What must you do to be saved?

It is the most important question anyone can ask, and the book of Galatians gives a surprising answer: nothing. We are saved by trusting Jesus, not by anything we do to earn it. In this first study of Galatians 1:1-10, Dr. Toby Holt begins a ten-part, verse-by-verse walk through one of Paul’s most passionate letters, written to guard that good news from people who wanted to add rules to it.

Soon after Paul left the churches in Galatia, other teachers showed up. They told new Christians that believing in Jesus was not enough, and that they also had to follow certain old Jewish laws to really be saved. Paul is stunned. He says a message like that is not good news at all. It is a different message, and it cannot save anyone. Hundreds of years later, Martin Luther would fight the very same battle, when the church of his day taught that people had to earn God’s approval.

Questions this study answers:

1. What is the book of Galatians about? Galatians is a letter from the Apostle Paul defending one simple truth: we are saved by trusting Jesus, not by following rules to earn it. Across six short chapters, Paul warns that adding anything to that good news ruins it.

2. Who were the Judaizers? They were teachers who told new Christians that faith in Jesus was not enough, and that they also had to be circumcised and keep the Jewish law to be saved. Paul stood against them because their “faith-plus-rules” message pulled people’s trust away from what Jesus had already done for them.

3. What does the word “anathema” mean? It is a strong word that means “cursed,” or cut off from God. Paul uses it twice in Galatians 1:8 and 9, saying that even if an angel from heaven preached a different message, that angel should be cursed. He repeats it to show how serious he is about protecting the true good news.

“But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.” — Galatians 1:8-9 (NKJV)

Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt is the President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, a Reformed seminary in Colorado Springs. He is known for clear, down-to-earth Bible teaching, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio.

Listen and go deeper: This is Part 1 of the ten-part Galatians study. Find the whole series, along with verse-by-verse studies of other books of the Bible, at newgeneva.org. To support this teaching ministry, visit newgeneva.org/give.

[upbeat music] What is the book of Galatians all about? As you may know, the book of Galatians was a letter written by the Apostle Paul that contains some very strong statements and critiques. In part one of our new study, we'll see what Paul wrote to the church in Galatia and why he wrote it.

We are beginning today a 10-week study in the book of Galatians. And as you might do when you encounter any book of scripture, you might start with the question: What is this book all about? Much like if you're going to take a puzzle, and you're going to assemble it, and you pour all the pieces out. As you start, the first thing you do before you even start to put them together is you look at the box top. You say, "What is the picture I'm trying to assemble here? What's the big picture look like?" And that's going to be our objective. We're going to get a top-down view, so to speak, of the book of Galatians this morning, and we're going to find that the book of Galatians deals principally with this one issue, with this one question. And the question is: What do I need to do to be saved? What do I need to do to be saved? The people in the region of Galatia, people in the region of Gulfport this morning, ask the same question. What do I need to do to be saved? Well, in Galatia, they had different opinions on this topic. They had different opinions on what salvation involved, what justification, to use a $10 theological word, what that meant, how it was applied. See, for centuries, leading up to today's text, for centuries before, for centuries past, people have always found it easy to acknowledge that there is a God. That's 101. You look around, you look at the trees and the stars and the clovers and all these things, you come away with an understanding that there is a God. There is a God. Cultures have always figured that one out. Whether you're talking about the Egyptians or the Romans or the Greeks, people of every culture, every age, and every context, it has been easy to draw the conclusion that God is there. What people have difficulty about is understanding what He requires of us and understanding how to be right with Him. You see, every culture has conceived of a god, but every culture has also conceived of the possibility that sometimes we offend that god. So every culture conceives a god is there, and they also conceive that this god rewards good people and punishes bad ones. Most every culture and every belief system has that today. They have a merit system built in where they believe that salvation, such as it is, is a function of whether you've earned it, whether you've done enough. But here's the thing, Christianity is the exact opposite. Christianity does not tell you, the person who's hurting and broken, that you have to first get right with God before He will give you grace. Christianity, among all religions, says this, that we're not saved by our works, but we're saved by the work of Jesus Christ on Calvary. That we trust in Him. By faith through grace, we are saved, not of works, lest you and I should boast. That distinction sets us apart. That distinction sets Christianity apart from every other belief system under the sun. This picture that we're saved through the work of someone other than ourselves. That it's by His righteousness, what He did, His perfect life, His atoning death, we have hope. We don't crawl our way into heaven on bloody kneecaps on the basis of all the things we do to earn God's pleasure, but instead, we're justified and made righteous in God's presence by the virtue of His Son. He was sacrificed in our place. He lived the life we should have lived. He died the death we should have died. Paul brought that lesson, taught that lesson to the people in Galatia. He taught it, he shared it, he expressed it, he repeated it. And yet,

