Defection: It's Consequences
Galatians 1:8-10 · Roger Henderson · Jan 24, 2010
Galatians (2010), No. 04
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926152585462

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Actually, I'd like to go back and read to the previous two verses. And as Randy mentioned, actually Bob Eccle went through and kind of divided up the sections. And sometimes it's not a perfect division. Just like the verse numbers are not perfect, neither are the divisions for this class perfect. And what verses we cover and what groups and whatever. So, actually, the previous two verses are a lead-in to these verses, because it starts off with a but, and I think, well, why is that there, and things like that.

So, I was wondering if I could get someone to read, starting in verse 6, read 6-10 in Galatians chapter 1. I am amazed that you are so quickly discerning him who called you by the grace of Christ, gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. Keep going. Through ten. All through ten? Yes.

Then I don't want to hear you talk. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you receive, he is to be accursed. For I am now seeking the favor of men or of God, or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a non-service of Christ. Thanks, Dan.

Well, if you notice, the lead-in of this verse is that Paul is talking about this different gospel, or it's a gospel of another kind, not the kind, the true gospel. In verse 6 and then in verse 7, he talks about they're disturbing you and they're distorting the gospel of Christ. And then we're going to see in here, we have a gospel contrary. So there's like three words in this passage. So the verses here talk about a different gospel, not the same as the true gospel, distorting the gospel, and then contrary to the gospel. And this set of verses, especially 8 and 9, he's extremely strong on the fact that distorting or contrary is not just an incidental issue, it is a big issue. Actually, what's interesting is, He includes himself in here, in verse 8.

He says, we've presented the true gospel to you. If I come back to you at some later time and say, oh, wait a minute, we need a little law on this or whatever, that's going to be a problem. And that's going to be, it actually goes on even to allude to the fact that an angel might come to you.

And people have struggled, verse 8, people have really struggled with it. As I looked through, I studied it and looked at it. Some people just really, they want to, I mean, they don't want to even consider it necessarily because it's so strong. And Paul includes himself plus the people that were teaching with him.

So hopefully we'll go through here, and I don't claim to have this, you know, perfectly understood, but, you know, see what you think. And I'd like to start off maybe with, hopefully this isn't too, tedious or too geeky. I think it would help. It turns out in these three verses we have several conditional sentences.

The if-then kind of thing. Actually Vern had one last week he pointed out. If a certain thing happens, then something else will happen. If-then. I like to go through the four categories in the New Testament. Just kind of maybe hopefully refresh your memory if you haven't seen before or if you've never seen before hopefully it will Clarify things when we get into the passages So, okay so conditional sentences and this came from Daniel Wallace's Greek grammar book and And I don't claim to be an expert on this, but bear with me here. The first situation is what they call a first class conditional sentence. And the proposition here, it's assumed to be true for the sake of argument. And many times, this is called the reality conditional sentence.

And if it's a true statement, like for example here, in Luke 4, 3 it says, and the devil said to him, talking to Christ, if you are the Son of God. Is that a true statement? It is. So that's true. Then he proposes something that Christ is not going to do. But anyway, he says, tell these stone, then as implied, then this stone shall become bread. So this is This is presumed true for the sake of argument. So there was a discussion between Satan and the Lord Jesus, and he stated truthfully that he was the Son of God.

So that's a first-class condition. That probably isn't the very best one I could have chosen, but that's an example. There's many, many more. And if you're interested, I have a more expansive sheet that has some better examples, and I can get that to you if you like. Okay, second-class condition is kind of the inverse of the first-class condition. assumption of untruth for the sake of argument. And this is called unreality.

And here's a case, basically Christ is talking to the Jews and John 5.46 he says, for if you believe Moses. And they didn't believe Moses. Because if they believed Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote about me. So this is assumed untrue for the sake of argument.

A second class condition. Third class condition presents a condition of uncertainty of fulfillment. So it's not clear whether the if-then statement will come to pass. It may come to pass, it may not come to pass. But it's likely. And this is a case where it does come to pass in Mark 5.28.

This is a woman who wanted to touch Jesus' garment to be healed. And she thought in her mind, or she thought, if I just touch his garments, then implied, I will get well. And she did do that. She touched his garments and she did get well. So in that case, it was likely to be fulfilled and it was fulfilled.

