My professor pointed out that the Apostle Paul often began his letters to particular churches with something like “grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
This was usually followed by an expression of thanksgiving for those particular Christians, something like:<\/p>\n\n\n
Even the church at Corinth, where there were major moral failings Paul needed to address, got a similar thanksgiving: “I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Cor. 1:4<\/p>\n\n\n
But the church in Galatia? They got “grace and peace” but no thanksgiving<\/b><\/i>.<\/p>\n\n\n
Instead, Paul goes straight to his point: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all.” (Gal 1:6-7a)<\/p>\n\n\n
I suppose there are degrees of false teachers. Some merely cause believers to go chasing down pointless rabbit holes. I am thinking of a video a friend shared where the preacher was rebuking men for growing beards … because facial hair on men is a sign of pride!<\/p>\n\n\n
And then there are those who go much further and make up their own version of the gospel.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
These are the types who had infected the Galatian church. In short, SOMEBODY was teaching the Galatians that they could only be justified in God’s eyes by observing the law. “Do this” and “don’t do that” and you will win God’s approval. This, of course, completely dismissed the need for faith in Christ.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But, Paul was eager to point out, if we can work our way into God’s approval, we have no need for God’s grace and “Christ died for nothing!” (Gal. 2:22)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I guess if you are a church which is dismantling the very heart of Christian faith, you shouldn’t expect too many pleasantries from Paul.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My professor pointed out that the Apostle Paul often began his letters to particular churches with something like “grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”.\u00a0 This was usually followed by an expression of thanksgiving for those particular Christians, something like: Even the church at Corinth, where there were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2925,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2924\/revisions\/2925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}