Steve Brown once began a sermon on Galatians chapter 1 this way: ‘I saved Galatians 1 for the last sermon in a 10 week series because I was hoping maybe I would die before I had to preach it to you.’

As I began to study this passage I understood his anxiety.

It’s shocking.

Paul even begins by saying “I am shocked that you are so quickly deserting the One who called you and are now following a different gospel”.

But what makes this passage so shocking is that Paul is not talking to people outside the church who reject the Christian faith.  Nor is he denouncing the culture “out there” for having an ungodly influence on our children through movies, music, public schools, liberal politicians, and the sale of Santa Claus figurines.

He’s addressing people who are longstanding members of the church, who resist grace. Those whom one writer termed the “that’s true, but…” people, referring to the way they respond to statements about believers no longer being under the Law.

There’s a great book called Exit Interviews.  It’s written by a man named William Hendricks who traveled the country talking to people who have left the church— not left the Christian faith, but left the church.  He interviewed them, listened to their stories, and made some observations.

Here’s what he concluded:

Most churches preach grace and live works.  Story after story after story bore this out.   The results were invariably tragic.  Perhaps the greatest tragedy was that a system promising forgiveness to people and freedom from guilt ended up making so many of them so very guilty.

Then he has a chapter on what do to about this issue.  He writes:

We need a theology of grace.  Here’s the situation.  Never have the expectations of believers been higher and never have the expectations on believers been higher.  We know too much.  For example, think how much we now understand about family relationships and the development of children. For parents that knowledge translates into a laundry list of shoulds and ideals at which past generations would have gasped.  There are so many of them and they are so very high.  And the family is just one area of responsibility.  Similar lists of what committed Christians ought to do could be generated for the believer’s work, participation in church, involvement in community, responsibility to the world, and it goes on and on.  Add it all up and it’s a crushing burden that is absolutely staggering.  Yet never have people been less able to live up to those expectations.  The standard response to this fact is that ‘of course we’re weak as human beings, but with Christ’s strength we can do all things.’  With all due respect to that point of view, let me state plainly that it is not going to happen that way.  Spirituality is a process and that process must include failure.  However, not everyone who claims to speak for Christ speaks the language of the good news of grace.  And therein lies a crisis, especially for the conservative side of the church.  Based on the stories present here in this book, I believe the church needs to decide how long it is going to coddle legalists in its ranks.  By legalists I mean people who preach grace but practice works, people who inflict guilt on others for being human, let alone sinful.  People who say ‘well, we don’t want to go overboard on this grace thing, because people will take advantage of it.’ The church has made it comfortable for those who hold that position, but at what cost?  It is keeping people out of the church, it is driving people away from the church, and it is poisoning the lives of those who remain in the church.  So why permit it?  Why even tolerate it, especially when Jesus and Paul reserved their harshest words for those who compromised grace.

As a pastor, these words make me shudder because I realize how easily I can slip into compromising grace. It’s much easier and safer to preach and live Law.

Galatians chapter 1 is about the danger of compromising grace.  It is written for those who, though they sincerely believe they are following Christ, are actually following what Paul calls “a different gospel”.  You can sense Paul’s righteous anger over the issue, and his assumption that his readers might even accuse him of compromising grace simply because he is offending them. And when they sensed that they were being accused of following a different gospel they probably reveled that they were being “persecuted” for their beliefs and high moral standards.

That’s the way it was in Galatia, and that’s the way it is with us today, and that’s why we so desperately need to read and re-read and understand the message of this wonderful little book within the New Testament. As Steve Brown says, it’s a “scandalous” book.

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