Defection- It's nature

All right, so let's turn our Bibles to Galatians. And what I'm going to do is read the first 10 verses, and then we'll return to verses six and seven today. When Roger assigns just two verses, we know it's stacked with information, right? All right, first one, Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God, the Father who raised him from the dead. And all the brethren who are with me to the churches of Galatia, grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from his present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Paul goes on to say that, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you from what you have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men or God, or do I seek to please men? For if I still please men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ.

And you could say the verse 10 really kind of transitions us into a new topic, but nevertheless, I think you know, Paul's Apostleship, and I think Bob divided it, you know, one through ten is an introduction. And that's kind of where we're going to start today. So as we approach the lesson today, let's look, first of all, at what Bob Wolford has reminded us.

It's context, context, and maybe use it five times more, and then content, right? And so let's define these terms. Context is who's the audience, what's the purpose, what's the platform, the timing of the location, cultural factors, all these kinds of things are part of context. But content is really information. It's substance, communication, the text, images, videos, audio, impact, and ultimately what's the core message from the information that's being provided.

Now what Bob has encouraged us to do, and I've done it, is read the entire book You know, do it daily, do it weekly, whatever. There's no legal requirement to read the whole book. But I think when you read the whole book, you see how ultimately Bob's point about context really relates to the verses that we're dissecting now, just verses six and seven. So I want to encourage you, as Bob has done already, all of us to continue to look at the entire text of Paul's message to the churches of Galatia and see how individual sections relate in context to the entire book.

OK, let's continue. So here's Bob's outline. And I'm just going to show that just to remind us. The introduction, verses 1 through 10, which I just read, Paul's defense of his apostleship, that's chapters 1 and 2. Paul defends justification by faith alone, that's chapters 3 and 4. Paul's call to liberty, that's chapters 5 and 6. And the conclusion is at the terminus of chapter 6. All right, then last week, Myles very nicely covered this concept of salutation. And as part of that, let's ask some questions and answer them very quickly. We've read this this morning.

Who was Paul and was he alone? Who was Paul? He was an apostle. And remember, Myles spent a whole week describing two words, Paul and apostle. I'm not going to go through all that now. But was Paul alone? No. Who was with him? The brethren, and the brethren are not defined, are they? But presumably he's not alone. He's working with members of the body of the newborn church. All right, next question. Why is Paul called an apostle? Don't all answer at once now, please. Bob, why is he called an apostle? Because the Lord Jesus Christ called him for a purpose, for a mission.

Okay, and how should we distinguish apostle from disciple? A disciple is just simply a student. a student, a teacher, someone who's put in a position of furthering the gospel, I think that ultimately could be all of us are disciples. I may be today a disciple because I'm teaching this class, but nevertheless, I mean, disciples are a broad definition of people who are in the Lord, who are manifesting His Word in truth. something you're absolutely right but i just realized from studying this last week that disciples were mentioned in the gospels but in the church you don't find the term disciple anymore true okay yeah and of course the disciples are well described as the 12 right yes including the famed one called um Judas Iscariot, right? Those are the apostles. Yeah. Right. Disciples at the time of Jesus's time on earth. Oh, yes. And if they were apostles, they were disciples. Right. They need to be distinguished, I think. OK. All right. Third question. Who's the audience? Churches? Churches of Galatia. This is not one, this is not Holly Hill's Bible church, right? These are the churches in Galatia.

All right, good. How important are, and from whom do grace and peace arise? Very simple question. What's the first? Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, from the Lord Jesus Christ, right? Okay. Next question, the last one. What will of the father was intended and for what outcome? Race by faith alone. They might rescue us from the present evil age. There you go, and for what outcome?

Verse five. His glory. The glory of the Lord. OK, so in a sense, what Myles covered, I've succinctly tried to address here with a series of simple questions. So that brings us to verse six. And I included six and seven. There's a comma between the verses, and I think it fits together very nicely. So we'll look at it as it's stated.

I'm marveled that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel, which is not another. But there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. Now, I sometimes turn, not always, turn to the inner linear. And here, by the way, the inner linear, if you use the Blue Letter Bible, is not exactly the original text. So I have a book that has the inner linear that's stated exactly as it is here. giving that to you and sometimes the direction of the words is not appropriate for you know sharing that as a sentence or trying to convince somebody of what the text has to say but anyway here's the interletter to read.