In some cases, it may not be fulfilled. In some cases, it may be hypothetical. And we're going to see that's where it kind of plays in when we get into our verses. Some people will take some of the verses as hypothetical. and not a real situation. I'm just throwing out an idea. For emphasis, you're hypothesizing. Some have taken, especially verse 8, as being hypothetical and not real. I kind of struggle with that a little bit. I'm not sure I really go along with that.

Lastly, the fourth class condition indicates a possible condition in the future, usually a remote possibility. The first three are the ones that I typically see. The last one I haven't seen too many times, and I didn't really take the time to find an example for that.

There are examples of that, and we could do that. So hopefully that's somewhat helpful. You may say, well, maybe that's of no help, but hopefully it is helpful. Are there questions about this or thoughts? And you hear people, many times people will, the first class condition, sometimes they will take and they will insert the word sense.

You can say, since you are the son of God, which is absolutely true. But typically that's not a good idea because some situations you get yourself in trouble. Because if you're talking about for argument's sake, you may be arguing a point which is true.

So the since replacement is, do that at your peril. Just be careful about that. Go ahead. So basically it's just a matter of logic. It's like if A is true and B is untrue, then AB is untrue. Right. It's a logical statement. And I think Vern kind of talked about that last week a little bit. It's basically logic. If this is true, then this will happen. If this is untrue, then that will happen, and so on. So it goes through if-then. If this is true, then that will happen.

So in some cases, there's... In the first case, there's no uncertainty, right? And that's what you need to pick up on. And it's really important to say, well, which ones are certain and which ones are not certain? And that's kind of the key part in this conditional sentence.

Roger, and isn't that the basis of a lot of legalese? I mean, if you're going to be a lawyer, this is one of the things that I understand that they study. Because that's what law is supposed to be. And I'm not saying that from a Paul standpoint, who was a Pharisee, who was a lawyer. So you understood very much how you reasoned that. Well, the book of Romans is an excellent example of that. Paul was very well acquainted with logic and he used that. And he wants us to be logical too. We want to be logical when we go through and look at God's word. We don't want to be illogical.

That would be kind of silly. So let's go ahead and we'll get into the first verse here. So it says, verse 8, but if we, I put the if then in blue, then is implied. If we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, then he is to be accursed. So we're going to kind of go through and look at each of the sections here. The first one is, but even, or even though, and some have taken this to be a, and this is where my Greek knowledge kind of is, they say, well, that indicates that this is a hypothetical And they'll say, this is a hypothetical verse. This isn't talking about something that really could happen.

But I don't know whether Paul knew about man. Paul understood man. He looked at himself and he saw that he had a sinful nature. And he knew that the we there implies that, let me just do the next one here. There's actually three categories of people here.

There's Paul, his team, which are most likely Barnabas, Silas, and Timothy, at least those, and then an angel from heaven. The angel from heaven presents some issues too. I don't see where in scripture where an angel from heaven is proclaiming But Paul was given to preach the gospel. Angels aren't necessarily in view there.

So there are some things interesting here. So some people have taken this verse to be hypothetical. And they say, well, he's just trying to make a point. Then in verse 9, he's going to get and talk about, if any man. And he's talking about there the people that were spreading, trying to add to the gospel. Well, he had to be circumcised. and you had to follow the law. That was two things that the Jews said, well, that's great news, Paul, but hey, you've got a couple things you missed. You've got to be circumcised and you've got to obey the law.

Didn't they have angel worship back then as well? One of the false gospels that Angels were seen as, and you see a lot of that in Hebrews, they really looked to angels as being something superior and something to be worshipped when it's the Lord Jesus Christ. Right, right. Well even actually later on here in Galatians 4 it talks about Sometimes the people that they preach to would think they were angels. They would say, you came from some place. You must be deity. And they said, no, we're not deity. We're not deity. We're men like you. We're telling you about what God has done, what the Lord Jesus has done. condition of the third class. Right, right.

And this is his literal rendering of it. Suppose I should turn renegade and preach other than or contrary to what we preach. That's the way he puts it. Okay, good. And he's using the we as the what do you call that, a literary plural, referring to himself. I see what you're saying. As you might say, yeah, as you would write, yeah. The thing is that you're saying, should I turn red again, because the form here is the third class condition.

