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.”