Galatians 1:6-9
6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel- 7 not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9As 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.
There is only one Gospel. Yet Paul can take the Galatian Christians to task, in verse 6, for deserting Christ and turning to another gospel. He explains what he means in verse 7: to preach another gospel is to to distort the one true Gospel that is.
There are all kinds of religious teachings, some called Christian, and some not, that distort the Gospel. And Paul is not shy to say what should happen to those who promote its distortion (vs. 8f). They should be eternally condemned. Think about this. Those who are preaching a way to heaven, eternal life, peace with God, etc. that is not the Gospel that He delivered should be eternally condemned.
This should settle, once and for all the debate about what happens to people who sincerely hold to their religious teachings that disagree with the Gospel presented in the Bible. It is a terrible thing to teach something that will end people up eternally condemned. While Christians get blamed for being bigoted and narrow minded for preaching faith alone in Christ alone, the Bible teaches that this is the only way to a right relationship with God. How cruel to know that and teach anything else. How deceived to believe otherwise.
The response to what Paul says here in verse 7 and in verse 8and 9 is to take great care to know the biblical Gospel and to preach nothing else but the biblical Gospel.
Those who maintain that different denominations and different religions should just get along and agree cannot maintain their argument in the light of Galatians 1. We must either hold tenaciously to the one true Gospel because of what Paul says here, or we must abandon what Paul says here and deny its truthfulness. The latter is simply not an option. We must recognize that there is only one Gospel. We must know it. We must preach it. And we must never surrender it no matter what the pressures on us are.
And we must, above all, seek to declare it in the ways encouraged in the Scriptures.
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