I wonder that thus quickly you are removing from the one presumably having called by quote, the grace of Christ to another gospel, which not is another. Only some there are troubling you and wishing to pervert the gospel of Christ. So the second part is very similar to the King James. Now, I'm going to point out in the New King James, and it's also true of other versions like the New American Standard, Is there a difference between in the grace of Christ or by the grace of Christ?

What do you think? Is that just romantic? It's pretty important. Yeah, it's very important. Okay, so think out loud. Why? Well, I'm going to cheat a little bit. If you go and look at the original, I believe that it's the Greek word enn, And it's in the sphere of, it's into, it's pretty significant. Bai kind of hides that. What you say, I'm called into the sphere of grace. He's calling us from where we were into this marvelous sphere of grace. And that's kind of, I think, where you're heading. So, I personally think a bias is... It's not good. Okay. All right. Other thoughts? Maybe it doesn't make any difference to everyone else.

I think in the grace is different than by. I think by the grace is kind of a platform of grace, but in grace seems it's more personalized, doesn't it? Yeah, Jim. You know, I think it's interesting that the ESP is the only one that uses in the grace. The NESB, the Weymouth, and the Holman Christian Center all use bi-grace.

I don't know if that says anything. Well, the different Greek texts are part of the problem. King James, New King James, they're a different set. It's a whole textual thing, which I'm not that knowledgeable on, but that can confuse you a bit. Personally, I'd rather be in grace than by grace.

Amen. Amen. That's the thing we Well, isn't he just saying that? He's saying he called you. Yes, he called me. But by the grace as a principle, it's this atmosphere of his extended mercy and love to us. I mean, mercy and grace are different, but nevertheless, you know, I'm not defending one versus the other. I'm just saying it was worthy of a little discussion. Oh, it is. Wayne, did you have your opinion? Well, I was thinking of John 17. you know, the same relationship we have in Christ as he has with the Father. So I think either one of them could be the same.

Okay, I want to just pass on this fairly quickly and not spend the rest of the time on it, but nevertheless I thought it was kind of interesting and worthy of discussion. All right, Constable says this, in every one of his canonical epistles, Paul commanded his readers before launching into the main subject of this letter, regardless of his general purpose in writing. Here he recorded no such phrase. What do you make of that? You guys are in trouble. That's one way to put it, Cal. And nothing to commend them about. Whoa.

Well, you know, the introduction is still the introduction. That was kind of uplifting, was reminding them they've been called, you know, in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ or by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in fact, in the verse six, it's reminding them of that. But then to further this, the first part of verse six talks about, let's go back and look at that again. I marvel that you're turning away. Hey, we're going to dwell on those terms a little bit more detail. This marvel or amazement suggests more was expected, doesn't it?

This is the same expression that Jesus described, actually, when he found the unbelief of the so-called prophets in the synagogues in Nazareth. And here's the verse. And this, I think this was moving to me. This is Christ describing what he was seeing in Nazareth. And he said, and he marveled or was amazed because of their unbelief. Then he went about the villages in a circuit teaching. Marvel, amazement. I mean, anyway. But that didn't hinder him from carrying on, basically. Okay.

Any thoughts about this response to Paul's? I mean, this is not a subtle response. But wasn't his response, in a way, to the man in John 3, where he said to the monk, he came to him by night, you know, the teacher. He says, you're a teacher? You don't know these things? I mean, you have the information. They had the information for the Old Testament about this. And he said, you don't understand this? It's like, huh?

Remember, his first missionary journey, he clearly taught the gospel throughout the churches of Galatia. And the Galatian churches, were departing from faith and faith alone. And I think the Holy Spirit emphasizes this in the book of Galatians, because all through history, even up until today, if people would just study Galatians, you wouldn't have all this legalism, It's a major problem in our churches. It really is. But I would suggest it's pretty subtle, isn't it? Yes. I mean, the whole issue of applying a legal system to Christianity is often very subtle.

It's because man thinks that he can do it and can contribute to this. That's the problem. It's our nature. to want to, you know, do all this stuff and not realize that, you know, we don't have to. We can depend on Him. Let's just pause a second and think about what Miles Stanford said once.

He said it's more difficult many times to bring a believer who's under law under grace than it is to bring someone who's unsaved to the truth of the gospel and bring him to justification. I mean, you can do whatever you want with that, but I think there's some truth to that. I mean, we can't do that without individualizing it, but I think it's an important thing that Paul is marveling at how far they've gone astray. There's so much ritualism in churches today, what people grew up with, what they're used to, and it's hard for them to accept they don't need all that. Thanks Heidi. All right, so then Paul clearly expected more, didn't he? And his disappointment was reflected later in Galatians. And by the way, throughout the book, and Bob again, the whole book in context is really what we need to think about.

