Alternative “Good News”?

         “When is the Gospel not the Gospel?” might be the question Paul is addressing in Galatians 1:6-10.  No doubt our response would be there is no “Alternative Gospel” or “Fake Gospel”.  The Gospel is the Gospel, end of story.  Yet six verses into his letter to the churches in Galatia Paul dispenses with the traditional words of thanksgiving and begins scolding them for listening to “Alternative” versions of the Gospel (a word that means “Good News”).

            For Paul, and indeed the essence of the meaning of “Gospel”, the good news is that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ God acted decisively for humankind.  Grace is not just a kindly attitude.  It is God’s reconciliation of the world to God’s Own Self through Christ’s self-giving on the cross.  We don’t earn it.  We don’t deserve it.  We can’t buy it either at full price or on sale.  And in that remarkable gift of grace, God has taken control and the Realm of God is present, then and now and always.

            The folks in the churches of Galatia were doing well while they kept this message front and center.  But then some other folks stopped by – well meaning folks – folks who also shared the Christian faith – folks who felt their interpretation of the faith was a little more authentic then those newcomers – folks with a missionary zeal.

They traveled the Mediterranean area looking up new Christian communities and proselytizing their ideas about what “true” Christianity was all about.  Since many of them had once been Jewish and had since become Christian they wanted to make sure their particular  Judeo-Christian tradition was kept.  They wanted these Christians who had come from other traditions (Pagan) to add to their confession of faith in the saving power of Jesus the practices of the Law of Moses.  In particular they were insisting that all men undergo a rather painful surgery in a ritualized form that is known as circumcision.  In doing so they would become children of the covenant as well as confessors of Jesus.

            Paul emphatically says no – that is a “fake Gospel”.  The relationship with God is in the cross.  God has already acted for their salvation. 

            Fast forward a couple of thousand years and we do not see the discussion raging about circumcision as an act of church membership.  Its pros and cons are within the context of health recommendations and even that is changing.

            We do, however, see the conflict present as some within the umbrella of the Christian faith go beyond the message of the Gospel (God’s reconciling work in and for the world) and begin to insist on specifics – Levitical laws to condemn those who are Gay; insistence on the Ten Commandments to be visible everywhere (even when strict adherence to each of those commandments is not always closely followed by the advocates); reading science discoveries through the lens of pre-scientific thought; holding women to their “place”; lifting up the texts around slavery as a verification of superiority. 

            Throughout Jesus’ teachings he would say things like “You have heard that it was said, but I say unto you…”.  God’s reconciling work on the cross began in Bethlehem.  In Jesus we see God showing us the nuts and bolts of the Realm of God.  In Jesus God breaks into human history in a profoundly different way and initiates the Realm of God.  In Jesus those around him, and those who would learn about him, see the Gospel, the Good News.  In Jesus we see the real thing – nothing alternative nor fake about him.  In Jesus we learn how to live by love and radical welcome and  justice. 

            There have been other times when someone in the spirit of Paul has challenged “alternative” gospels.  The following is written by Richard B. Hays, Professor of New Testament, The Divinity School, Duke University, Durham, NC in his commentary on Galatians in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol XI, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2000, page 207.

            A few historical examples can illustrate the point.  When Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in 1517, protesting the sale of indulgences, he was confronting the distortion of truth by Christian leaders who had lost sight of the gospel of God’s free unmerited grace.  (It is no coincidence that Luther found in Galatians the clearest articulation of Christian freedom.]  When Karl Barth and members of the Confessing Church in Germany drafted the Barmen Declaration in 1934, they said no to the Nazis’ usurpation of the church.  In this way, they defined the truth of the gospel against a false gospel of nationalism and ethnicity.  Likewise, when in 1982 the World Alliance of Reformed Churches denounced the acceptance of racial apartheid by the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa as a heresy, they were following Paul’s example of pronouncing a curse on a dangerous perversion of the gospel.  If the church is to bear witness to the gospel with integrity in “the present evil age,” it must have the courage to make such discernments and to speak prophetically against destructive teachings that deny the grace of God.

Grace and Peace

Rev. Clara