Another Gospel

Good Morning,

Today's topic is "another gospel."  Chrysostom was an early church father that wrote ~400A.D., and Martin Luther wrote ~1500A.D.  There message is the same because the word of God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

God bless,

~Al

 

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ, to another gospel: Gal 1:6 

 

No truce with heretics

 

They had, in fact, only introduced one or two commandments, circumcision and the observance of days, but he says that the gospel was perverted, in order to show that a slight adulteration vitiates the whole. For as he who but partially pares away the image on a royal coin renders the whole spurious, so he who swerves ever so little from the pure faith soon proceeds from this to graver errors, and becomes entirely corrupted. Let those who charge us with being contentious in separating from heretics, and say that there is no real difference between us except what arises from our ambition, hear Paul's assertion, that those who had but slightly innovated, subverted the gospel. Not that to say that the Son of God is a created being [as the Aryans did] is a small matter. Know you not that even under the elder covenant, a man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and transgressed a single commandment, and that not a great one, was punished with death? and that Uzzah, who supported the ark, when on the point of being overturned, was struck suddenly dead, because he had intruded upon an office which did not pertain to him! Wherefore if to transgress the Sabbath, and to touch the falling ark, drew down the wrath of God so signally as to deprive the offender of even a momentary respite, shall he who corrupts unutterably awful doctrines find excuse and pardon! Assuredly not. A want of zeal in small matters is the cause of all our calamities; because slight errors escape fitting correction, greater ones creep in. As in the body a neglect of wounds generates fever, mortification, and death; so in the soul, slight evils overlooked open the door to graver ones. It is accounted a trivial fault that one man should neglect fasting; that another, who is established in the pure faith, should shrink from its bold profession, and be led by circumstances to dissemble; that a third should be irritated, and threaten to depart from the true faith, is excused on the plea of passion and resentment. Thus a thousand similar errors are daily introduced into the Church, which is divided into as many parties, and we are become a laughing-stock to Jews and Greeks. But if a proper rebuke had at first been given to those who attempted slight perversions, and a deflection from the Divine oracles, such a pestilence would not have been generated, nor such a storm have shaken the Church. You will now understand why Paul calls circumcision a perversion of the gospel. There are many of us now who fast on the same day as the Jews, and keep the Sabbaths in the same manner; and what shall I call our tolerance of this, noble or miserable? Again, many Gentile customs are observed by some among us; omens, auguries, presages, distinctions of days, a curious attention to the circumstances of their children's birth, and, as soon as they are born, tablets with impious inscriptions placed upon their unhappy heads, thereby teaching them from the first to lay aside virtuous endeavors, and drawing them as much as possible under the false domination of fate. But if Christ profits nothing those that are circumcised, how shall faith hereafter avail to the salvation of those who have introduced such corruptions? (Chrysostom.)

 

The unchangeable gospel

 

I take it that the gospel cannot be a changeable, variable, shifting gospel, a sort of sliding-scale gospel, because—

1. It is certain that man has not changed. Just to-day man is what he was in the days of Christ and the apostles.

2. I think nobody would have the hardihood to deny it—that truth in the very essence of it must always be the same. A fact, though it happened ten thousand years ago, is as much a fact as if it happened yesterday. Truth must be always the same. "But there is a great advance made," says one. How? In the principles of things—in mathematical science, for instance. Certainly there are great masters of mathematics, and great advances have been made, but upon the principle that two and two are four, and twice three makes six, there has been no advance. A proposal for a new multiplication table would scarcely be entertained even in a board school. No; these fundamental principles stand the same, and so must the fundamental truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which are to all good men's thinking what these tables, these fixed facts in mathematics, are in all calculations. Truth must be the same. It cannot be altered; it is impossible.

3. The gospel is the same, because it was, and is, sufficient for all the purposes for which God sent it. What I mean is this, we want to give the people the gospel more by itself. There is a good story told of Caesar Malan. I should never forget my vision of that grave, reverend man, whom many at this platform still remember. He was a man of strong idiosyncrasies, and of somewhat singular habits. Going once from Boulogne to Paris, he got into a coach; and he was no sooner seated, than he began reading out a chapter from the Bible. A Frenchman opposite strongly objected, and I think with some reason, as persons in public conveyances should remember that there are other people there. Caesar Malan, however, did not think of that, and he continued to read the chapter, and the Frenchman continued to object. He said he did not believe in the authority of the Bible, and that it was offensive to him to hear it read. At last Caesar Malan's French deacon said, "I think, dear pastor, that I differ from you about your doing this: this gentleman does not believe in the authority of the book, and you ought to prove to him its authority and then read it." Said he, "If I was going out to fight and I had my sword, and I met somebody on the other side, would you say, 'First prove that you have a sword before you fight?' No; I will prove it is a sword." So he went on reading. He and his deacon supped together, and the waiter came in, and asked whether they were going on the next morning in the coach to Paris, because, he said, that the French gentleman who had ridden with them on the previous day was anxious to ride with Mr. Malan again. He afterwards became a communicant at Caesar Malan's church, and was one of his best friends. It is the Word of God that does it—not our talking about God's Word; it is the Word itself. Quote plenty of Scripture; put plenty of Divine words in. It is God's Word, not man's comments on God's Word, that saves souls. Furthermore, dear friends, we want no improved gospel, because there is nothing that requires that the gospel should be amended.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)