No Other Gospel

Today on Renewing Your Mind… What is the false gospel? First of all, what is the gospel?

That measuring rod, that orthodox, that straight standard, that right standard, and now we see the deviations. And it's our job. We're obligated to call down false teachers. What we believe has eternal consequences.

And here's the hard truth. If we believe the wrong gospel, we are not saved. And according to the Apostle Paul, those who preach it are under a curse. Here's Dr. Stephen Nichols to help us identify the false gospel and clearly define the only true gospel. No other gospel raises perhaps what is the most crucial question, what is the gospel?

Let's start there. The gospel is that we are saved from the wrath of God through the work of Christ alone. The gospel is the work of a triune God. God the Father decrees our redemption. God the Son accomplishes our redemption. God the Holy Spirit applies our redemption. It was before the foundations of the world that God the Father decreed chose us in His Son. It was at a point in time, space in time, that the Son was sent, born of a woman, born under the law, born in that little town of Bethlehem. He did not come to abolish the law.

He did not come to set aside the law. He came to fulfill the law and lived a life of perfect obedience, the spotless Lamb sinless. And then we have His crucifixion, the death of Christ on the cross as a substitute in our place, on our behalf. This is not the justice of God overridden. This is the justice of God satisfied as the cup of God's wrath is poured out to the dregs over the beloved Son. And a stone was rolled in front of the tomb, and the tomb was sealed. And then we have the resurrection.

God raised Jesus from the dead, signaling the acceptance of His sacrifice in His work on our behalf was accomplished. But we are not sick. We are not good people who just need to be better. We are dead, rotting trees. We are fallen, and we cannot get up. And so we need the Holy Spirit who quickens us, as the old King James puts it, makes us alive, regenerates us. And then we have the gift of faith. That is the gospel, the work of the triune God, of election, of atonement, of imputation, of regeneration, of bringing us to God, of ultimately bringing us to peace with God. That is the gospel. Now, we know that the gospel can be summarized as God is holy, and we are not, and we need a substitute. And there is no other gospel.

Any other gospel is a different gospel, or we could say a false gospel. And I've been given this wonderful text of the first chapter of Paul's epistle to the Galatians. Both Romans and Galatians are a tour de force statement of the gospel.

Romans has a systematic flavor to it. You can see Paul taking his time, building his case, mounting this wonderful discussion of what the gospel is, not Galatians. In Galatians, he's in the trenches.

This is trench warfare. This is the gospel under attack. This is the church under siege.

And here, Paul presents again the gospel. We'll look at Galatians 1, 6 to 9, but before we do that, I have to tell you a story about Martin Luther. It was winter, and it was 1546, and Luther was an old man, and at one point he says, I'm a one-eyed… I think he had cataracts.

I'm a one-eyed, old, decrepit man. For Luther, it was not just the years. It was the miles. And he felt the weight of that, but he was a trooper. And even despite all that, there he was in the pulpit. Now, in a little bit's time, he would make the trip to his hometown of Eisenach, and there Luther would die. But in his final sermon at the Merion Kirche, his beloved church there in Wittenberg, in the final sermon, Martin Luther is chastising his congregation for sneaking back to Rome. This is the Reformer. This is Martin Luther's congregation, and they wanted to make sure, what if this new thing isn't right? Maybe we should cover our bases. And so, they'd sneak off to this pilgrimage site, and they'd sneak off to this cathedral to see those relics, and they'd sneak here to this place where there was an apparition.

No! Don't go off and look at these relics. This is Luther chastising his congregation for allowing works to sneak back in to their thinking. Yes, Christ, yes, His work, but what if we need to add something to it just to make sure? Well, we scratch our heads, don't we? How does this happen in Luther's congregation?

I've got one better for you. It happened to Paul's. So, let's pick it up at verse 6. I am astonished. 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 one. But there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. You see here a couple of things, don't you?

First, you see the strong words that Paul's using. I'm astonished. I have no words for this.

I have no category to put this into. He uses that word troubled, like the turning of a sea, like the trees in a hurricane, unsettled. He uses that word distort to take that which is pure, that which is beautiful, and to twist it, to turn it into something ugly and something that's actually an enemy of itself.

And then he pulls out all of the stops, doesn't he? Things get really serious. Let them be damned, anathema, a curse.

