Loyalty to the Gospel

In this sermon on Galatians 1:6–10, Pastor Todd Odenath considers Paul’s urgent warning to the churches of Galatia: there is no other gospel.

Paul is astonished that the Galatians are “so quickly deserting” the God who called them in the grace of Christ. False teachers had troubled the church by adding works of the law to the finished work of Jesus Christ. But Paul does not treat this as a minor doctrinal mistake. To distort the gospel is to desert Christ.

This passage forces us to ask three searching questions:

Who do you leave?
Who do you follow?
Who do you serve?

The gospel is not “Christ plus” anything. We are not justified by our obedience, our sincerity, our religious performance, our suffering, or even the strength of our faith. We are justified by faith alone in Christ alone, because Christ obeyed, Christ died, Christ bore the curse, Christ rose, and Christ is our righteousness.

Galatians 1:6–10 calls Christians to loyalty to the gospel—not by adding more works to Christ, but by refusing to add anything to Christ as the ground of our acceptance before God.