when he left,

as often was the case, people followed, came into the churches, and they taught something different. In Paul's day, there was a collection of individuals that we call the Judaizers. Now, the Judaizers were nice, smiling people. They had a smile on their face and a song on their heart, and yet, when they came to the churches of Galatia and elsewhere, they had a gospel, but it was not the gospel. They said everything about Jesus, good, but they added something on top of the work that Jesus did. And they said, "You need to trust in Jesus, but you also need

to be circumcised. You also need to pursue work or works that add something

to your righteousness that Christ's righteousness otherwise didn't." This is wrong. And in today's text, we are seeing Paul call them out on it. He's calling them out on the mess that he sees in the local church, and that's what Galatians is about, principally, and that's absolutely what today's text is about. All right. Let's look again at verses one through five of our text together. We'll consider the very start of the book here, and then we'll work through a few more passages, as time will allow here today. All right, verses one through five. "Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, Paul and all the brethren who are with me, to the churches of Galatia: Grace to you, peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen." That is Paul's opening. Now, you'll notice at the very start of Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia, Paul does two things. First of all, he identifies his name. Right at the start, that's the very first word you see in this text, Paul. He identifies who it is, who's writing. And then secondly, he identifies his credentials. He says, "Paul, the Apostle." In the first century, we had men called apostles. They were a select few. There are not modern apostles in this present day. They were a select few, and when they preached, when they taught, when they instructed, they had a credibility that others didn't have because these men had learned from Christ. So Paul here, he starts with his credentials. He explains who he is and by what right and by what authority he's writing to the church. With that said, let's remember for a moment something about Paul's backgroundSomething about Paul's background. Now, Paul didn't start out as Paul. In fact, before he was Paul, what was his name?

Saul.

Saul. Before he was Paul, before he was Paul the Apostle, before he was Paul the Benevolent, before he was Paul the wonderful, gentle Christian, before he was Paul all these things, he was Saul. Saul of Tarsus. And when he was Saul, he was one of the greatest villains that the church had ever known. When he was Saul, he was a persecutor of the church. Now, when he was Saul, he had grown up as a young man. He had grown up just steeped in the Jewish faith, steeped in an understanding of the Old Testament, steeped in laws and law keeping. Some have said by the time he was 21 years old, he had the equivalent of two PhDs based on the education that he had. He was an informed individual on everything pertaining to Jewish society and Jewish laws. But Paul's problem, or Saul's problem, was this, that he had made a god out of the laws themself, and he didn't have a right relationship with the law giver. This was the problem of a bunch of men in his generation. You remember the Pharisees? The Pharisees, that's what they're known for. They could tell you how many laces your shoes should have. They could tell you all different things about laws, from things that are small to things that were great. The Pharisees were all about laws, and they perceived that if you kept enough of the laws or if you kept them rightly, that God was happy with you. If you asked a Pharisee the means to reconciliation with God or the means to salvation or what have you, they would have seen it as a road of works, as things that you do, laws that you keep, and the like. Well, that was also Saul's understanding, that you're right with God based on how much you do, that you got to impress Him enough, you got to keep enough laws, and if you don't, then you're in trouble. This was the thought. And there was a kernel of truth in it, and yet it was perverse because it made a god of the laws themselves and forsook all the promises of the law giver. With that said, you remember in Acts 9, you have Saul, and at this point, he's still the villain. Now Saul, he's on the road to a place called Damascus. And when he gets there, he plans to persecute Christians. He plans to persecute the church. In fact, Saul, we read, as he's on the road, he was breathing out threats and murder. That's what scripture says. That's a fascinating picture. He's on a horse, he's on the road, he's heading towards Damascus, he's breathing out threats and murder. That's the hardness of his heart. And yet, for reasons that are God's alone, God, in that moment, knocks him from his horse, so to speak. The light shines, a voice speaks. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" "Who are you?" Saul's question. "I'm the Lord Jesus."

