What Is The Gospel?

Have you ever had to defend the truth?

Have you ever had to go up against a lie?

Have you ever had to defend the truth on behalf of someone else?

Or defend someone else against a lie?

It’s just different when someone else is involved—at least it is for me. I love to fight for the underdog. Show me someone who is being targeted or made to feel small, and I’m coming in swinging. 

I feel like Paul is a lot like me, at least in his letter to the Galatians. He comes in hot to defend the truth for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the Gentiles.

The big question at the time was: Did you have to be Jewish to follow Jesus?

The answer to this question is important. Paul is fighting for the true gospel for us—the non-jews, aka Gentiles. But he had some major opposition.

Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery—to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

Galatians 2:4-5 ESV

What is the truth of the gospel? In a word—grace. The book of Ephesians says we are saved by grace through faith, not by our own doing, but it’s a gift from God.

The true gospel is grace, period.

Paul isn’t allowing for compromise. It’s the true gospel “by grace through faith,” nothing more or less. If they start to stray from the true Gospel, everything Paul had worked toward would be ruined and the trajectory of the church would be ruined.

It’s grace, period. But not everyone was happy about this grace message.

Have you ever met a “false brother?” It’s a person who says they’re a Christian but actually doesn’t know Jesus at all. It’s a fake.

These “false brothers” won’t always self-identify. They won’t walk up to you and introduce themselves as a false brother. That’s what makes them fake. You can’t always tell something is fake at first. From far away, fake Jordan’s look like real Jordan’s. Have you seen those? But when you get up close and look at the details: the stitching, the logo—it’s not the same. It’s not the real thing. That’s what makes a fake so dangerous.

An imitation gospel isn’t the gospel.

It may look good on the outside, it may seem pretty close, but it’s not real.

The true gospel is grace, period.

These “false brothers” were actively fighting against grace. What they were fighting for was actually slavery. They wanted all these new Jesus-followers to have to follow the old Jewish rules. That meant keeping every religious law plus the extras they came up with. To them, you had to earn your right in. You had to pay dues. You had to subscribe to the handbook down to the tiniest details. And if not, you’re out.

That’s not grace. That’s slavery.

Because those in slavery call out the freedom in others.

Have you ever met someone so miserable that they wanted you to be miserable, too? Like, they weren’t satisfied just being miserable, everybody around them had to be miserable. If they can’t be happy, nobody gets to be happy.

Those in slavery call out the freedom in others.

That’s what’s happening to Paul. These “false brothers” didn’t like how free Paul was. They didn’t like that he was telling the Gentiles about that freedom. They didn’t like that the gentiles didn’t have to follow all the “rules.”  They wanted the Gentiles to become Jews in order to follow Jesus.

It couldn’t just be grace.

The problem is that they were missing Jesus altogether. Jesus’ whole life, death, and resurrection was to break the curse of the law and offer everyone a new path—the path of grace through faith. It’s not a gospel from man but from God. It’s not rule-following; it’s freedom.

But it broke their brains. It just didn’t make sense.

Because it’s easier to stay with what you know. Slavery is comfortable when it’s all you’ve ever known. And the Israelites always wanted to go back to what was comfortable.

Remember in Exodus? Moses told Pharaoh to let his people go, right? They walked out toward freedom, but at the first hint of something hard, they wanted to go back to Egypt. They wanted to go back to what they knew. Even when what they knew was a life of slavery and captivity.

But God wanted freedom for His people, not slavery.

“Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.”

1 Peter 2:16 ESV

We are meant to live in freedom. Not to choose to go back into slavery. Not to accept a fake.

Freedom looks like accepting the grace God is offering. It looks like not having to earn it. Not having to work for it. But freedom isn’t doing whatever you want. That would make you a slave to yourself.

It looks like trading your slave-hood for servanthood. We are free to serve God—Who ultimately wants the best for us anyway. Living free looks like serving God.

God wants freedom for His people. And that’s what He wants for you.

You might think this is just a problem for Paul’s day—it’s just a bible story. Or maybe it’s just a problem for the big Church at large fighting against the world (and that’s true). Or you think you don’t actually need to “protect” the true gospel in your life. This just doesn’t affect you.

But I’m willing to bet that you’ve been enslaved before. You’ve believed something, embraced something, worked toward something, or got convinced of something other than the true gospel. But the gospel + anything is not the true gospel. It’s slavery. Not true freedom.

The gospel will free you. Anything else will enslave you.

You cannot be a servant of God and a slave to something else. You cannot serve God and serve anything else. True freedom only comes from being a servant of God.

So, what has slipped in to take your freedom?

Maybe you are:

Enslaved to yourself

What you want drives what you do.

Enslaved to the opinion of others

Every decision you make is based on what people will think.

Enslaved to culture

You have to follow every trend, or you feel like you’re missing out.

Enslaved to social media

You can’t stop scrolling, can’t stop comparing, can’t stop seeking attention or affirmation.

Enslaved to perfection

You need the perfect appearance, performance, or perception.

Enslaved to approval

Your boss, your spouse, your friends, your followers, or even strangers validate you.

Or maybe you truly are enslaved to a false gospel (which just means the gospel + something else).

The gospel + being a good person

The gospel + what you want

The gospel + astrology

The gospel + a political party

The gospel + making as much money as possible

The gospel + manifesting

The gospel + your specific denomination

The gospel + whatever it might be for you

What is it in your life? What is trying to pull you back into slavery and away from the freedom Jesus is offering?

For me, there have been times in my life when it was:

The gospel + being right

The gospel + making a name for myself

The gospel + my goals and dreams

The gospel + the approval of man

That last one is one I still struggle with, even today. It turns out I have a fear of man problem. I desperately needed the approval of those around me. I feared man more than I feared God. I put way too much power on what the people around me thought of me. I cared more about what people said I could or couldn’t do than what God had called me to do.

That’s why I love the confidence of Paul in this letter. Look at chapter one, verse one:

Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead…

Galatians 1:1 ESV

He starts the book by letting them know it’s not about man’s approval—it’s God’s. The number of times in this letter that he makes it clear he isn’t approved by anyone other than God is so encouraging to me.

Seeking the approval of man seems normal, comfortable, even safe. Everyone does it. But it’s a form of slavery.

We are actually designed to fear God, to please Him, to desire approval from Him. And to fear God just means to acknowledge that He holds the power. Not man. Not the people we try to please.

When I stopped adding the approval of man to the gospel in my life, I was able to step out into what God wanted me to do. I could take step after step of obedience, and instead of asking myself what “they” would think, I asked myself what God would think. That was freedom for me.

So what is it for you? What are you adding to the gospel? What has you enslaved?

The good news is, you don’t have to do anything to get out of this mess you’re in. It’s all already been done.

We are able to freely accept the grace of this gospel—the grace of God. It’s a free gift. There’s nothing you can add to it or take from it. You can’t earn it or buy it. 

It’s grace, period.

And when we trust and accept what God has done, He enables us to do all the things He’s asked us to do. We are His workmanship; He is at work within us, and when we are in Christ, we can walk in His ways. Our works prove God’s grace in our lives.

But it only works when you start with grace, period.

When you accept grace, you live different, you look different, you talk different. Our lives will reflect the grace we’ve been given. And we can live in freedom.

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What I’m Doing:

• DRMTLGY Anti-Aging Tinted Moisturizer SPF 46

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What I’m Listening To:

• Always on Time by Elevation Worship

• Fresh Starts: Step Into Your Future by Erwin and Aaron McManus

What I’m Reading:

• Hebrews

• A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene H. Peterson

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