Not God's face shining upon us, God's face turned from us. Let him be accursed. He uses strong language. He uses hyperbole.

Even if an angel were to materialize in front of you and descend to the pulpit, and if they were to say something that does not measure up to the standard of God's Word, reject them, send them packing. And if I come back to you, and I'm not in my state of mind, and I start saying something that doesn't measure up, don't believe it for a minute, and then he does what all effective teachers do. He uses repetition.

He does what all effective teachers do. All three of those underline how important this is. And it's not just these three verses. It's an entire epistle. An entire epistle is aimed like an arrow at the target of the real potential of the false gospel making its way into the church. And if it can happen to Martin Luther, and it can happen to the Apostle Paul, absolutely it can happen to the church in 2021.

Absolutely it can happen. And so we use this text to say, what is the false gospel? First of all, what is the gospel?

That measuring rod, that orthodox, that straight standard, that right standard, and now we see the deviations. And it's our job. We're obligated to call down false teachers, to call them on it.

And so this text invites us. There's a simple formula for false teachers. It's truth plus error, and that's the false gospel. The Galatians were not denying Christ. They were not denying the cross of Christ. That was truth, these false teachers that were infecting the Galatians. They had plenty of space for Christ. But let's make sure all of our bases are covered. And yes, Christ fulfilled the law, but let's keep it too.

And especially if there are any new Gentile converts coming into this church, let's just make sure that we've got this base covered. And so its circumcision is the issue as you read the epistle, but that's just a stand-in for works. The work of Christ plus works is the false gospel. Truth plus error is the formula. I can think of three major false gospels in our day.

The first is what we were dealing with 500 years ago, and it has not gone away. If you look at the Roman Catholic church's teaching, you see that it is truth plus error. There's room for faith. There's the emphasis on faith. Salvation is by faith, absolutely.

Trent affirms that, truth. But it's faith and works. Faith, truth, plus works, error. It's Christ our mediator.

Absolutely, that's necessary. The cross is necessary. It stands between us and the holy God, absolutely. But there's Christ the mediator plus other mediators. The saints with more graces than they need, and they're stored up in that treasure chest in heaven, works of super-arrogation.

It has nothing to do with your irrigation systems that here in Florida keep our lawns from living or dying. Arrogation, super works, works above and beyond, more graces than they need, and they're stored up. And at the top of that chain of saints is Mary, full of grace. And there's the necessity of confessing one's sins to a priest.

It's a sharp contradiction to God's Word. There is only one mediator between God and man, and it is the man Christ Jesus. It is not Christ plus, it is Christ alone. It is not the cross plus, it is the cross alone. Jesus was on the cross and said, it is finished.

And that's the third point of distinction. Is it a once-for-all finished accomplished work of Christ? Yes, Roman Catholicism affirms, plus Christ is crucified again every time we celebrate the Mass.

It cannot be the once-for-all finished work of Christ plus the Mass. That's a false gospel. The Reformation is not over.

There are millions in the grips of false teaching. Another false gospel in our day is the prosperity gospel. The gospel promises benefits, freedom from guilt, freedom from sin, forgiveness of sin, union with the triune God, peace with God. But the gospel does not promise you will be saved from sorrow, suffering, sadness, tribulation, difficulty, poverty, financial stress. The gospel does not promise financial prosperity. Prosperity gospel points to a temporary salvation. It holds out only a temporary salvation of financial prosperity, and even on that promise it fails to deliver. The only one prospering in the prosperity gospel is the prosperity preacher. And the tragedy is it is literally on the backs of the poor.

It's tragic. As Ligonier is reaching now more into Central America, more into South America, more into Africa, and even in the urban centers of these United States, you see the tragic grip, the prosperity gospel has on millions around the globe. God promises us that we will be kept through trials and suffering and sorrow and sadness, but He never promises us that we will be kept from those things. In fact, sometimes it's in those things, isn't it, that we see the glory of God revealed in ways otherwise we wouldn't have seen? Is it in some of those moments that we see the mercy of God in fresh ways we never would have seen? The grace of God, the strength of God, the kindness of God, the goodness of God, isn't it in some of those difficult times that we see those things the most? The prosperity gospel is a lie.

There's also liberalism, good old-fashioned liberalism, twists everything. It starts with God's Word. It's not God's authoritative, inspired, inerrant Word.

