A Church in Trouble – Galatians 1:1-5

Topic: A Church in Trouble

Reading: Galatians 1:1-5

1 Paul an apostle–not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead– 2 and all the brethren who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: 3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father; 5 to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Introduction and Overview

In the last session we completed the detailed study of the letter of Paul to the Romans. That letter was basically a road-map for all Christians, teaching them how a person should come to Christ and the various steps along the journey to reach perfection in Jesus Christ. It was not addressing specific issues in the Roman church, but was teaching the processes for the work of transformation from a life of sin in this world, to a life of righteousness in Jesus Christ.

By contrast, the letter of Paul to the Galatians church is a letter to a church in trouble. The church in Galatia had lost, or was losing it’s way. They were turning away from the truth in Jesus Christ to a false gospel. The Galatians had been tricked by some teachers and preachers that had come into the church preaching a false gospel. These false teachers were not advancing the word of God, but were in it for what they could get.

And this is a message that rings true today, perhaps even more so. Many of the problems in the church today had their roots in the problems Paul was trying to deal with among the Galatians. Many of the issues of this church, which was a church in trouble, exist even more strongly in the church today. Whether the Galatians church ever resolved their issues or not, we do not know, but this message was written down for us today because the church of today has the same issues as those in Galatia.

As we work through the letter of Paul to the Galatians in the coming weeks, we will see what their major issue was, and hopefully see how it is still an issue in the broad church today. And the particular issue Paul reveals to that church is not unique to just one of the churches today. The problem has affected almost all of the churches today, from house churches through to the major denominational and non-denominational churches. All of these are a church in trouble because in almost all cases they have accepted the same lies that were being perpetrated upon the Galatians church. Today, they have almost all followed a different gospel than the gospel of truth that is in Jesus Christ, and this will be revealed in the coming posts.

Key takeaways:

1. Paul was trained and ordained by God, not by man to do the work he was performing for the church and the Lord.
2. Paul begins by emphasising the work of Jesus, which was to die for our sins to deliver us from this evil age in a world full of sin, according to the will of God the Father.

Discussion:

1. Scripture: Galatians 1:1-2
   • In these first opening verses of this letter, Paul makes several important points. He shows that he was appointed as an apostle of the church, but this appointment was made by God, not by men. And this is an important distinction.
   • Today, we often see church men and women who call themselves apostles, pastors, evangelists, teachers, and prophets or priests. The vast majority of those people have been ordained into their respective ministries by going to a bible school, college, or university, where they are trained and receive a document of ordination. They are declared to hold one or the other of the various religious orders above because they have completed a course of study. And they are ordained into the ministry of the church school that trained them.
   • But we see in Paul’s case, he was not trained to become an apostle by anyone but God and Jesus Christ Himself. In fact the only true apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers of the words of God are those appointed by God. The schools of men who appoint other men into these roles do so falsely. And that is often the starting point of the failure of the church and why we have a church in trouble.
   • If we look at the letter of Paul to the Ephesians, we see that these ministries were all gifts from God.
     
     8 Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (Ephesians 4:8)
     
     11 And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13)
   • The ability to perform in these various aspects of church ministry cannot be truly ordained through some bible school. It is a gift from the Lord to the church so that the ministry of the church can be done correctly, led by the Lord through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Man cannot ordain another man into the ministries of God. Only God can do that.
   • One of the issues when man trains other men is that they teach only what the teacher knows. As someone once said to me, they are taught to think in a certain way. They are taught to think and preach the word according to the way of the church that is running the bible school. And if that church is in error, they will continue to teach the errors of that church. They are trained in error and so they perpetuate the errors of that church and keep people in error.
   • But when God teaches someone and ordains them into His ministry, He teaches them the truth and shows them what they need to know and teach when it is needed. As the scripture says,
     
     It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. (John 6:45)
   • The apostle Paul was showing in the first two verses of Galatians chapter 1 that he had been appointed by God to teach the truth of the gospel. Those who were leading the Galatians astray were not messengers of God, trained by God, but were deceitful teachers seeking their own gain. By listening to them, they were a church in trouble because they had turned away from the truth of the message from God.
2. Scripture: Galatians 1:3-5
   • In the first verse Paul re-emphasises the key point of Christianity, that God raised Jesus from the dead. This is the primary message of Christianity because it is believing this that we are saved. When we accept and confess Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and we believe wholeheartedly that God raised Jesus from the dead, we are declared righteous by faith and receive the gift of salvation. This is the message of salvation at it’s simplest form.
   • In these next few verses we see that this was the will of the Father. Christ died for us according to the will of God. He was obedient to the Father even accepting the death He had to die, knowing it was so that we who were sinners could be saved from sin. And Paul points out again that this was why Jesus died. He died to take away our sins and to deliver us from this evil age.
   • In Christ we have received a new life. We are born again as new creations in Christ, no longer citizens of this world and this evil age, but as citizens of the kingdom of God in the Spirit, where there is no sin. Jesus takes away our sins as it was prophesied of Him:
     
     The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)
   • But the Galatians were a church in trouble because they had forgotten and turned away from this knowledge. They were not seeking the righteousness and salvation under grace in Jesus Christ. Instead they were seeking a self-righteousness under the Old Testament law, and as Paul points out later in his letter, that does not work. Anyone who seeks salvation under the law has cut themselves off and severed themselves from Jesus Christ and the grace of God (See: Galatians 5:1-4). And this is why they were a church in trouble. Continuing down that path was a path to ruin because you cannot live under both the Old Covenant law and the New Covenant of grace. They are like oil and water and the two do not and cannot mix.
   • Consider this. The Old Covenant law defined sin for what it is and those who failed to keep the law were guilt of sin. It was a covenant of bondage to sin under the law. But the New Covenant of grace takes away our sin and gives us freedom from sin and freedom from the law. So, if one leads to bondage and the other leads to freedom, how can they co-exist? How is it possible to live under bondage and freedom at the same time? The bottom line is that you can’t and the scripture tells us this:
     
     7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second. 8 For he finds fault with them when he says: “The days will come, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; 9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I paid no heed to them, says the Lord. (Hebrews 8:7-9)
     
     And;
     
     In speaking of a new covenant he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:13)
     
     This is what the Galatians were attempting to do and why they were a church in trouble. They had muddied both covenants together into something that does not and cannot work, because as these scriptures tell us, the New Covenant replaces the Old Covenant, and that Old Covenant is now obsolete and ready to pass away.
   • And this error in the Galatians church persists to this day. They were a church in trouble and so too almost every church today is a church in trouble. They are in trouble because they are still trying to live under both covenants at the same time. And as we will see in Paul’s letter, it doesn’t work. In fact it promotes confusion in the church.

Prayer Points

1. Pray and ask God to teach you about these matters, how and why we cannot live under the two covenants at the same time. Ask God to teach you the true principles of God’s freedom that exists only by faith in Jesus Christ who said in John 8:31b-32, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
2. Pray and ask God to help you so that you find the freedom that is in Christ Jesus so that you are not bound by false teachings that will prevent you from growing into maturity in Christ Jesus.