Right, right. You use the word hypothetical. Right. It's one step away from reality. Exactly. It's the way he usually says that. Right. That's actually my next point. That's okay. That's perfect. This is great. So this is, just like you read, this is a third class conditional sentence.

And that's what troubles, that's what really bothers a lot of people. It says, well, there's a possibility that Paul could preach something. He preached the truth, right? But then he could come back and preach something different. Or maybe Paul or Silas who do that too. Or an angel from heaven.

And the way you determine what class it is is by basically some of the tense of the verbs and a couple of key things in there. And that kind of gets a little bit too technical. I mean, we could go through and do that if you wanted to. We look at the Greek and do it. So basically this is a third class. And this is what kind of Bothers you know makes it a more difficult situation, so let me just let me just give you See don't want to do it here, or they want to let's just keep going just keep before I get this Okay, I see a lot of puzzled looks Okay All right, so this is the third so it says that it's possible.

It's it's possible that Paul could could come back and If you think about ourselves, as a believer in the Lord Jesus, with a sin nature, do we always act in line with who we are in Christ? Do we ever deviate from that? Paul, Silas, and Timothy, they had sin natures. Paul, he has a sin nature. Paul, Silothane, Timothy. They had sin natures.

The question comes about angels. Let's think about this. Let's go ahead and just look at that for a second. Let's look at angels. So let's look at 2 Corinthians. So the question is, what kind of angel could this be? I'm not saying this is it, but this is a possibility. What kind of angel could this be? 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Could someone read verse 14? 2 Corinthians 11 verse 14.

And no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. So one line of logic says, okay, some people say this couldn't be a a good angel, if you will, an angel following the Lord that didn't break it. But what about angels that haven't? What about Satan? Couldn't Satan come and preach a gospel contrary? That's certainly possible. To me, that helped me a little bit.

Paul has a sin nature. Members of his team, taking the we to be a little bit different than what Roy said. They have sin nature, so they certainly could deviate. They certainly could follow their sin nature. And if this were a satanic angel, all bets are off. He can appear really good and have all kinds of flashy stuff and have a gospel. So with that kind of approach, you say, well, I guess it would be possible that they could. And then, of course, the question we get into, what does this mean to be a curse? That's part of part two. It's bad enough, OK, they preach a gospel that's contrary. But then the accursed part is the next part to deal with.

So do you see where I'm thinking about here? And I had, I went back and I may have cheated her a little bit. I went back and I looked at Hal's notes from this. And so that helped me somewhat too. And I found actually variations between people that we, Macaulay had a certain view and Hal had a certain view, different people had a little bit different views. So anyway, just, okay, so that's that chart. Go ahead.

So it actually did what, to sum it up in a nutshell, basically the accursed part. is the important part, because you're saying that since it's the third class, and even if Paul preached a gospel that was not the true gospel, that he would be encouraged. So he's saying that the gospel is extremely important to be preached.

Absolutely. A cursing is what happens when you don't, regardless of who you are. Right, right. And then the question is, especially very critical, what does a cursing mean for a believer? To be consistent with the rest of Scripture. And I think we probably already know the answer. Now, what does a cursing mean for an unbeliever?

And actually, I think we're going to cover that in verse 9. Because verse 9 talks about any man. Where Paul says, in this case, we have at least with Paul and his team, they're believers. Now, if that's a satanic angel, then he already has his due. He can't be any more cursed than he already is. There's a lot of head scratchers in this. Like I said, maybe you come out of here and you get the stones out on the way out and meet me in the parking lot, right? I'm joking. So let's go on to the middle part.

You should preach a gospel contrary to what we have preached. So I just want to kind of go through this, and this is basically what I mentioned before. This is a word that means other than or more than. So what Paul is really hard on, he doesn't want you to, he wants to make very certain, you're not to go beyond what scripture says. You don't say, well, I think it would be good if Christians did this or that, or I think it's nice if, no, you stay to the message. You don't go beyond what is there, other than or more than.

And actually, it's the idea of going beyond And then the other thing is back in verse six, a different gospel. And that's that word heteros. It's another kind. It's not the same kind as the true gospel. It's a different kind. And then the third part of that is a distorted gospel, where you, in verse seven, you distort the gospel. And that's the idea to transform into something of the opposite character. And there's a verse that I have, excuse me, on that.

Let's look at Acts 2.20.

