8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! 9 As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed!
10 For am I 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 bond-servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:8-12 (NASB) (Read verses 11-12 on the site)
With all of the “inside job” attacks on the gospel going on right now in the visible church I have decided to take a closer look at the Biblical gospel, what it is and what it isn’t. Some say that we must make our interpretation of the gospel very loose because “no one can know everything about it, therefore, we must be tolerant of other’s views of salvation because the gospel is inherently unknowable.”…
However, I am not in that camp and I pray that you aren’t either. Our God is a very precise God who does things His way in His timing and always for His glory.
The background passages I will use for this article will be mostly from the book of Galatians. However, we will look in Romans, John, Matthew, and Ephesians as well. Galatians was the Apostle Paul’s first epistle. Galatia was a region of the Roman province of Asia. This area is in modern day Turkey. This was the region of Paul and Barnabas’ first missionary journey. They planted several churches throughout that region. However, sometime after they returned to Antioch false teachers had come to those churches preaching and teaching that faith was not enough for salvation. They contended that the Gentiles in Galatia who believed must also keep the Mosaic Law in order to be saved. When Paul found out about this, he responded with the epistle or letter that we call Galatians.
This book is a great source for this topic because it deals with the same issue the post-modern Church is dealing with. The Galatians were told that there was another gospel. Today, as I stated above, the gospel is open to interpretation. Is it? I contend that the gospel is not open to anyone’s interpretation. It is only what the Bible says it is. This, of course, causes another huge cry of “foul” because people interpret the Bible differently. That is a shame, but it is a true statement. However, there would not be this huge variance of interpretations of the Bible or the gospel if we utilize careful exegesis, keeping everything in context.