Most of the new Christians in the early church were Jews, and Jews had been raised to believe that obedience to the law was how you got close to God and obtained favor from him. After these Jews (called Judaizers) came to faith in Christ, they still kept some of this old law mentality, because—as we all know—old habits die hard.
So, they taught that in addition to faith in Christ, real believers needed to make themselves acceptable to God by forcing themselves to obey the law. By keeping the commandments, they believed, you could transform yourself into the kind of person God wanted you to be. Chief among their concerns was the Old Testament command to be circumcised, which, for 1,500 years, had been the primary distinguishing mark of the Jews.
The Apostle Paul calls what the Judaizers were teaching a different gospel (Galatians 1:6), a perverted gospel (v. 7), and a contrary gospel (v. 8).
The real gospel is that in Christ, God did for us what we were utterly incapable of doing for ourselves, and all we can do is receive it by faith. Our problem was worse than law-breaking. We were condemned and dead. In response to our condemnation, Jesus lived the perfect life we were supposed to live and then died the death we were condemned to die in our place. In response to our death, Jesus infused new life into us through his resurrection.
This is the true gospel. It teaches us that God saves us and blesses us as a free gift of unmerited grace, and in response to that, we do good works.
The perverted gospel reverses that, saying that we do some good works and then God saves and blesses us in response to that.
Now, most of us today are not hung up on circumcision or aspects of the Jewish law, but many Christians today believe the same, false, perverted gospel.
1. We believe a false gospel whenever we make something else besides faith in Christ necessary for salvation.
For example, some people believe that to become a Christian,…