Can I get someone to read that for me, Acts 2.20? Yeah, Bonnie.

The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come. Okay, that word turned into darkness is our word here, distorted. So it's taking it It's taken from a true situation to something that's not true. It's transforming it or perverting it. I think the King James has perverted the gospel. So those three ideas are what Paul was really focusing on in terms of the gospel. He wanted to make sure that that didn't occur.

So that's what could be preached. And then the other question comes along. It's about thinking about the gospel in the narrow sense or the widest sense. And in the narrow sense, we have 1 Corinthians 15. Can someone quote that or read that? I've been noticing, I think we probably go over this verse almost every week, which is good. And Vern will quote it. So that's what I'm calling the gospel in the narrow sense.

What I'm calling the widest sense is Paul's teaching on the gospel of God's grace, which is past, present, and future. Paul, in all his writings, he proclaimed a message of grace. And if you think about it, what would you say, we haven't, of course we're in chapter, we're to verse 8 in Galatians, but if you have read before, what do you think, do you think that the, was it the narrow sense gospel that was under attack, or the widest-sense gospel that was maybe under attack. What do you think from Galatians, just from your times, what do you think was, were they nitpicking the narrow gospel, or were they maybe more focused on the wider gospel? Just like today, it's the widest sense. Right.

I mean, if you're going to run a race, it depends on where you start. And the problem today is that they teach grace in many, many places, but they don't begin with the 15.3-5. And if you don't understand who Christ was and what he did, and the fact that he rose again and is still living, then anything that you teach about grace is really wrong grace. And that's new age today, and you can hear it everywhere.

And if you think about what the Judaizers were doing, like I mentioned, they said, well, OK, the core gospel is fine, the narrow sense gospel is fine, but then you've got to be circumcised. They wanted to add stuff to it, just like they're going to pile in more on top of it. And then you've got to obey the law. Well, we're going to find later on that Paul is very strong about that. He says, no, if you follow the law, that's going to nullify grace. So it seems to me that Galatians is more focused on people distorting the wider gospel than it is so much the narrow gospel. And maybe narrow isn't the best term. The core gospel. Gospel in a nutshell.

Okay. It's what, as Verma said, it's what you need to know to be saved. Right. Then the question is, once you're saved, what do you need to know to live the Christian life? And I'm saying that's a wider gospel. That would mean, do I follow the Ten Commandments to live the Christian life? And so on. Is it a grace-based system or a law-based system? Which Paul, I guess, mentions when he says, having begun.

You began well, right? Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's good. That's good. Right. Okay. So let me just see here. Okay. So any other thoughts or questions about this? Sure. Sure. To be saved, we believe on who Jesus Christ is and what he's done. Right, exactly. Sort of a summary way of putting it. Exactly. I've benefited by it. Exactly. Died for our sins, was buried in the rose. Right. Right. That's what he's done. Right. Is doing. Exactly.

And it was, and since it was, since it was Christ, so, so, and that's actually kind of in the, what I call the narrow sense or the core gospel, if you will. And that's not, you know, this is not to, you know, the core gospel is, is vital. But I'm just saying that when you, the word gospel is mentioned, it has some different contexts. And some people have labeled that a little bit differently. I think J. Verne McGee had it a little bit differently. the expanded truth, he called the widest sense, where Paul expands the truth.

Well, it's like some people start off and they say that Jesus was a good teacher. That's true. He was a good teacher. And they say that he was a prophet. He was a prophet. And they say that he lived and he was a great leader of the Jewish people. He was that too. But if you don't start previous to that, to why he came and what he did, well then, that really, that makes him no different than anybody else in a Shakespeare or somebody else.

Right, exactly. You know, and then they miss the message. I mean, you can hear it, like I said, you can hear it on TV all day long. Right. Or in the world all day long. Right. Exactly. It's very important to start to raise. Oh, absolutely. Start to raise at the right place. Right.

And that's what Roy was saying. It's who he was and what he accomplished. Those two things are vital. If I die for somebody's sins, that doesn't mean much, but when I cry, I mean, you know. So anyway. All right. Great. Great. All right. Let's see here. OK, so let's go on.

