³ May God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. ⁴ Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. ⁵ All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.

⁶ I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News ⁷ but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.

⁸ Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. ⁹ I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed.

¹⁰ Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.

Galatians 1:3-10

Dear God, I wonder what the false teaching was. What was someone telling them that was wrong? The New Testament reading for today starts with verse 6, but I wanted to go back to verse 3 because I think that’s the summary of the Good News: Jesus brings you grace and peace. Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as you planned. This sacrifice rescues us from the evil world in which we live. That’s the thesis of this whole book. This is the Good News, but people are adding to it and changing it.

Of course, that is still happening today. People add a prosperity aspect to it. People use it to motivate others so they can reach for power. In a huge irony, there are those, even though they display all of the “desires of the flesh” which Paul describes in chapter 5, verses 19-21, will lead others and say they are defending you and defending those who believe in you. As if you need a rescuer and a lecherous hero. On the other side of the table, there are those who say there is no justice from you. You make no demands of us. We can just exist and you will accept us no matter what we do. I will admit that my nature draws me to this heresy more than the other. I don’t want anyone to suffer. I want to be merciful. I want you to drop any standard you might have and be merciful. But that just simply cannot be. We cannot have an afterlife in your presence full of people who are simply there without having some amount of character and willingness to submit to you.

Father, once again, I don’t want to just sit here are point to others and talk about how they are wrong and I am right. The point of sitting here with the Holy Spirit and praying to you is that I will let the Holy Spirit examine me and reveal my sin and errors to me. I’m having breakfast later with a friend who is part new believer and part seeker. He has been hurt by the church in the past, and my temptation is to make you something you’re not–a big softee. At the same time, I could also make you something you’re not the other way–a tyrant ready to destroy. The truth is, you are a God who beckons us to come to you for what Paul describes in verse 3 as grace and peace. But we do have to accept Jesus, walk the narrow path, and then, like I am doing now, leave ourselves open to conviction. None of us will get it perfect. I have sins in my life that I still commit. Some I’m aware of. Some I’m not aware of. And some I’ve just settled into and become numb to. But I ask you to show me where they are and slowly, deliberately, draw me out of them and towards yourself. And help me know how to represent you this morning to my friend.

I pray all of this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen