It was my lot to grow up in one segment of a religious movement which, like many other such historical attempts to recapture the ideal of the first century community of the saints, had become fractured into rival factions. It had been inaugurated chiefly by earliest Presbyterians, with the assistance of a few worthy thinkers from other backgrounds, who were, as one of them phrased it "tired and sick of the bitter jarrings and janglings of the party spirit." Accordingly they launched a program to unite the Christians in all of the sects."
It was not the only project begun for this purpose at that particular period of time. There were a number of "restoration movements" whose adherents pleaded for men to "return to the original pattern as set forth by the apostles," and a favorite title for sermons was "Seeking the Old Paths." It is not essential to my present purpose to detail all of the tributaries which converged to form the rushing river of "The Second Great Awakening." It is sufficient to say that under its influence hardy thinkers began to proclaim to a frontier people that unity in Christ Jesus was attainable in the wilderness of a fresh new world, provided that all men would search the scriptures and "restore the ancient order of things."
All of these movements without exception, eventually became both divided and divisive, contributing to the "jarrings and janglings" which they started out to eliminate. The particular movement with which I was directly affiliated, and of which I became an ardent defender, was doomed to become one of the most fragmented upon the contemporary American scene. It ended up with more than one division for every decade of its turbulent existence from the day of its beginning until the present.
It is not difficult to assess the causes for the disturbing result. On the other hand, given such causes, the result was inevitable and should have been predictable. But hindsight is often better than foresight. One can more readily read the signs of the times by looking backward than by trying to scan the future. Frontier peoples, who are often deprived of those amenities which a stable society takes for granted, tend to define their learning and goals in capsule form. In this form they are easily remembered. Significant happenings are memorialized in simple ballads, wisdom is reduced to pithy proverbs, and life purposes expressed in slogans.
The real danger in this is that men repeat the slogans until they become a substitute for thinking. They remember the slogan and forget the purpose. In the particular movement with which I was identified one of the earliest proponents coined the expression, "We will speak where the Bible speaks, and remain silent where the Bible is silent." This worthy resolution became the watchword of the movement and when it did, was translated by attitude and action into a weapon rather than into an instrument of righteousness.
More than anything else it tended to develop a prooftext approach to the sacred scriptures and men became "scrap doctors" as Alexander Campbell referred to them. The tendency developed into a way of life and men searched the scriptures to validate presuppositions, and to find justification for what they already thought and did. A generation arose which spoke where the Bible spoke, but was not concerned in speaking as the Bible speaks.
When division in the family of God, which is always condemned by the Holy Spirit in the divine revelation, began to be sanctified by quoting passages to justify it, the flood-gate was opened. Every faction, fragment, splinter and sect could "prove" that its exclusiveness and separation was the will of God, sanctioned by heaven and authorized by the new covenant scriptures. Each sect froze knowledge at its own level, each established its own plateau, and each made additional discoveries above and beyond the partisan norm a crime punishable by banishment and exile.
As absurd and ridiculous as it may seem to the real scholar of the divine disclosures, every minor detail of difference and debate was branded "another gospel" and the unfortunate soul who had not stopped thinking when he reached the partisan plane was accused of "preaching another gospel." He might be, and often was, the most spiritual person in the group, humble, prayerful and loving, but this counted for nothing if he could not conscientiously bring himself to remain confined in the partisan straitjacket of orthodoxy.
If he held a different view about the millennium, music, or missionary methods, he was guilty of "bringing another gospel." Even though he accepted every word about Jesus as recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and literally steeped himself in their testimony, if he could not concur with the party position as to the time and meaning of "the thousand years" in Revelation 20, he was preaching "another gospel" and he was expected to be accursed by God after having been excommunicated by the sect.
As a kind of mitigation of the hardness and rigidity which settled down like a pall to halt further movement, it cannot be forgotten that it was alleged "respect for the authority of the Word" which created the sectarian status. A number of factors contributed to the condition. Basic to the entire system was the mistaken concept that we are still under law rather than grace, and that the love letters of the apostles constituted a written code of divine jurisprudence, the terms of which had to be enforced by certain men invested with the power to determine the conditions of union and communion for each developing party.