So now the last part. Now he's going to refer to what we have preached to you. So he's comparing this contrary gospel to what they were given at some time in the past. So let's just look at what we have preached. So we've already gone over this. What did Paul preach to them? He certainly preached to them the core gospel, or the narrow sense gospel. He also preached the entire message of God's grace. So that's what Paul preached to them. And actually, what's kind of cool is, the idea here is that Paul took personal, this gospel just wasn't a theory.

This was something that he owned, and he referred to it Let's look at a couple verses here. Let's look at Romans chapter 16. Refer to it in a certain way, which I think is kind of neat. You all have heard this, but I'm not telling you, so I want you to turn there so you can see what it is. Could someone read Romans 16 verse 25? Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the leachness of God is stronger than men. This is Romans 16, 25.

Thanks, bud, for reading. Thank you for reading. So did you find the verse 25? It's all scripture, so I'm not worried. And actually, I can read it, bud, if you can't find it. It's the next one down. 16, 5. 25, 25. My ears aren't pretty much. I'll be with you here in about 20 minutes here. Oh, here we go.

Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Salute my well-beloved Ephanius. Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my glorious gospel. according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of a mystery which was kept secret since the world began. Great. Thank you. So my point here is that Paul calls it my gospel. He does it three times in the New Testament in his writings. Excuse me. So Timothy calls it my gospel and also another part of Romans. It's my gospel.

So it was very special and precious to Paul. And then the question comes up, and we've kind of seen this before, what authority did Paul have to do this? Once again, if any particular person did that, but Paul said, no, I have a special, and we'll get into this shortly here. Actually, it'll be next week, in fact.

In verse 11 of chapter 1 of Galatians, for I long to see you. I'm not getting the right place here. I know, I'm sorry. Yes, there we go. It's on page 1177. On my Bible. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached to you by me... He always says, I preach this message to you. It's in the past, and now he's talking about, now I'm going to come along with... So what I preached to you in the past, by me, is not according to men. So it doesn't have... It's not out of man as a source.

For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So Paul says, you know, this message is not my message, it's a message I received from Jesus Christ. So he had the authority and he had the message directly from Jesus Christ. So the consequences of preaching the gospel contrary, or different from, or distorting the gospel, is that he is to be accursed. And this is a word anathema, cursed or condemned, and literally it means to set apart for divine judgment of God. And it's interesting. Let's look at this. This is, I think, really a key verse to understand part of what's going on. Let's look at Romans chapter 9. Romans chapter 9. I'm going to read verses 1, 2, and 3.

For I am telling you the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit. that I have a great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, anathema, same word, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen, according to the flesh. So in this case, actually I haven't really studied that verse out totally, but you could argue that that's another hypothetical situation that maybe he's saying I would go that far, but it's not going to happen because Paul's a believer. So the question comes up, what does it mean to be accursed?

And I kind of gave you the, you know, to be set apart for divine judgment of God. So what does that mean? Let's take maybe the easy one. Go ahead. Let me just say one thing and then I'll get your question. Okay. So let's take maybe the easier one. What does it mean if an unbeliever comes along and preaches a gospel contrary? What does that mean in terms of him?

I think it's on the same principle as Romans 8.1. Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Okay, so you got the believer covered. The unbeliever, right, is the opposite of that. I mean, he's already condemned, right? He's condemned because he did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's condemned from who he is, right? He's an Adam. So he's already, he can't get more condemned. So the unbeliever is easy. The Believer.

Okay, I'll stop there. Tom, you wanted to add something to this? I noticed that there's an interesting series of letters in this, just a tiny bunny trend that sets off the whole idea. FEMA judgment, judgment for reward, and FEMA judgment, the other kind. Okay, all right. Okay, all right, interesting. So for the believer, and thinking about it, let's look at this, another verse. Let's look at James. James chapter 1. Can someone read James chapter 1, verses 13 through 15? James chapter 1, 13-15.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then, when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

So this is talking to believers. So I actually see a parallel between So here we have, if a believer, including Paul, for whatever reason, goes off and preaches something contrary, then what will happen? As was read before, his position is untouched, but what about his condition? What would happen to his condition? He sins, right? So what happens conditionally? What happens in that case?

That's how I used to say, you become pregnant. Okay, all right, that's part of that right here, you're right. And then you, in the natural course of events, the ultimate end point of pregnancy here is death. Okay, now is that, do you think in verse, do you think that's physical death? Well, I believe that's actually speaking of spiritual death. I believe that's spiritual death. So in fact, Hal would say that's temporal spiritual death.

