There Is No Other Gospel

Kate Bowler is a Duke University professor, who got my attention when she published a book titled, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved. She is a historian, and her area of expertise is the American Prosperity Gospel. This woman, Canadian, was fascinated with the belief that is part of the American culture, woven at a deep level into the way we choose to live our lives that good things happen to good people, and (not explicitly stated, but also held) the believe that bad things happen to people who deserve bad things to happen to them. Kate’s area of interest was documenting the history of this cultural belief; she was deeply interested in it. In fact, her life was full of blessings: she had married her high school sweetheart, landed her dream job, and was mommy to a precious baby boy; and then Kate was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer…good person, bad thing…and it changed her perspective on her research on the Prosperity Gospel…and her faith. Kate now writes regularly on the myths that we believe as Americans that sound religious and faithful, but aren’t.

So, before we dive in this morning, let’s play a game. I’m going to share a proverb and you decide if it is Cultural or Biblical.

God helps those who help…themselves. – Ben Franklin

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of…wisdom. Proverbs 1:7 – Bonus points – does anyone remember what the Hebrew word that we translate “fear” means? Reverence/Proper respect for

Fools despise wisdom and …instruction. The rest of Proverbs 1:7

Cleanliness is next to…godliness. Not in the Bible.

God won’t give you more than you can…handle. NOT in the Bible. I Corinthians 10:13 does say that God won’t place temptation in front of you and leave you unable to resist. But, we get more than we can handle all the time…and God never leaves us there to handle it alone.

Pride goes before a…fall. Bible – Proverbs 16:18

You reap what you…sow. Cultural, a Chinese proverb, actually…but Proverbs does commend hard work – Proverbs 10:4 says, “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth” and it also commends compassionate generosity, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward them for what they have done.” – Proverbs 19:17. Of course, the Covenant Code, the 10 Commandments, call us to follow God’s pattern of work and rest, as we honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.

You cannot serve both God and …mammon/possessions” Jesus – Matthew 6:24.

Alright, back to Kate Bowler. This week she wrote on Substack about “Practicing Holy Underachievement.” I read it as we made our way back from two weeks of whirlwind travel and vacation – a week in New York with shows and shopping and museum hopping, then a flight to Oklahoma City to put 2,500 miles on a rental car through TX, to 3 National Parks, and a couple of days in and around Santa Fe before starting back. As we came back, I regretted that I had only finished one paper for my D.Min. I wondered if I had been present enough to each moment, fully soaked in the beauty. I hoped I hadn’t missed the wonder or anything else…did I read about any kitsch things on Route 66 along our travel that we forgot to stop and see or do? I checked my list. I didn’t get a chili cheeseburger at the recommended place in Palamagordo, NM…but, we tried all those pistachios at Pistachioland, and had the homemade pistachio ice cream…I couldn’t have been more full…did I miss out?

Did I do enough? Did I do it right?

It is a human question. It is the question that the agitators in Galatia have stirred in the Gentile believers. Over the next several weeks, we will be working our way through the letter Paul wrote to the churches of Galatia. Today we begin with Paul’s introduction.

We can tell from the curt greetings and the lack of thanksgiving for their faith….that we see in every other one of Paul’s letters…that he is, in the words of one New Testament scholar, hopping mad! So, what is going on?

During his first missionary journey, around 47-48, just about 15 years after Jesus was crucified and risen, Paul traveled through an area that is now part of Turkey; it was known then as Galatia. And as he traveled, Paul shared the story of Jesus’s life and ministry, and of his death and resurrection and he converted people and established churches. Galatia was not a Jewish area, though, it was a Gentile area. Before his missionary journey, most all of the people who were converted were Jews, after all Jesus was a Jew. Followers of Jesus described themselves as Jews who were also “followers of the Way.”

There are certain things you have to do to be Jewish. You can be born into a Jewish family, or you can convert to Judaism. If you are born into a Jewish family, you are circumcised when you are 8 days old. If you convert to Judaism, you are circumcised as a symbol of your conversion. If you are Jewish, the Law is your path to God. What about these Gentile converts in Galatia? Do they have to be circumcised? Do they have to follow the Law? Do they have to become Jewish first to then be followers of the Way of Jesus? That’s not what Paul had taught them. But, word has gotten back to Paul that someone has.

We don’t know who. Maybe it is another missionary, a Christian Jew from Jerusalem. Maybe it is someone from within the converted Gentile Christians who is concerned that what Paul taught them might not be enough and they need to be Jewish too. But, whoever it is, Paul is hopping mad.

Since we don’t have more than his letter to figure out what is going on, scholars use something they call “mirror reading.” What can we make out reflected in what Paul writes?

Paul begins, “Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers and sisters with me – to the churches in Galatia.” There is something different about this greeting. In the two letters we have that he wrote before this one, Paul started, “Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians.” In the two letters we have just after this one, Paul started, “Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth…” and Second Corinthians is the same except he references with him, “our brother Timothy.”

What is going on in Galatia has brought Paul’s authority into question. So, he has added to his formulaic greeting his credentials. He claims to be an apostle. “Apostle” means “one who is sent” and it came to mean the disciples who saw Jesus after his resurrection and were commissioned to go out and make disciples of all nations. Paul claims the title apostle because he, too, saw Jesus on the road to Damascus at his conversion. He wasn’t sent by men…perhaps the agitators were sent by Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, or perhaps they suggested that he was not properly commissioned by the leaders of the church in Jerusalem when he came to them as a missionary. My commission isn’t by people, says Paul, it is from Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead by God.

Then instead of listing other people with him, he says the letter is from “all the brothers and sisters with me.” I don’t know if he’s being curt, or doesn’t want the agitators to discredit particular people he might have named, or if he wants to give the impression that he has the concurrence of a large number of faithful people…any of those are possible, some combination of those is likely.

And he ends with to the churches of Galatia. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ – the same blessing Paul often offers, a shorthand for one of the oldest blessings, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious (grace) to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.”

Only he goes on to add that Jesus “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” This is the Gospel that Paul has preached and is preaching, and still is the gospel for us today. So much is packed into these few phrases:

1. We live in an evil age. The Law has not done what it was intended to do. It has not brought humanity into right relationship with God. It has not curbed sinfulness.

2. God is for us. God wants relationship with us. God wants us to choose God over sin.

3. Creation, when it runs the way God intends, will bring glory to God…like an artist inventor who has created an incredibly beautiful developing and unfolding work of art…when all of the interlocking pieces of God’s creation move in concert, the only possible response is wonder and praise of the artist inventor.

4. Jesus chose to give himself to set right the workings of the creation. The gears were locked. The cogs unturning. Nothing was developing or unfolding. Jesus rescued creation and offers to restore us to right relationships with God and one another.

Then, Paul launches right into why he is writing. In every other letter, Paul offers thanksgiving for the faithfulness of the believers he is writing to, he praises their ministry and the ways they have been part of making disciples and spreading the good news, but not so for the Galatians.

“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all.”

We will learn more about what the agitators have been teaching them in the weeks and chapters ahead. For now, we are reminded that there is no other gospel offered to us but that of “Grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”