As a corollary to this false foundation there was an undermining of the real purpose of the new covenant which was to create an association of free men and women, joined to each other only because they were joined to Jesus. New yokes began to be hewn out to replace the one delivered to Moses and each party whittled and shaped its peculiar yoke to fit the cast of its leadership and recognized interpreters. Divine distinctions were obscured in the fog of factional debates, and men began to defend their novelties as ardently as their fathers once opposed them.
It is not easy to assess the relative importance of fundamental errors in the rise of any system of thought, because, with the passing of time, they become intertwined and matted together. In the movement in which I grew up I think one of the principal mistakes consisted in confusing the gospel of Christ with the apostolic doctrine addressed to those who had obeyed the gospel. Many forgot that the gospel was the good news of what God had done for men in Christ Jesus, while the doctrine consisted of instruction as to what men in Christ Jesus must do to walk worthy of their vocation. Eventually the term "the gospel" became the equivalent of the whole of the new covenant scriptures, and one who held a divergent view about any passage was adjudged as being unfaithful to the gospel.
Since we will be pursuing the subject in our next chapter we propose now an investigation in context of the term "another gospel" as used by Paul in his letter to the Galatians. Here are his words:
I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.
As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed (Galatians 1:6-9).
It is my conviction that none of the troublesome issues which create problems among those who are firmly convinced that Jesus is the Anointed One and God's Son, the Lord of life, constitutes "another gospel." Certainly when controversy arises over such matters as the millennial reign, or the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit in our day, someone is wrong, and all may be. But neither side is proclaiming another gospel, and the accusation that either is doing so may be far more dangerous and damaging to the cause of Christ than the error under dispute.
One has not "left the gospel" or "deserted the gospel" who "through the Spirit waits for the hope of righteousness by faith." He may be ignorant of the meaning of many things in the apostolic letters, and wrong about a lot of things he thinks he understands, but he does not "preach another gospel" when he expresses his views about his deductions and opinions. If we are to "speak as the oracles of God" and if we accept the letter to the Galatians as a part of those oracles, it is important that we determine what Paul said and what he meant by what he said.
Galatia was a district located in the great peninsula called Asia Minor, the region we now know as Turkey. It was populated by the Gauls, a rude and boisterous people from the land of the Rhine who migrated into Greece, and about 280 B.C. went on into Asia where they carved out a home for themselves which came to be called Galatia, "the district of the Gauls." Julius Caesar, who made their name familiar to every high school Latin student, described them as volatile, restless and changeable. The apostle apparently found the description accurate.
It appears that when Paul proclaimed the good news to them the first time it was because of a physical condition. It has been suggested that because of some weakness or illness he could not travel further and, rather than consume the time in idleness he preached the gospel to the inhabitants of the area (4:13,14). Characteristic of their enthusiasm they received him "as an angel of God." Borrowing a phrase from the Grecian games the apostle told them "Ye did run well."
He was not gone from the region very long after visiting it the second time until disturbing reports reached him. Judaizing teachers had entered the area and were spreading the propaganda that one could not be justified by faith in Jesus. He must be circumcised and come under the law, or be lost. To further their nefarious course they sought to discredit Paul. They denied he was a true apostle, and contended that he was inferior to Peter and the other apostles whom Jesus called. They implied that whatever he proclaimed was a secondhand message, having been learned from the other apostles at Jerusalem. In view of this they contended, all must look to Jerusalem for the fullness of the gospel.
In that portion of his letter with which we are directly concerned Paul met their accusations head-on and without cavilling. He was not an apostle of men, neither by man. He was not commissioned by any man or set of men nor was he selected by human agency. He was an apostle sent forth by Jesus Christ under the authority of God the Father (1:1). He said, "The gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ (1:11,12). He did not confer with flesh and blood, nor go up to Jerusalem to counsel with the other apostles, when he was called (1:16,17)
Since the good news he declared was given to him by revelation of God and not by repetition of men, the apostle was astounded that those who had been introduced into the grace of God by that gospel, could so soon be lured away and seduced by another gospel, which was actually not another gospel at all, for it was not good news. It was at this juncture the apostle wrote, "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."