It's man's sense of the divine encounter. From there we move to who God is. He's not a God of holiness. He's not a God of purity.

He's not a God before which a prophet is unraveled. He's a God of love. He's a God of love. Stop reading the Old Testament. He's a God of love.

Stop reading Paul. He's a God of love. And what about Jesus? Oh no, not the God-man. Just an example, one who sensed within Him the divinity that resides within us all. And when we come to His cross, it's no substitute. He's but an example. And what is this thing, the kingdom of God?

Right now counts for right now. The kingdom of God is the eradication of famine, the eradication of poverty, the eradication of inequality, and it is a kingdom on earth. It was said in the middle of the 20th century by one of the Niebuhrs of liberal theology that a God without wrath brought man without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. That's liberalism. Machen said it very succinctly, liberalism is not Christianity.

Here's the rub. What was true of liberalism a generation ago, a decade ago, maybe even more recent, has now infiltrated much of evangelicalism. And so, a cultural agenda has overtaken a biblical mandate. And pay attention to what people are saying the gospel is, because the gospel is that we are saved from the wrath of God by the work of Christ alone, period. That's the gospel. And when you add something to it, that something to it overtakes the truth.

It always does. These categories of truth plus error, we can add to it the category of flat-out error. Paul had this in his day. He had paganism and pluralism.

First century Rome was rife with it. So is the 21st century. There's paganism, and there's pluralism, and there's no even element of truth there.

But we could add to it a third. And going back to my Baptist roots, I'll keep it alliterated, and we'll call it progressivism or secularism. And a key tenet of secularism is this, the perfectibility of man by man. Remove God, we remove guilt, and now we can live as we please.

There is an ethical motivation behind that, but the judgment is coming. We have teenage boys. I take them out to eat. Sure, get an appetizer. Sure, add that. Sure, get dessert.

Sure, have four or five entrees. But eventually the check comes to the table. And when I see that check, it finally dawns on me. Oh, this is the reality check.

That's what this is. There is guilt because there is God. And you can eat all you want, but check is going to be brought to the table. There will be a judgment. There is a hell.

There is a hell. So these are the false gospels. So what do we do?

Well, how do we respond to these false gospels? Here we stand. This is not a time to cower. This is not a time to compromise. This is not a time to capitulate, falter, waver.

No. We must proclaim, defend, and contend for the truth of the gospel. We have an obligation to proclaim this gospel to as many people as possible. The gospel is truth in the midst of lies. It is life in the midst of death. It is hope in the midst of despair.

It is joy in the midst of sorrow and of sadness and even anger. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is God's gospel. There is no other gospel.

It can't be any clearer than that, can it? That's Dr. Stephen Nichols speaking at this year's Ligonier National Conference. Our theme this year was Right Now Counts Forever, taken from Dr. R.C.

Sproul's monthly column in Table Talk magazine. You know, early in his ministry, R.C. saw that many people in the world are living their entire lives focused on the temporary, on the here and now, and not on matters of eternal consequence. That fueled his passion to help people know God so that they could know what really matters in life.

Because of R.C. 's passion and commitment to God's Word, Ligonier Ministries has always been a home for Christians who are not afraid to think deeply about what matters most in life and in eternity. And I must say that for R.C., saying that Right Now Counts Forever wasn't just a tagline or a clever name for his Table Talk column. He really believed it, and he lived it.

At Ligonier, we believe it too, and we exist simply to serve God by helping people know God and glorify Him forever. I happen to have a copy of the August issue of Table Talk here, and the theme is Right Now Counts Forever. There are articles here from Robert Godfrey, Sinclair Ferguson, Stephen Nichols, and many others, and we'd like to send you a copy of this edition plus provide you with a year-long subscription to Table Talk. Just contact us today with a donation of any amount, and we'll be glad to set that up for you.

You can call us and make your request at 800-435-4343, but you can also give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. Well, tomorrow we will continue this theme, Right Now Counts Forever, and our teacher will be Dr. Stephen Lawson. Here's a preview. Every second, God is working. God's not passive. God is active. And because of that, we are made in the image of God, and we are made for a task, and that is to work. The title of his message is Working as for the Lord. We hope you'll join us Tuesday for Renewing Your Mind.