In Galatians 4.19, I'm just quoting Weinberg, my little children for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you. It's a good example later in the book. He's still burdened by this false doctrine that they're living underneath.

So, which do you prefer, turning away from the gospel or removing it, or perhaps, as the New American Standard states, deserting him? Remember, we're talking about not only the gospel, we're talking about the Lord Jesus Christ himself. That's what the verse indicates. Which one of those do you think more strongly states the case here? Are you going to tell us the original?

Sorry, Bob. I'm asking opinion. I'm trying to engage the class here. You know, you can all not say anything. That's okay. There's no test at the end of this. And notice what or who they are turning away from. And interestingly enough, this is a present middle passive participle. And that suggests that the individuals themselves are involved, but perhaps they're being influenced by others. So it's middle passive is meaning there's some passivity to this, meaning other people are trying to encourage this.

And it's not that true of much of our covenant church today. I think that the encouragement is utilizing the Old Testament as a soft pillow for a tired head. There's nothing wrong with using Proverbs or Psalms. We need to put that all into perspective, don't we? We are not living as David did, although he's a man of God, for sure.

All right. And so I just thought we could represent this by turning away. But that was a good example of turning away from something one another. All right, you're going to have a few more of those today. OK. And just quickly. Hey, Bob? Yes. Oh, I was just thinking that this is Andrew. Um, the word in the outline is pretty good. They're defecting, defection. Okay. Yeah. For, for deserting. Yeah. Or removing themselves. Oh, deserting. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

And here's two people deserting the truth of one another. I'm not quite sure which. How should we interpret quickly? You know, quickly in scripture could be relevant to time, which means soon. And that would be JFB's interpretation. And by the way, when was this gospel or this epistle written? What's this time sequence, do you think, between when this epistle was written and when it was ultimately given to the churches at Galatia?

Rob? So you have a question. Kathy's on the line. Oh, yeah. Kathy, what? I'm just wondering, do you think that this was intentional on their part, or were they deceived? If this was intentional, by whom? You mean the Galatian church? The turning away. Oh, I don't know that we can interpret that, but clearly it's biblically incorrect for sure. And we're going to come back to that a little bit, who are these people who've turned away and try to understand that a little bit more. So back to the question, Weiss thinks that this will be done rapidly or with rapidity.

I mean, what's the time scale? Around 50 AD is when it was written. But what was the time sequence between when the epistle was written and when it was ultimately delivered? After the first missionary journey. Okay, so probably briefly, I mean maybe some people say up to one year, some people say as long as three.

I don't think it's that long, temporally. Some people may have done more of a historical search on this. But I think the term quickly here could be interpreted either way, I think. But generally, quickly and, you know, soon or quickly in scripture sometimes could mean just over a short period of time or actually could be a delayed time. So we'll leave. Yes.

The Galatians, they were actually turning away from the gospel as as Paul was on his first missionary journey, when he would go to the next city, people would come in behind and start reteaching what Paul had taught. And every time he went to a new city, he went to four different ones. He was followed by what we call the Judaizers. And they were being quickly turned away just as fast as Paul was evangelizing them. So you're thinking of it like Lystra and Iconium and some of these other Galatian churches.

This was a sequence of events. Yes. OK. Don't you see that today when certain movements come through and everybody oh that sounds good let's go that way or something and it just seems like it's continually going on like that like what was the book on the promises of god right now anyways yeah yeah we get easily distracted don't we so what does paul mean by another or a different gospel well it's important and look for the original there that's an i see it's another there's two words it's alice Okay, you're proceeding here.

The Greek term here is heteros, which can refer to either quantity or number or quality. And here it is of a different kind, which can imply, it implies either good versus evil. There's understanding in Greek interpretation. The other Greek term is allos, which means another but of the same kind. So heteros here implies quality.

This is a different gospel in terms of the quality of the gospel, not another one of the same kind. So this misdirection of interpretation in the Galatian churches will continue to be emphasized throughout the epistle. And here I'm going to, again, go to a text later in the epistle.

Galatians 5, 4, you become estranged from Christ. You who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. Now, let's not forget how Paul began the letter. Galatians 1, 3, and 4, grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins, da da, da da, da da. And so another similar reference to this might be this, 2 Corinthians 11, 4. And by the way, just a bit of a rabbit trail, 2 Corinthians is one of the most uplifting texts in scripture. It really is an incredibly rich text.

And this is a whole different direction that Paul had for the church at Corinth and the messages he gave through the first epistle. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we've not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you've not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you may well put up with it.

In other words, Yeah, you may go there, but ultimately, that's not what the intention was. And I think here's a picture of maybe what this other gospel looks like across that is less meaningful, if you will. I mean, you can interpret that however you want. I thought it was kind of pictorial in terms of another gospel. I mean, maybe the cross looked more like that. I don't know. I think there's a message there. I think you can interpret however way you'd like. another gospel of a different kind.

And of course we're talking about here legality. Because gospel means good news. How could another gospel not be bad news? I mean this interpretation of heteros implying good versus evil is saying one's right and one is not right. The contrast is what's being represented.

Hey Bob, if you take the gospel 100% of what's true about the gospel and you prefer just say 5% of it, you have destroyed the whole thing. Faith plus anything is no faith at all. Thank you. And in fact, that turned me to Titus here a little bit. Big arrow there.

Titus says, this is Titus chapter 3 verses 4 and 5, but when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us. not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

I mean, it's effectively, that's succinctly the gospel that was now being ultimately not obeyed by the Galatian churches. Doesn't Paul seem to contradict himself when he states in verse seven, no, not another? Doesn't that seem like a contradiction? What was it? What does that mean? Well, I think to interpret it, it's no. Here he's emphasizing there's really but one gospel and no other gospel. I mean, in other words, I mean, when you read it initially in context, it looks like he's contradicted himself. But Bob, here's where the, and you probably get to the, here's where the Greek helps you out because the second one is allos. I got ahead of myself. Yeah. I didn't go there, but that's good. Yeah. Okay. So the two Greek words, heteros and allos help you out. Okay. Good. Good. Appreciate that, Roger. Thanks. And don't let anyone trouble you in this way.

In terms of that, Galatians 5.10, again looking in other sections of Galatians, I have confidence in you and the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is.

And we can decide what kind of judgment that would be. This shows you perhaps burning in Hades or whatever, but whatever. I mean the judgment of someone who's teaching other truths ultimately may be unsaved, and I think that is really something we could discuss and we'll maybe for a few minutes before we close.

Those that trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. Trouble is terrasso, which means to disturb mentally. And this is in the present tense. This is an ongoing activity of these people in the Galatian churches who are preaching another gospel. And what to pervert is metastropho, which means to reverse or change to the opposite. So that's really not consistent with what Pollack intended.

JFB says, though acknowledging Christ, they insisted on circumcision and Jewish ordinances. and professed to rest on the authority of other apostles, namely Peter and James, but Paul recognizes no gospel save the pure gospel. Okay, so that's a reasonable commentary. And you know, James and Peter could have been misleading, particularly a group of people that we call Judaism. Does this indicate that they were saved and actually doing this, and I'll just go on to say that ultimately, beware this term, and I think Bob Wolford mentioned this, the term Judaizers is never used scripturally. So we've had a discussion when we were studying the Book of Acts. Are these believers who have fallen short, or are these unsaved people?

What are people's thoughts about this? Mixture. A mixture. Context, context, context. Don't you also think that a lot of these people, this was so different for them, how easy it was for them to just slip right back into this whole thing which they've been taught their whole lives, that unless you're circumcised, The tradition.

The tradition, you know, I think, and it's true today. I mean, you know, look at all these churches. So what percentage of these people in the Galatian area, Bob, I'll turn to you in this, you seem to have a historical view of this better than I do. What percentage were Jewish and what people were Gentiles? What do you think? Are we dealing with... There's a big mixture of the two. Yeah, okay.

People from Rome, Southern Galatia became a Roman Providence, and a lot of the military retired in that area. But on the same hand, while Jerusalem was getting persecuted, people were leaving and going out into all these areas. So we have both Jews and Gentiles. We have both saved and unsaved.

The Bible does not distinctly discriminate between these individuals and who they were. I think something important to say here is a lot of these were believers who were confused. When you put your faith in Christ, you do it one time. You don't have to keep putting your faith in Christ for salvation over and over and over again. You might get confused. You might change your mind about it. But once you believe in Christ, you are eternally saved.

