Galatians 1:9

Paul usually opens a letter by thanking God for the people he is writing to. Galatians has a short greeting (Galatians 1:1–5), which already speaks of Christ giving himself for our sins, and then Paul turns at once to the trouble: “I marvel that ye are so soon removed.” The abrupt start shows how grave the matter is. Verse 6 states the conflict the whole letter answers, the one gospel of grace against a message that adds the law to it, and the curses of verses 8 and 9 press it home.

The verb thaumázō means to wonder or marvel, and it comes from the noun thaûma, a wonder. Here the wonder is dismay. What astonishes Paul is the speed of it, “so soon”. People who had received the gospel of grace from his own lips were already turning to a system of law, which showed how shallow their grasp of it had been.

“Removed” translates metatíthēmi, to transfer, to change or to desert. It describes a change of allegiance, a move from one footing to another, and Paul names what they are moving away from. It is a person: “him that called you”. Drifting from the gospel is a turning away from God himself.

The other gospel was the teaching that Gentile believers had to keep parts of the law of Moses, above all circumcision, in addition to faith in Christ, if they were to be truly saved or fully righteous. Its teachers were Jewish Christians, usually called Judaizers, who had come into the churches of Galatia. These churches lay in the Roman province of Galatia, in what is now central Turkey, and Paul probably founded them on his first missionary journey. The question of circumcision runs through the letter (Galatians 2:3–5, 6:12–13), and it caused a sharp dispute in the church at Antioch as well (Acts 15:1–2).

The teachers likely leaned on their Jewish heritage and on claims of close ties with the apostles in Jerusalem, and they may have said that Paul made the gospel easier for Gentiles in order to win followers. Their message had a real pull. Gentile converts faced strong pressure to take up Jewish customs in order to be accepted, and some wanted a more tangible sign of their conversion or a surer place in the Jewish-Christian community.

Adding the law to Christ changes the whole message. Paul’s answer in this letter is that “a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16), and that “if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Galatians 2:21). He later warns that those who seek to be justified by the law are “fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:2–4). Grace with a condition attached turns God’s gift into a system of human achievement and treats Christ’s work as needing our help. Salvation is wholly by grace, and that is why Paul cannot let this pass.

Paul names the cause: “there be some that trouble you”. He calls them simply “some”, the teachers just described. The verb tarássō means to stir up or agitate, as water is roiled, and it describes the confusion, doubt and anxiety the teaching brought into churches that had stood firm in the truth. False teaching unsettles faith and peace as well as minds.

These men “would pervert the gospel of Christ”. Metastréphō means to turn something across, to change it into something else or to corrupt it. Their teaching twisted the gospel into its opposite and left it powerless to save.

It is “the gospel of Christ”, the good news about a person and what he has done, so whatever moves the weight from Christ to anything else corrupts it. Paul warns the Corinthians in the same terms about one who comes preaching “another Jesus” and “another gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). The Judaizers’ demand for circumcision and law-keeping set aside the truth that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4).

Verse 8 sets the standard by which every message is measured, the gospel that Paul and his companions preached to the Galatians at first. The verb for preaching, euangelízō, comes from the words for “well” and “messenger” and means to announce good news, in the New Testament especially the good news about Jesus. So to “preach any other gospel” is to announce some other good news. Of anyone who does that, Paul says, “let him be accursed.”

“Accursed” is anáthema, a religious ban, and a thing or person devoted to destruction and cut off from God’s favour. It comes from a word meaning to set up or to devote. Paul puts it with the solemn imperative éstō, “let him be”, and pronounces it as God’s judgment on those who corrupt his saving message. The verse opens with allá, a strong “but”, which sets this flat statement against anything the troublers could say.

Verse 10 explains why Paul can speak so boldly. It begins with gár, “for”, the word that gives the reason for what has just been said, and asks, “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men?” The questions expect a plain answer: Paul seeks God’s approval. Peíthō means to persuade or convince, and set beside “please men” it asks whose favour Paul is trying to win. Aréskō, “please”, means to be agreeable to, to gratify or to accommodate someone, which in a preacher would mean shaping the message to what the hearers want.

He answers with an “if”, ei: “if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” “Yet” is éti, “still”, and the sentence asks whether Paul were still living for people’s favour. “Servant” is doûlos, a slave or bondservant, someone owned by a master and bound to do his will. A slave has one master, and Paul’s master is Christ, Christós. Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24).

The verse also answers the charge that Paul had softened the gospel to win Gentile followers. A man who has just put himself under a curse should he ever change the gospel is plainly seeking to please God, and his willingness to preach an unpopular message is evidence of his calling. Verse 10 leads into his account of his conversion, call and early ministry (Galatians 1:11–24), where he shows that his gospel came from God. Elsewhere he says that he speaks “not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts” (1 Thessalonians 2:4), and Peter and the apostles told the council, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

The gospel of these verses is good news about a person. Christ “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father” (Galatians 1:4). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), the “one mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5), and “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), and “there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The gospel is “the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16), because through Christ God reconciles all things to himself by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:19–20).

To add anything to his work is to treat it as unfinished, so another gospel always brings another Christ with it, one who is less than fully God, less than fully man, or whose work falls short. Paul’s curse guards Christ’s glory, so that all the praise for salvation goes to him.

Jesus himself lived the life verse 10 describes. He said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me” (John 4:34), and he asked how people could believe who “receive honour one of another” (John 5:44). At his baptism the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), and in Gethsemane he prayed, “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). He came to do his Father’s will, and his death on the cross fulfilled the Father’s plan of redemption (Hebrews 10:7). Paul’s life as a servant of Christ follows the pattern of his Master’s obedience.

These verses give us a gospel that holds. The God who called the Galatians into the grace of Christ still calls people into that grace, and what he gives is complete in Christ. Because the gospel stands over every messenger, apostles and angels included, every voice can be weighed against it, and we can rest on what God has already given. Paul’s alarm shows how quickly people can drift from what they first received, and his two curses show how much God cares that his people hear the true message. Verse 10 shows the freedom of a servant of Christ, who answers to one Master and lives for God’s approval. Christ pleased his Father perfectly, and his finished work is the good news the Galatians received and the good news the church still carries.