This series of blog posts covers Bible passages every Lutheran should know. The idea is simple: Our faith is eminently biblically based, but we also recognize that some parts of the Bible are easier to grasp than others, and we follow the principle when we read the Bible that the right tools for interpreting the challenging passages of Scripture are the clear, obviously unambiguous ones.
The First Clear Passage to Know
These posts are about the “clear” passages. If you know these and rely on them when you’re reading, they’ll open up the rest of the Bible for you.
One of these passages is Galatians 1:8:
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
This passage is from the beginning of the book of Galatians, which is a letter written by the apostle Paul about how the Christian faith is a matter of the purest free gift. At the time of his writing, false teachers were adding requirements that weren’t given by God for salvation. They were requiring men to be circumcised and also requiring people to keep other laws in order to call themselves Christians and believe that they were saved.
Another passage in Galatians (3:3) deals with the issue really clearly: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” The great message of Galatians is that salvation is given by the power of the Holy Spirit and rests entirely on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Belief in that work counts for righteousness—just as believing in God counted as righteousness for Abraham (see Galatians 3:6).
Teachers Must Not Muddy the Gospel Teachings
But the Bible often emphasizes not just what we believe but also which teachers we listen to and what those teachers teach. In Galatians, the people had been subjected to false teachers who buried the Gospel under legal requirements. So before he even gets to his refutation of these false teachings, the apostle Paul sets up the importance of right teaching: It doesn’t matter who says it nearly as much as what the teacher says. Even if Paul himself or an angel from heaven were to teach falsely, you should not listen. That teacher comes under a curse.
That’s a high standard for teachers, to be sure. It means they’re never, under any circumstances, allowed to supplement the God-given truths of the Christian faith. To do this is to corrupt the Gospel of God, by which we are saved. It can never be permitted. And where it does occur, that false teacher must answer to God. (This most often occurs through unintentional error and can be resolved in a process of discussion and correction, but where it cannot, firmer action is absolutely required by this verse.)
We Must Hold Fast to the Right Teachings
It’s the other side of this, however, that lays such a good foundation. Teachers of the Christian faith must hold to the right teaching. And that teaching comes only and alone from the Holy Scriptures. There can be no other source, and anyone who would bring something else, adding to or contradicting what the Bible teaches, has departed from God’s will and Word. Those departures inevitably mean teachings that are contrary to the Gospel and corruptions of it, and this is why we are so insistent about faithful, biblical doctrine. It keeps us close to God’s will and His plan for our salvation.
Finally, it’s worth noting that this does not mean that we never learn from another book or somehow avoid books other than the Bible, as if that would be improperly adding to the Bible. Not at all. Rather, it means that we test and evaluate everything we find in other books claiming to teach the Christian faith. Is it grounded in what the Bible teaches? Does it stick to that or improperly go beyond that? Does it interpret the Bible properly? These important questions arise from Galatians 1:8 and should be applied to books, their authors, and those who teach in the church. They are the standard for teachers and teaching in Christ’s Church.
Scripture: ESV®.
Pick up a new Bible to start memorizing these Scripture verses and many more to be featured in this series.