Well, I've walked down the aisle four or five times now. Okay, okay, good. So, you know, it reminds me of Romans, which we will get to three years from now, but... Okay, hopefully from then. Paul, writing to the Romans, said, Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and avoid them. I mean, you know, again, the message is not unique to here.

But perhaps people who were Jews who came to the Lord Jesus Christ and got saved still relied on James and Peter to guide them in terms of perhaps living as a law. But I could disagree with our interpretation of James and 1 Peter. I mean, James, I think, remember what James was for?

James was for me looking at Jim and saying, boy, I really admire Jim's walk of the Lord. I mean, our walk was being observed by others. And that's, if I could reduce James to kind of a one-liner, that's what James is teaching us. Our walk is related to the body that we're part of.

Whereas Peter, I think doctrinally is sound. I think that the Judaizers there were just misinterpreting what Peter was saying. All right, Romans 11, 6, and if by grace, then it's no longer of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. I mean, it's that simple, right? And Mike and Roger taught that well to us during Romans 9 through 11 about Israel, right? And perhaps the ultimate.

Jude 1.4, for certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord and our Lord Jesus Christ. You'd have to say that Jude is relating to the unsaved, who if they relate to people in the Galatians churches ultimately would be I think labeled as unsaved individuals. But again, I'm just pulling that out as watching out for these contrary men. And by the way, Peter says a lot about these types of individuals also. So Macaulay kind of concludes here, and I'm going to end with this.

The defection in Galatia then has three aspects. First, it had a human aspect seen in the emotional impact it had on Paul. I think we all can accept that one for sure. Second, it had a doctrinal aspect proved by their failing relationship to grace in the message of the gospel. That seems also true. And third, it had a personal aspect. They were departing from him.

Macaulay was pretty succinct in his comments on verse six and had a little bit more to say about seven, but I really liked his summary of these two verses and what they have for us. And just to say this, and this is the nature of the defection, next week we'll talk about the gravity of the defection. So it's 945, worked out perfectly time-wise. Any thoughts or comments? Yes.

I just wondered about the, you know, these Judaizers, you know, what their motive was. Were they trying to, I mean, were they just confused and they were just leading people along with them? Or, you know, were they purposely trying to, you know, draw them aside and, You know, I don't know. I mean, I look at like people today and some people are just, you know, they believe this and so they want you to believe that because they think this is true. But on the other hand, there are people who were trying to pull you away because they don't want you to go the true way. Does that make sense? Right.

I think some of the text I shared here could have been one of both. I don't think we can really conclude what the motive was. but the legal principles were still manifesting themselves as another kind of gospel. I think that the actual Judaizers, not the people they were deceiving, but the actual Judaizers hated the fact that Paul was taking away their old traditions from him. Yeah, I mean tradition, but that exists in today's churches too. Yeah, I know. So I think the principles described here by Paul are those that are continuing today. Hey Bob? Yes, Andrew?

I've been thinking, and you can comment on this, but Back then, it was really only Paul who was ministering to the Gentiles, just him and his team. And I think that Satan, he had a very easy job, Satan, and he knew that, and he would just send, raise up men behind him to come and uh mess up his his work because it happened during all of Paul's ministry everywhere he went there was always there was a there was a train of false teachers coming along behind him which was would be Satan's work I think. I remember in his first missionary journey Barnabas accompanies him but also there were brethren and when you know remember when Paul was talking to the Church of Galatia in this epistle ultimately mentioned the brethren that were part of this message. So anyway, you may be correct.

I mean, in Scripture, Paul was more isolated in terms of this impact, but there presumably were others who were involved too. We just don't know how many and who. I think most of the brethren in the Jerusalem church and many in the Antioch churches were opposed to what Paul was doing.

They had to have that council at Jerusalem just to straighten everybody out. And then James sent out a letter which was taken back to Antioch and then spread all over the place. That letter also went out on the second missionary journey. to straighten the doctrine out. Well, presumably they straightened it out doctrinally, but that didn't last. I mean, this is an example of how it failed. Somewhere along the line, Peter even screwed things up.

Roger's going to tell us when that happened. I don't know what happened. When will that be, Roger? Well, you know, it has a schedule in the regulations. It wouldn't be today. Not today. All right. Well, thanks for everybody's participation today. Andrew, could you please close us in prayer? Yeah. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and its application for us today with the same things that are going on with the Galatian churches. They continue on today, and this book gives us wisdom to avoid the pitfalls of legalism in our lives, and we thank you for your word, and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.