No Other Gospel — Galatians 1:1-10

Imagine receiving a letter from the most influential person in your spiritual life — the person who led you to Christ, the mentor who shaped your faith — and there’s no warmth. No “how are you.” No commendation. Just: “What has gotten into you? How can you be this far off?”

That’s what the Galatian churches experienced when Paul’s letter arrived. And the most unsettling part? They probably thought they were doing everything right. They weren’t backsliding. They didn’t think they were walking away from the faith. They thought they were going deeper — doing more for God. Paul saw it differently. He called it desertion.

Not deserting Paul. Deserting God Himself.

For those who have been following our study through Acts, this letter lands right in the middle of the story we’ve been living in. We’ve walked with Paul and Barnabas through their church planting journey across Galatia — Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe. We watched Paul face contradiction, blasphemy, persecution, even stoning. And when it was time to go home, he didn’t take the short route. He reversed course and went back through hostile territory to strengthen the disciples and appoint elders. This is a man who clearly loves these people. Paul also understood the importance and need for local churches to be established and strengthened. So when he writes them a letter shortly after they last saw him and skips every pleasantry, opening with a rebuke instead, they know something is seriously wrong.

The Greeting That Means Business

Paul doesn’t ease into this letter. Before he says anything else, he establishes where his apostleship came from. More importantly, Paul states where it did not come from. Not from a human source. Not through a human agent. His authority originates with God and was given directly through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised Him from the dead.

This isn’t how you open a casual letter. Paul is laying the foundation for everything that follows. Before the Galatians evaluate his message, they need to understand that this message comes from God, not from one man’s opinion. And he adds that “all the brethren” with him (his sending church in Antioch) stand unified behind this letter.

The Gospel in Miniature

Paul’s greeting includes a brief but loaded gospel summary, almost as if he’s placing the genuine article on the table before exposing the counterfeit. Christ “gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

Every phrase matters. The gospel begins with substitutionary self-giving of Christ for our sins. Not our effort, not our merit. Christ gave. The word for “rescue” is strong: extraction, deliverance. It’s the same word family used of God delivering Israel from Egypt. The gospel isn’t just forgiveness as a legal transaction. It’s rescue from an entire system, an entire age under the dominion of evil. This matters enormously. The false teachers troubling Galatia were essentially pulling these believers back into the very system Christ died to deliver them from.

Even in a brief summary, Paul anchors everything in God’s initiative. God willed it. Christ accomplished it. And the glory belongs to God alone because the gospel belongs to God alone.

The Silence That Says Everything

Here’s where the letter takes a turn that would have shocked its original readers. Every other letter Paul wrote to a church includes a thanksgiving section. Some expression of gratitude for the believers he’s writing to is customary. Not this one. This is the only Pauline letter that skips it entirely. The silence is deafening. And, it’s deliberate.

“I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel.”

Paul is amazed. Not in a good way. He is expressing astonishment at their foolishness. Notice what Paul says they’re deserting. Not a doctrine. Not a theological system. Him. The God who called them. Turning from the gospel is turning from God Himself. The message and the Sender are inseparable.

And notice the present tense: they are deserting. It’s in process, not complete. There is still time. This letter itself is evidence of Paul’s hope for them.

Paul then clarifies what’s happening: this “different gospel” is really no gospel at all. There is the gospel — THE one, with the genuine article — and any deviation, distortion, or addition doesn’t produce a second legitimate option. It produces a counterfeit. People were actively disturbing the Galatian churches and distorting the gospel of Christ. The Galatians were responsible for following the deception. Both realities are true simultaneously.

The Weight of a Curse

Paul now pronounces the most severe condemnation available: anathema. This isn’t “I respectfully disagree.” The word has Old Testament roots in the Hebrew cherem, referring to something devoted to destruction under God’s judgment. Think Jericho. Think Achan. This is utter destruction under divine curse.

This is so important and so heavy, that Paul puts himself under it first. “Even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.” The gospel’s authority doesn’t rest on Paul’s status. If Paul himself were to preach a different gospel, the curse falls on Paul, too. No one is immune. The message outranks the messenger. Always. This demolishes any personality-driven faith.

Then the escalation: or an angel from heaven. No experience, no vision, no supernatural encounter overrides the content of the gospel. Truth isn’t validated by the impressiveness of its packaging. It’s validated by its consistency with what God has revealed. This is how deception often works. It comes wrapped in impressive, even seemingly supernatural, packaging. Many false religions and ideologies have been built on supposed “revelation” from angels or other supernatural experiences. Paul says that doesn’t matter. Content is king.

Then he says it again. The repetition communicates severity. Paul wants zero ambiguity about the stakes.

Whose Approval Are You After?

Paul closes the passage with a question that brings the whole argument full circle: “Am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God?”

The accusation against Paul seems to have been that he was a people-pleaser. The Judaizers likely accused Paul of making the gospel too easy for Gentiles by dropping circumcision and law-keeping. The irony is rich: the man writing the most confrontational letter in the New Testament is being accused of going soft. In fact, the opposite is true. Living as witnesses for Christ is precisely the thing that caused Paul to persecute Christians before his conversion, to be persecuted himself after his conversion, and was the direct reason for him being stoned and chased out of Galatia. Not his circumcision. Preaching Christ as Lord.

“If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ.” That word “still” reveals there was a time when Paul did seek human approval: his former life as a Pharisee. But that Paul is gone. And the distinction he draws is absolute. Servant of Christ and people-pleaser are mutually exclusive categories. Choose wisely.

The passage opens in verse 1 with Paul’s authority coming from God, not men. It closes in verse 10 with Paul’s aim being to please God, not men. Divine origin, divine allegiance. The bookends match perfectly.

So Where Does This Leave Us?

Christ didn’t rescue you from this present evil age so you could keep living the same life with a religious coating. The gospel isn’t an add-on to your existing life. Jesus is your life. You’ve been transferred from one kingdom to another.

Am I living for Christ’s kingdom or have I reduced the gospel to an accessory?

Religion masquerades as doing enough to get to heaven when you die. The gospel says you are redeemed by Christ, not by your works, and you are free to live for His kingdom now — not someday after you die. The question to sit with this week is simple but searching: Am I using the freedom Christ gave me to live for His glory alone? Or have I reduced the gospel to religious flavoring on a life that’s still fundamentally lived for myself? Do I live for Christ and His kingdom or do I have my feet firmly planted in the world still?

When we examine our own lives in the mirror of Scripture, let’s be honest with ourselves. Do we look more like the transformed people we’ve been reading about so far in Acts or do we look more like our worldly, unbelieving neighbors, coworkers, and friends, with the simple caveat that we go to church on Sunday mornings and they don’t? Are we living transformed lives of radical devotion, generosity, and boldness like the early church? Or are we living luke-warm, tepid lives that aim at personal enrichment and entertaining ourselves above reaching those who are still dead in their trespasses and sins with the gospel message of a Savior who can rescue them?

Do I know the real gospel well enough to spot the counterfeits?

The Galatians couldn’t tell the difference between the genuine article and a religious counterfeit. Paul had to write the most urgent letter of his life to wake them up. The most dangerous drift doesn’t happen when we walk away from the faith. It happens when we think we’re growing deeper but we’re actually moving further from the simplicity and sufficiency of Christ.

Let’s not be people who need that letter. Let’s be people who know the genuine article so well that no counterfeit can fool us. Remember: God’s gospel carries God’s authority. To distort the message (whether by adding to it or taking away from it) is to abandon the One who sent it.

Unfortunately, the audio recording of this sermon was lost due to a technical issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Preached February 15, 2026 at Howell Bible Church