6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel--
7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!
9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
Continuing the thought from previous verses, Paul is telling the Galatians that he finds it surprising that they are quickly deserting the Gospel of Grace he preached and are turning to the law, the very thing Christ rescued them from!
Paul’s Gospel? We were dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:1, 2:5, Colossians 2:13) and are saved by grace through faith, it is not of ourselves or within ourselves, it is a gift from God and we could do nothing to get it (Ephesians 2:8-9). If we had to do something first, it wouldn’t be a gift! But now the Galatians were abandoning this Truth and preaching that there are some actions that a lost man must do before God will save him.
This is identical to the Arminian Gospel of today - man must cooperate with the Holy Spirit to be saved. The law had many requirements that had to be met and maintained before God would “save” a man. The Arminian claims that you must believe before God saves, you must place your faith and trust in Christ before God saves, you must repent before God saves, you must come to Jesus before God saves... I’m sorry, all of those are the actions of a man whose spirit has been quickened, a redeemed believer, a saved man! A lost man can never “do” any of those things.
A lost man hates God and will not come into the Light (John 3:20). The lost man can’t know something he can’t see or hear, he can’t believe something he doesn’t know or understand. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14 the lost man can’t understand anything from God, he thinks it’s foolishness. And the fact that he thinks it’s foolishness makes it clear that he hears the Truth with his physical ears and processes the message with his intellect, but because his spirit is dead he heard nothing with his spiritual ears and understood nothing with his spiritual heart.
THAT is why God says a lost man is His enemy and can’t please Him (Romans 8:7-8), why he won’t come into the Light (John 3:20), and why he has no hope (Ephesians 2:12, 1 Thessalonians 4:13). A man can’t believe until God gives him belief (John 6:29, Philippians 1:29), there is no option to believe or not, God gives belief. A man must be born again BEFORE he can see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3).
Paul goes on to say in verses 8 & 9 that even if he himself started preaching a gospel other than what was already given them, let him be eternally condemned! He then repeats this in verse 9. Why does this not concern Arminians? It is the Arminian who makes the claim that lost men must accept Christ, believe Christ, and repent - all before God will save. Is this man anathema? It seems to hinge on the fact that Arminians claim that believing, trusting,and repenting are not works. I disagree - anything a man must do before God saves is a “work” of the flesh. This is the very definition of the word “works” - any product whatever, any thing accomplished by hand, art, industry, or mind (Strong’s G2041). So even the very act of believing is considered a work of the flesh if one is required to believe before God saves.
The law had a curse for those who fail to keep it, the Gospel has a curse for those who try to change it, whether the Judaizers in the 1st century or the Arminians of the last couple of hundred years.
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