Passage: Galatians 1:6-10 Speaker: Pastor Lukus Counterman Series: Gospel Rooted Living
Speaker: Lukus Counterman - The most destructive dangers to the church have never been atheism, pagan religions, or cults that openly deny Scripture, but rather those supposedly Christian movements that accept so much biblical truth that their unscriptural doctrines seem relatively insignificant and harmless. But a single drop of poison in a large container can make all the water lethal. A single false idea that in any way undercuts God’s grace, poisons the whole system of belief. The gospel message cannot be changed without being lost. Perhaps this awakens a troubling question: how can we ensure that the gospel we believe is actually true? How do we know it is not merely a gospel that we feel is true, or are told is true, or think is true, or sounds to us as true – but a gospel that is true, objectively, and therefore can save? How can know what the pure gospel is? Well first, it is the gospel of grace, God’s free and unmerited favor. Whenever teaching starts exalting humanity, implying that we can contribute anything to our salvation by our own morality, religion, philosophy, or respectability, the gospel of grace is being corrupted. Second, the pure gospel is the New Testament gospel. The norm by which all systems and opinions are to be tested in the gospel which the apostles preached and which is now recorded in the New Testament. Anyone who rejects the apostolic gospel is to be rejected.