteousness.

PAUL’S WARNING OF GOD’S DESTRUCTION

But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. (1:8-9)

The Judaizers who were misleading the Galatian churches probably had impressive credentials and may have been among those who claimed to be from the Jerusalem church and to be authorized by James, the leader of that church (see Acts 15:24). In addition to proclaiming their modified form of the gospel, which Paul declared to be no gospel at all, they sought to undermine Paul’s authority and teaching in every way they could.

Although the particular heresy of the Judaizers was legalism, Paul’s warning applies equally to the opposite perversion of libertinism or antinomianism, which, under the guise of freedom in Christ, removes all standards of righteousness and morality. Of such false teachers Jude wrote, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4). Whether as restrictive legalism, permissive liberalism, or cultic perversion, any teaching that adds to or takes away from God’s revealed truth is a distortion of the gospel and perverts the nature and the work of Christ.

Against any and every distortion of the gospel of Christ, Paul declares, But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.

Even if Paul or any of his associates were to change their teaching, the Galatians should not listen to them but treat them like heretics, which they would then be. Even an angel from heaven should be rejected if he were to present a gospel different from the one originally taught by Paul. The Jews believed that the divine law came through angels (cf. Heb. 2:2), and the Judaizers may have made the point that this made the Old Covenant and its attendant ceremonies and traditions binding.

Paul was, of course, speaking hypothetically. He would never have changed his teaching, and an angel who was truly from heaven (and therefore set apart from the fallen angels identified with hell) could not teach anything contrary to God’s revealed truth. But the apostle was reaching for the most fanciful possibilities imaginable to make his point that absolutely no messenger, no matter how seemingly godly and good, should be believed or followed if his teaching does not square with God-revealed apostolic doctrine. The truth outranks anyone’s credentials, and every teacher or preacher must be evaluated on the basis of what he says, not who he is.

Many false systems are attractive because they emotionally appeal to love, brotherhood, unity, and harmony. Many false teachers are popular because they seem to be warm and pleasant and claim to have great love for God and for others. It is because distortions of the gospel by such deceptive personalities are so appealing that “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14).

William Hendricksen paraphrases Galatians 1:8 in this way: “Even if we or a holy angel must be the object of God’s righteous curse, were any of us to preach a gospel contrary to the one we humans previously preached to you, then all the more divine wrath must be poured out on those self-appointed nobodies who are now making themselves guilty of this crime.”

Paul turns from the hypothetical to the actual as he reiterates his concern. As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed. The repetition reflects the passion of the apostle for gospel truth.

As we have said before refers to an earlier visit, not to the preceding clause in the text, since now (arti) is an adverb of time. The sense seems to be, “What I said at that time I am saying again now” From the start of his ministry among them, Paul had warned them of imminent gospel perversions. The gospel which you received refers to the once for all (aorist tense) preaching of the good news of grace in Christ which they had previously believed.

False teachers not only should not be believed or followed but should be left to God’s judgment to be accursed. Accursed translates anathema, which refers to that which is devoted to destruction. The apostle John wrote, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. . . . If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds” (2 John 7, 10-11).

Christians are to have nothing to do with false teachers, no matter what their credentials. It is both naive and unscriptural to believe, for instance, that staying in a religious school or church that denies the Bible and distorts the gospel gives a believer the opportunity to be a positive influence for the Lord. Even a leader like Timothy, well trained in divine truth, was warned to stay away from error and to concentrate on the pure truth of God (1 Tim. 4:6-7, 13; 2 Tim. 2:15-17). To subject oneself to false teaching, no matter how orthodox one’s own convictions may be, is to disobey God and to compromise and weaken one’s testimony and to tolerate distortion of the grace of God in Christ.