Saul had been steeped in the laws, and he was now on the road to Damascus having a close encounter with the law giver, and the law giver would say things to Saul then and in the future that would absolutely redirect and change Saul's understanding. More to the point, this God, this Savior, would change Saul's heart. He was regenerated. Something happened inside Saul by which he became a new creation, by which he was born again. That's a phrase you may have heard shared. He was born again. Something happened. God changed this man. He took him from what he was, this angry, bitter Pharisee of the Pharisees, this persecutor of the church. He changed his heart. He made him something different. He made him something better. And because he was better, Saul, who now was Paul, understood something about the faith that he never before understood. Let me read. In the book of Philippians, he says this. He describes all this in this way. He says, "If anyone else thinks he can have confidence in his own flesh, I more so. I was circumcised the eighth day. I was of the stock of Israel. I was of the tribe of Benjamin. I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Concerning the law, I was a Pharisee. Concerning zeal, I persecuted the church. Concerning the righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. But what these things were gain to me, I now count as loss. I now count as loss for Christ. I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord, for whom I've suffered the loss of all these things. I count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith."

You see, attaining a right standing with God, how to be saved, how to be justified, how to be reconciled, how to be back into a close relationship with the one whose laws we've broken, it's not attained by doing enough deeds, walking enough miles, touching enough relics, saying enough prayers, giving enough money. None of that. That's not how you do it. And Paul said as much. He says, "I used to do all that. In fact, I was the best at it. Now I consider all of my efforts trash.

All I need is Christ's righteousness.

As I receive it by faith, I bring nothing to the equation other than this, the faith that He has sown into my heart." That's his consistent teaching, and that's what he told the people in Galatia. He told it with greater clarity than you and I could imagine, and he'd repeated it. He taught. He sat around campfires. He was in tents, in circles. He shared this stuff with the people in Galatia. And yet, here's the sad thing. Almost the minute that he left town, almost the minute that Paul left,

wolves came in. The Judaizers came in, and they brought a different message. They brought what Paul calls a different gospel. Let's look at that gospel now. Let's look at verse six and seven to read more about this distinction. Verse six, "I marvel that you are turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel."Which is not a gospel, which is not another. "But there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ." All right. As we said a few moments ago, prior to writing these words, prior to writing the letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul had invested himself in their lives. He'd invested himself in their community, in their teaching. He'd sat down with them. He'd bounced babies on his knee. He'd done all these things. He had invested his heart and soul in them, and he'd taught them everything that he knew. And yet, the same thing happened here that happened almost everywhere else that Paul went. When he would leave a town, others would come in, and they would teach something different. Men who were not apostles, men who Paul and Peter would later call wolves, would come in and they would teach something different. It might have holy-sounding words, and might sound gospel-ish,

and yet it was not. It was not the gospel of Christ. Now, chief among these groups, we've said before, was a group called the Judaizers. Now, the Judaizers, as you'd expect from the word, they were those who took the Christian teaching and attempted to season it or flavor it with traditional Jewish understandings, traditional Jewish laws, and the like. Say there was a convert, a Gentile convert, in the region of Galatia, someone who comes to Jesus in faith and in prayer and the like. Someone who comes to Jesus, Paul would've just celebrated that and wrapped his arms around such an individual and prayed for such an individual and been excited about such an individual. The Judaizers would add something. They would go up to such an individual and say, "Well, that's great and that's wonderful. Now

you got to do just one more thing.

One more thing. Now, of course, you need to be circumcised."