Because if we confess, Bud's favorite verse, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So I think for the believer, if he preaches something, if I add law, I probably have in my Christian life, before I understood about grace, I'm sure I had a law in there. It sounded so good.

Then I was out of fellowship. The mind-boggling thing here, and I haven't really come to grips with it, if you think about the Christian community at large, we have an awful lot of poor teaching. So, I mean, how many people are in fellowship with the Lord? It kind of scares me a bit. It really scares me a bit to think about that. If you go on this path, you think, well, wait a minute. All these people, they're adding all these works or programs and stuff to the gospel, to the wider gospel, and making people do all these things. And they do it year after year after year.

I know. So are they constantly out of fellowship? I don't have a question for that. The Lord knows that. It kind of scares me a bit, and kind of agrees me a bit to think about that situation. This verse is awful, awful difficult. And for the believer, there's no condemnation. So he's not going to be, positionally he's secure, but his fellowship seems to me to be impacted, just like in this James passage.

Gail, go ahead. Yeah, when I think of death, And I think of spiritual death. Of course, there's the real thing. Right. You could call it. And then there's being out of fellowship. Exactly. And death is separation. Exactly. I'm out of fellowship. I am walking in darkness, as I said the first time. And I am separated. I am unable to fellowship with the Lord, and He is unable to fellowship with me. He has no fellowship between dark and light.

I know, I know, I know. It just really makes, it really agrees me to think that, wait a minute, if people, if they add extra things to the gospel, the greater, you know, they want to add works in there, you know, I don't know, and I, you know, God knows, but this is, Paul is very strong on this.

Okay, we're going to have to, let's just move on to the, this is actually repeated, the same verse is repeated in verse 9, with a slight difference. In this case, he says, if any man, rather than Paul, rather than the we, it's any man. So he enlarges it. And then actually repeats it, any man. And this is in the perfect tense, which means past completed action with abiding results up in the present or in the future. So if any man preached it in the past, in the present, or in the future, He's accursed.

And this is a first class condition, assumed to be true. So this is pretty interesting. He assumes that any man, and you can argue that's probably an unbeliever, possibly, it's assumed to be true. There's no doubt about this one. And if you think about it, this was reality. This was the real deal, so to speak, in the Galatian church. that they were adding extra things to the gospel. They were adding circumcision, they were adding following the law.

And that's what that Acts 15.5 I think talks about. The book of Judaea, one of his strongest parts of that book is that the men that had come in among them were destined to this judgment because they took the grace of God and distorted it. That's a very good passage. Exactly, it goes along with it, you're right. So this is not a real pleasant thing to think about here. Go ahead.

Doesn't that also go along with James 3.1 where it says, so that not many of you become teachers, my brother. Knowing that as such, we will incur a stricter judgment. Right. And so he's not talking about condemnation there. He's talking about the message that you teach. Right. Right. No, I agree. I absolutely agree with that. OK, so let's go on. Verse 10.

So now he stated that those two verses were very similar. One talking about Paul and his other team, and then the angels, and then one talking about any man. Then he kind of goes on through this segment here where he says, he says, am I seeking the favor of men, kind of rhetorical, am I seeking the favor of men, and he's not.

Am I seeking the favor of God? And he's not. Just kind of a quick question here. You guys all know this. Should we ever seek the favor of God? This is kind of a trick question. Well, we don't have to. We already have to. Thank you so much. Because we already have his favor, right? We have his favor because of Jesus Christ. So we don't have to.

What Paul is saying here, I'm not seeking the favor of men. I'm not seeking the favor of God. Am I striving to please men? Striving is actually the idea to... Actually it has two senses. My throat here today is just really... So striving here, there's a couple of senses.

There's a good sense to striving like In Colossians 3.1 it says, keep seeking or keep striving. Keep seeking the things which are above. So in that sense, to strive in the sense of focusing on Christ is what God desires. He wants us to focus on what He's done. So there's a good sense to striving.

And this is sort of a negative strength. You're not striving to please men, always thinking, well, how am I doing in the polls? That's probably bad. We don't have polls here. How am I doing? Do I go around and say, well, I talked to each person and say, well, I'm doing pretty well. Should Vern go around and talk to each person in the Congress? How am I doing? Am I doing OK? No. No, he shouldn't be doing that. He should be striving or seeking to the things which are above. Roger does that. And that's the political correctness of today.