What is the gospel? Before one can designate a thing as "another gospel" he must be able to identify the original gospel. The gospel, by etymology, is good news. It is not a system of doctrine, a philosophy of life, a compilation of laws, or a code of ethics. It is good news about a person and what that person has done for us in our hopeless, helpless and hapless condition. It is not a message for the saved but for the lost. It is never addressed to saints but to sinners. It is never proclaimed to the church but to the world.
The gospel is designed to make believers. It is intended to create citizens out of aliens. The word is our translation of euangelion. It is an evangel and you do not evangelize saved persons. It is sadly amiss to talk about preaching the gospel to the church unless the church is composed of those who have never come to Christ, that is, who have never obeyed the gospel.
The gospel which Paul proclaimed in Galatia did not originate with man (1:11). It was not the presentation of borrowed "sermon outlines." It was the "gospel of Christ" (1:7), the good news about Jesus. It consisted of preaching Christ among the Gentiles (1:16). It was "preaching the faith he once tried to destroy" (1:23). What was that faith? "And I said, Lord, they themselves know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believed in thee" (Acts 22:19). It was belief in Jesus which Paul sought to destroy. It was faith in Jesus which he later proclaimed.
The careful student of the Galatian letter will at once see that the good news was a proclamation that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works of law (2:16). There was no good news in a reign of law. Those who rely for justification upon works of law are under a curse (3:10). No man can be justified before God by law (3:11). If justification were through law, Christ died to no purpose (2:21). If inheritance were by law it was not by promise (3:18). The utter futility of law lies in the fact that it must leave men dead. "For if a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by law" (3:21). There is no such law, either human or divine.
Law confines and keeps under restraint. It binds but cannot free (3:23). It makes a person under it "no better than a slave" (4:1). Men had to be redeemed from it before they could even receive adoption as sons (4:5). It is impossible to be justified by faith in Jesus and try to be justified by law at the same time, because one binds while the other frees. One cannot be both a slave and a son, because the adoption as sons frees from the bondage of law. One who seeks to be justified by law, or by legal conformity, severs himself from Jesus. "You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you are fallen away from grace" (5:4). Nothing is plainer than the statement, "You are not under law, but under grace." You cannot be under both at once. The attempt to be will make of us schizophrenists in the spiritual world.
Salvation is a state of right relationship with God. Jesus did not come merely to keep us out of hell but to keep hell out of us. He came to reconcile us unto God. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." We do not enter this relationship by bargaining with God. We cannot earn it, purchase it or deserve it. We cannot bid on it or for it. It is not what we do for God that brings us into this relationship but what He has done for us. We are saved by grace through faith. It is not of ourselves. It is not of works. Study Galatians 4:1-7. "We were slaves . . . but . . . God sent forth his Son . . . God hath sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts." We could not adopt ourselves into His family. We had nothing by which to purchase our redemption from the slave pen. "So through God you are no longer a slave but a son."
Our response to the grace which sent a person to become sin for us, and to reconcile us, is faith in that person. This is what justifies. Justification has to do with freedom from guilt. We are not justified because we are guiltless for all of us are guilty. We are not justified because we have done something to free ourselves from guilt for no one can ever undo an act he has committed. Not even God can do that! We cannot "take back" what we have done. But Jesus is guiltless. He is the sinless one. If we are in Jesus we are not in a sinless state but in a sinless person. If we trust in his righteousness, that faith or trust is reckoned unto us as righteousness, or justification. Justification must always be a gift of God. We cannot give anything to God to meet a need of His. We must be always on the receiving end.
To one who works, what he receives must be counted as wages. It is not a gift. One who works has something coming to him, but no man has anything coming from God. He cannot be placed in our debt. We cannot keep books on God or "figure our own time." "To one who does not work, but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness" (Romans 4:5). To be in Christ does not mean we have not sinned. It does not mean our sinful acts have been undone. It does not mean that we are guiltless. It simply means that in Christ Jesus God can treat us as guiltless. He can, through Jesus, reckon our faith as righteousness and not reckon our sins.
The gospel is the good news, the glad tidings, the joyful announcement of that justification by faith in Christ Jesus. It is the welcome communication from heaven that by trusting in Jesus in complete surrender and commitment, God will regard us as if we were without sin, since we are in one who is in that state. This is the gospel which Paul proclaimed in Galatia. It was the good news that Jesus was not as powerless as Greek wisdom and Jewish legalism. Salvation was not hinged upon arriving at wisdom or coming under the law, but coming into a person! God has made Him "our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30).
The gospel is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He is the good news, the greatest good news in all the history of sinful man. Paul declared that the message brought to Galatia was "Jesus Christ publicly portrayed (or placarded) as crucified" (3:1). The truth of that gospel, that is, the essence, the basis, the central theme was justification by faith in Jesus Christ. Truth is reality, stripped of all extraneous matter and naked of all artificial covering. The glad tidings to the world consisted of announcement of the most tremendous, magnificent and earth-shaking principle in the universe--that justification is by faith in the Son of God. This is the core of the message. This is "the truth of the gospel."
Shortly after Paul had gone from Galatia, members of the circumcision party came and told those who had heard the good news that something else was required, that faith in Jesus was not sufficient. No doubt their message was the same as that which they promulgated in Antioch, "Except ye be circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1). When the controversy waxed hot in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas went up to Jerusalem to consult the apostles and elders. They took Titus along as a test case. They encountered "false brethren secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy out our freedom which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage--to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you" (2:4,5). Paul was not here talking about the veracity of the gospel. If he yielded on this occasion, the principle of justification by faith, the truth of the gospel, would have been washed down the drain by the flood of legalism.
When Peter went to Antioch he ate with the Gentiles, until certain men came from James at Jerusalem. "When they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party" (2:12). This was a repudiation of the principle of justification by faith in Jesus and an adoption of the tenet of the party--you must believe in Jesus and something more to be in the fellowship. Peter caused a division with his unwritten creed. Others were drawn into the faction, including Barnabas. Paul saw that "they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel." Do not be mistaken. Peter still believed in Jesus. So did Barnabas. But they lent their influence to those who insisted that this was not enough to be justified.
Paul proceeds to define the truth of the gospel in one of the most sublime passages in the Galatian letter. "We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified" (2:15,16). To profess this as the marrow, or kernel of the gospel, and then, under partisan pressure, tack something else on to it as a condition of salvation, is to act insincerely and to be "not straightforward about the truth of the gospel."
Those who were in Christ in the days of the apostles were in error on many points. They were mistaken about a lot of things, but they were not charged with "preaching another gospel." Freedom from error is not a condition of salvation else all men would be damned. We are not saved by attainment to a certain degree of knowledge but by faith in Christ Jesus. It is by belief of facts related to Him, and not by grasp of abstract truth, that we are justified before God. Certainly it is not by performance of meritorious deeds nor by legalistic conformity. When we postulate a program of justification by knowledge we hang ourselves on the gallows we have constructed to rid ourselves of others, unless we are prepared to make ourselves even more ridiculous by affirming that we know as much as God.
No honest opinion held by one who is in Christ Jesus and who respects His Lordship, is "another gospel." Since it is the gospel which forms the basis of the fellowship with the Father, the Son, and with one another in Christ, such an opinion can never be made a test of union or communion in Jesus. A man may hold a view as to the perseverance of the saints, the manner of the resurrection, or the second coming of our Lord, and he may prove to be as wrong as one could be, but he cannot be debarred from citizenry in the kingdom of heaven by the other subjects, any more than one can be disenfranchised in the United States because he disagrees with the government space program or the approach to overseas help.
No man "preaches another gospel" simply by being mistaken about some aspects of the will of God, otherwise one would need to know perfectly the divine will or he would be a perverter of the gospel. It is common in our day for some to level the charge at their brethren who disagree with them over some means or method for implementation of God's will that they are "preaching another gospel" and "apostatizing." Those who do this, regardless of motive, reveal their ignorance of what constitutes both gospel and apostasy.
We need to give serious thought to the problem of "another gospel" because there is a grave danger that those who are most vociferous in their accusation that others are preaching "another gospel" are treading on thin ice. They may be guilty of the very thing of which they accuse others. Actually there is no such thing as another gospel and cannot be. The gospel is the good news that we are justified by faith in Christ Jesus. Anything else is just not gospel. That is why Paul said, "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel--not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ."
To offer justification, or right standing with God, upon some other basis than trust in Jesus, may appear to those who hear it to be "a gospel." They may regard it as such and even accept and designate it as such. Ultimately they will learn it could not deliver what it offered, and that there is only one basis for a right relationship with God. Then that which appeared so plausible and convincing, which seemed so rational and documented, will be shown to be empty and frustrating, and not good news at all.
When men make a test of union or communion out of some method, mode or machinery for accomplishing God's will and refuse to recognize as in the fellowship those who do not concur in their special brand of orthodoxy, they hinge justification upon faith in Jesus Christ and something else. The "something else" is agreement with their understanding, inference or deduction from the scriptures as regards that thing. Their creed is no longer simply Christ but conformity with a factional pattern. Whatever any party makes a test of fellowship is its creed. Whatever one must accept to be regarded as loyal is a creed.
To make one's right standing with God depend upon standing right upon other things rather than upon surrender of himself in trust to Jesus, is dangerously near to perverting the gospel. This was the mistake of the circumcision party in the days of Paul. Let it be understood that Paul did not regard circumcision or lack of it as of any avail in establishing that relationship. "For in union with Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor lack of it counts for anything; but only faith that is spurred on to action by love" (Galatians 5:6). Many quote Galatians 1:6-8 and apply it to others when they are actually the ones who set up other unwritten creeds and pervert the gospel with their partisan terms of fellowship and justification.
Not every divergent view is another gospel. Not every area of disagreement makes the one who disagrees with us a perverter of the gospel. There are some questions which are in order and to which we should face up. Why do those who profess to love God seek so eagerly to brand their brothers and apply hurtful and prejudicial epithets? Why are they so anxious to set at nought their brothers for whom Christ died? Why are they so bent on smiting their fellow-servants while the Lord is absent?
Is this the "more excellent way?" Is this the royal road to unity? Will this accomplish the purpose for which Jesus shed His blood? Will it answer His prayer for the oneness of all believers? If God deals with us at the judgment in the same cold legalistic fashion in which we deal with His other children, will any of us be saved?
I would like to urge my readers to carefully consider a quotation from The Declaration and Address, written in 1809 by Thomas Campbell at Washington, Pennsylvania.
That although inferences and deductions from Scripture premises, when fairly inferred, may be truly called the doctrine of God's holy word, yet are they not formally binding upon the consciences of Christians further than they perceive the connection, and evidently see that they are so, for their faith must not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power and veracity of God. Therefore no such deductions can be made terms of communion, but properly do belong to the after and progressive edification of the Church. Hence it is evident that no such deductions or inferential truths ought to have any place in the Church's confession.
It is a lack of discrimination which has been responsible for most of the tragic divisions among the children of God. Their zeal has been misdirected because of the lack of discernment and the inability to distinguish between things which differ. They have confused the good news which brings men into a relationship with the doctrine or teaching upon which they are to be nourished and nurtured in that relationship. They have confounded that which produces our very being with that which is essential to our well-being, and which belongs to our after and progressive edification or spiritual growth.
In closing I will provide another quotation which should give us all pause, when its content soaks into our consciousness. It is from the pen of Alexander Campbell, the son of the man who wrote the previous citation.
The present partyism is a disgrace to our profession. It is fatal to the progress of piety and truth . . . The key of knowledge is virtually taken away, and ages of darkness are again spreading sable wings over a slumbering world. We must awaken from this sleep of death--this fatal lethargy that has seized the body ecclesiastic. Men are fighting about chimeras, loving and hating, approbating and disapprobating one another for reasons they do not comprehend, and, if comprehended, they would blush to see the illusions and phantoms that have bewildered them.