The Jews looked back to the old covenant, to Moses, the mediator of the first covenant. They looked to circumcision, the sign of that covenant, and they said, "Well, that sign must apply to you." They said, "It's not enough just to believe and profess and have faith and all that. You need to also do this." And on top of circumcision, there was other things as well, but this was chief. Well, the problem that Paul thought was this. Circumcision had been a sign in the Old Testament, in the old covenant, but had been replaced by a new sign, a new sign that we saw this morning at the 9:00 service, the sacrament of baptism. Baptism replaced circumcision. And we also know that baptism, nor circumcision, saves alone, nor do you add these things to faith in order to get saved. Paul knew that what the Judaizers were doing, even if they smiled as they did it, it hollowed out everything that he'd said. Because what they implied was that faith and grace and the like, that was good and that was wonderful, but work, a work, even if it was just one, let alone a bunch of works, even if it just was one work, the Judaizers suggested that you had to do it in order for that grace to kick in, in order to be saved. So Paul accuses the Galatians of embracing this and other things in verse six, and he says, "I marvel, I'm astonished. I marvel that you're turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel."

To a different gospel.

He emphasized two points here. On the one hand, the different gospel. He says this is a bad gospel. It's a false gospel. It's not a saving gospel. You start seasoning works on top of grace, so that's not the gospel any longer, you start doing that. So that was his first point of contention. The second thing he said is, "Dear heavens, how fast have you done this? How fast has this occurred? I marvel. I'm astonished." You can see face palm Paul here. You can see him just shaking his head and saying, "How is this possible that you've done it?" He says, "I'm shell-shocked to hear that you've done it so soon." So soon. I was trying to think of a good anecdote to express his surprise. The best I came up with was this. When I was younger, I had a number of chores and responsibilities around the house, a number of different things to do, and one of those responsibilities was weeding. Now, for a number of years, we lived in California, where the weeds grew bountifully, and I was tasked to go out and weed the garden. Well, here's the thing. I didn't mind actually pulling up weeds. That could be kind of cathartic. I didn't mind that so much. Pulling up weeds, that was fine. I was okay with that. Here's why I hated weeding. I hated weeding because I could finish my job, I could look at the ground, I could look at the soil, I could look at what I'd done and feel so pleased about it. But then if I came back one week later and looked at the same patch of dirt,

I could be beside myself because I could see all the fresh weeds, the fresh shoots beginning to grow.

I could see the very work that I'd done had, in short order, been reversed, as if I hadn't done it at all. That, in a sense, that's the sort of thing that Saul's doing. He's writing as if he had tilled this garden that should have given great spiritual fruit. He had sown seeds in this garden in the region of Galatia. He had tilled it with care, and the minute he stepped away, the minute he left to attend to another garden or other affairs, he hears word that the weeds are growing. The weeds are back, and he's just beside himself because it's like, "I just said this.

I marvel that you're turning away so soon from him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different gospel." Not only to a different gospel, but he also uses the words a perversion. Pervert the gospel. Let's look at the next couple verses, verses eight through nine. "But even if we," meaning even if Paul and his gospel associates, "even if we or even if an angel from heaven were to preach any other gospel to you than what we've preached to you, let him be accursed."If anyone comes to you and preaches you something different than what I have preached to you, if anyone adds anything on top of we're saved by faith through grace alone, if anyone adds anything on top of that, let them be accursed. Even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we've preached to you, let him be accursed. As we've said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you received, let him be accursed. He says it twice because, in scripture, if you really wanted to make a point, if anything was really critical, you repeated it. You did this in Hebrew literature. It carried over into the Greek context. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Well, that's exactly what Paul does here. He says, "This is so significant, I don't want you to miss the point. If anyone comes to you, even if it was an angel, even if the clouds opened and an angel came down and that angel spoke, even with the light shining and shimmering and the sounds of harps in the air, even if all that happened, but when that angel opens his mouth, he says something different than what you've heard,

let that angel, let that man, let anyone be accursed for doing so."

Sometimes when we think of villains, the Judaizers or others, or wolves in the first century, sometimes we think of them as kind of like the villains in silent movies. They're easy to spot. They had the curly mustache, and the dark clothing, and the top hat, and all that like. Sometimes we think that these villains are easy to spot, but they're not. The reason Paul mentions an angel here is to suggest, look, even if anyone comes to you and they positively radiate with warmth, and they are just the most charismatic, nicest guy in the world.