I mean, if you're going to bring in more people into the church, then you shouldn't preach about sin. Right. Well, and actually... All these other things that they're doing today in an effort to spread the gospel. But it's saying here that you should preach the real gospel. Exactly. And then it also says in chapter 5 of Matthew that you'll be persecuted. Well, there's a lot of people that aren't persecuted today because they aren't teaching the truth. Right. They're teaching a politically correct truth. Exactly.

Well, and you see that, unfortunately, many churches feel the way that they're focused on what Hal would call nickels and noses, which I always like that term. That was one of his favorites. Do we focus on numbers and money, or do we focus on Christ? And Paul's saying, I'm not focusing on any of that.

He's going to get to the bottom line here in a second. seeking us to win over, gain favor, striving. The good sense of striving, like I said, striving to know Christ. And the last part here is, and this happens to be a second class conditional sentence, and it's assumed untrue for the sake of argument, because he's not. What he is trying to do is here, and this is a pleasing God versus a pleasing man. We already kind of talked about that a little bit.

But he says that he is a bondservant of Christ Jesus. And actually, that's the word doulos, one who gives himself up to the will of another. So we have voluntarily, as a believer, we've given ourselves up to say, not my will be done, but your will be done. And then Paul says, in other passages, that he's a bondservant, a bondslave of Jesus Christ. Peter says he's a bondslave of Jesus Christ.

OK. And then lastly, this is what's been great about teaching this class. I had Sue print off all of Hal's notes, which are like, I mean, it's beyond. Because he took, what, eight years to teach Galatians, or some incredible amount of time. So there's a lot of notes. But here's another little gem that I found. This is Hal's summary points on Galatians 8 and 9.

And the first one, Paul's gospel concerns the person of Christ and what he has done is doing and will do for the believer. There's absolutely no human effort involved the believer is to simply abide in Christ and walk by faith. God will not tolerate one iota of human effort to be added to his grace. Doing so reverses grace and substitutes human effort for the power of God. Anyone willfully adding human effort works, legalism, et cetera, to grace is anathema, or damned by God. There is a probability that any one of us could pervert the gospel by believing that we need to perform some human effort for our sanctification. Sanctification is a word talking about our Christian walk, another term for that.

Paul's gospel, all 13 epistles, is a believer's church's standard of truth regarding living the Christian life and who we are in Christ. All of man's teaching is to be tested against this. And he has a note there. This is not to say that the Old Testament books do not contain church truths, but the predominance of church truths was revealed to Paul. Our focus must be on the truths of the gospel and not the person teaching regardless of his credentials, popularity, charisma, or godliness. And then number seven, do not follow men, follow truth.

Yes. Could there be a difference between somebody willfully doing that and somebody And I wonder, and maybe that's the answer, because we think of all our brothers and sisters in the Lord, and we think about really the poor teaching that's out there, really. And so many people, maybe, people that are believers that just don't understand. And I think that the Lord knows. I mean, He's the one.

He's the one that, you know, I can't go and judge. Well, because this church isn't teaching this, I'm going to say, oh, you guys are this way or that way. I really can't do that. We shouldn't do that. We should teach the truth and let the Lord use that for His glory. Just like Paul said, you know, if I come back and tell you something different, you know, I'm in trouble just like everybody else is.

So that's pretty amazing. So that's a good point, Bonnie. Excellent point. Many people don't know, don't understand, you know, they've been poorly taught. In that case, it seems like the Lord is merciful. He loves his children. Christ died for them. But it is pretty sobering verses. The importance of the gospel, the good news, the total gospel of what the gospel of God's grace, what God has done for the believers is so very critical.

Tom? Did I say Old Testament? I'm sorry. Thank you so much. Yeah, this is not to say that the other New Testament books. Thank you, Tom. Right. They contain church truths as well. But the point here is that Paul focuses on the believer's Christian walk and the church-aged truths. Great. Well, thanks. It's great. Okay, let's close in.

We thank you, Father. We thank you for this day, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. We thank you that we are privileged to have understanding of your truths, Lord. Understanding of your marvelous grace, and we pray that we would Learn more and more and cherish it more and more and just be those who are willing to share the wonderful grace that you've given us. We ask it in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen.