Title: Accept The Gospel As Is
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Text: Galatians 1:1-9
Galatians Theme: Galatians describes a life that is free. It is a life in flight. If we cling to the true gospel, if we accept it for what it is, we can fly. But Paul wrote Galatians because the Galatian believers—and all future believers—were in danger. If we adulterate the gospel, if we add to it in any way, we will not fly. Like a bird chained in a birdcage, we will (at best) hinder ourselves from flying into God's ideal for our lives or (at worst) hinder ourselves and others from true salvation.
Overview: When I was an early-teen, my friends and I often played a simple game we called Quarters—I think we heard about it from Michael Jordan. Each of us would carry around a roll of quarters, and during school breaks, we would find a wall where two guys would take turns flipping quarters against it. Whoever's quarter landed closest to the wall—and the group was there to help judge—took home the other guy's quarter.
Every once in a while, a teacher or yard supervisor would catch us and tell us to stop because it was an introduction to gambling. We'd get in a tiny amount of trouble; they were never very concerned.
But imagine if we were tossing quarters as a way to compete for our future earnings. You win this toss, and I give you everything I earn for the next sixty years! Any teacher who overheard us would probably laugh. But imagine our game was somehow legally binding; they would've sternly rebuked us because the stakes were too high.
Adding to the gospel should never be done—the stakes are too high. We should not add the idea that our salvation is contingent on the quality of our surrender to Jesus. We should not add the idea that our salvation comes when we hold the right cultural expression of the gospel. We should not add the idea that we can save ourselves by being good people who do good things. We should not add the idea that we can save ourselves through regulation or religious ceremonies.
We cannot, and the stakes are high if we do—we don't fly, and people don't get saved! Instead, we must accept the gospel as is: the divinely inspired and initiated death, burial, and resurrection of Christ on our behalf—God's rescue mission to save despairing sinners.
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