Even if they're just smiling, there's a smile on their face and a song on their heart, even if that, that wonderful individual should come in, as many of the people would come in and seem like, even if that person comes in, if they say, when you listen to the words coming out of their mouth, if they say something different than what we've said, as nice as they may be,

as smiley as they might be, let them be accursed.

Paul knew that our faith hinges on the gospel.

The gospel faithfully preached, simply preached.

At its core, it's pretty straightforward.

We're saved through faith alone and grace alone, not of works lest any man should boast. We're saved by trusting and professing in Jesus Christ as our Lord. We're saved by the fact that although we have sinned and broken the laws of someone greater than us, that Jesus Christ paid the punishment for our sins.

And when we trust in him through faith, we're acknowledging that he's paid our debt, he's paid our ransom, and that there's nothing we add to the equation.

Well, here in Galatia,

and really throughout the centuries, people loved to add things to the equation.

Paul says we're saved by faith. Others, then and now, say we're saved by faith plus.

Faith plus. Plus what? Well, it's defined differently in different contexts, but here it was faith plus circumcision, faith plus work. And Paul stops them in their tracks and says, "No. This is not the way that it works. You will not receive credit for undertaking your own salvation through your own deeds, but rather it's solely a function of grace." Now let me add something that you and I may be familiar with.

In the Old Testament, we know of the Pharisees, and when we picture Pharisees, we picture guys who tried really hard to keep all the laws, and wear their hats just right, and have their sandals buttoned up just right, and they tried to keep all the laws with the idea that law-keeping would get them into heaven. We're familiar with that approach to works, that approach to works righteousness, what we've heard of the Pharisees. But in our day, you know what the irony is? The irony in our day is that in the world around us, most everyone still believes they're saved by works.

I'll give you an example.

Back when I started in ministry, lived in Wyoming, and we had a significant outreach. It was a church plant, so we did a lot of activities to spread the word locally in our community. Now, among those things is we'd go into parks, and we'd visit folks at different intervals that were both public and private, and we'd talk about the gospel. On a number of occasions, I had a conversation, and it went like this. I'd start to introduce the gospel to someone, and before I got half a sentence in, someone would say, "Oh, I know, preacher. I know. I got this. I'm a Christian." I'd say, "Okay, good." I'd say, "Phew. That's wonderful." But the minute we started to drill into what they meant by that statement, the more concerned I got. On a couple of occasions, I remember it pretty clearly, I had someone say to me that they had been saved, that they were a Christian on the basis that they had prayed that prayer. I said, "Well, what prayer?" They said, "Well, you know, the prayer."

And I said, "Well, what prayer?" And I figured out pretty quickly they were talking about the sinner's prayer, which some of you may be familiar with. An otherwise good prayer. But what they had done with it is they had perceived that by simply saying magic words a long time ago on a hill far away or walking down a sawdust trail at some revival someplace, some time, because they spoke certain words aloud, that that was the means by which they were saved, even if they never lived like a saved person since. Even if they exhibited no signs of fruit, no signs of faith, no participation in the body, never turned to Christ, weren't engaged in prayer. Even if they never did any of that, they thought they were saved. And I met a number of people who believed just that.

I met other folks who they would say, well, they were saved, they're in good shape because they'd been baptized.

Someone had told them once that all you need to doJust be baptized and you're in the kingdom. And so even though they never lived as a Christian in the days since, they thought they were in good shape because of something they did. See, the Pharisees had a laundry list of things that they could do. The irony is in our day,

we've boiled them down to maybe something once you did a long time ago and never repeated. In our day, we've set the bar so low as to be beyond comprehension. And yet,

the mistake of the person who trusts in their baptism is the mistake of the person who trusts in circumcision. The sin of the Judaizers is the same sin we see in our own day. If you trust in works, whether it's one work done a long time ago or a thousand works done yesterday, if you trust in works, that you can work your way into God's good pleasure, that you can do something after which he's happy with you, eh.

That's not the gospel. And that's what got Paul beside himself when he's teaching them, when he's writing to them. He says, "I can't believe it. I am astonished at how fast you've done this." And then he went on to say that if you believe this, if you believe that you add something to Christ, that his merit was like 99% of the equation, and then you added something of your own volition on top of that, and that gets you in, he'd say, "Those who believe or teach such a thing, let them be accursed."

Because ultimately,

they're laying their hope on their own deeds. That may feed the pride, it may feed the ego, but it is wrong.

And so Paul calls him out on that. He says, "You will not rob the glory of Jesus Christ one iota. I will not let you. You will not do such a thing. You need to know that anyone who tries to rob the glory of God by stealing some part of the credit, it doesn't work that way." And again, he uses the word "accursed." Now, the Greek word for accursed is anathema. Anathema. Some of you may have heard of that word, and it's not a frequent word in scripture. Anathema only comes up six times in the New Testament. Paul in 1 Corinthians 16, he said this. He says, "If any man loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema." It's a picture not of discipline. It's a picture not of being rebuked. It's a picture of being outside the kingdom. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema. And so when he says, "If we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we've preached to you, let him be anathema," that is significant. All right. Let's look at our last verse, verse 10. "For do I now persuade men or God?" He's asking this kind of rhetorically. He says, "Do I persuade men? Am I concerned with making you happy or God?" He says, "Do I now persuade men or God? Do I seek to please men? For if I still pleased men, I would not be a bondservant of Christ."

Our church, we're what you call Reformed Presbyterians, and as those who are Reformed, we look back to some of the events and some of the people of the Protestant Reformation, and sometimes we reflect on what went on in their day and age. Now, you might remember, there was a guy named Martin Luther, who was terribly significant in the Protestant Reformation, and Luther had a problem. See, Luther was a monk. Luther was a monk in the Roman Catholic Church, and for years and years, his understanding of how to serve and how to be a monk and how to be a Christian was that you would do a ton of things, and at the end, pray and hope that that was enough. And so Luther, he would run around as a monk in the monastery, and he would clean the pots, and he scrubbed the floors, and he went to confession as often as he could. Sometimes he'd go into the confessional booth and he'd say all the sins, and then he'd get 10 feet outside the door and he'd run back because there was more sins he just remembered. Luther took works seriously. He thought that in order for God to be happy with him, that he needed to do enough things and then just hope that that was going to get him over the edge, that that would be enough that God would be happy with him, that that would be sufficient. Well, Luther

was a depressed guy. He was an unfulfilled guy. He was one of the most joyless professing Christians you'll ever know. Because as much as he did, he figured it wasn't enough.

Later on, years later, he would one day say, "You know what?" He would say, "If a monk could ever get into heaven on the basis of his monkery, on the basis of the things that he did," he says, "it would have been me." But that was not sufficient. Ultimately, Luther came to an understanding, the understanding of Paul, that we're saved by faith alone through grace alone, that good works bear witness to the hope that's within us, but they don't independently save us. So Luther, in his day, was dealing with the Roman Catholic Church, who, guess what? They thought the exact opposite. The Roman Catholic Church of his day and ours from that point had all manner of things that you had to do on top of your profession in order to give you some sense of assurance, which, if you ask most Roman Catholics, they still don't have. But they would add baptism, they would add the kissing and touching of relics. You would travel great distances to touch a fragment of bone, to touch Joseph's pants, to touch something with the idea that that might be sufficient. From baptism to relics, to indulgences, to repeating the rosary, Rome had piled up this mountain of works on top of one's faith if you wanted to be justified with God. Rome was guilty then, it's guilty now of the same error of the Galatians,

and that's preaching another gospel that adds something on top of grace. Well, to Luther, that was wrong.

Luther became convicted that that was unacceptable. It wasn't scriptural.It was wrong. He said it was the very definition of anathema, what Rome was doing. Now, as you remember, as the story goes or as history unfolded, Luther got in a lot of hot water. He got into hot water not only with the Roman Catholic Church, but the Holy Roman Empire, the state, the government, those who were in a public office. From those on through the church, it was all manner of folks that were against Luther. So Luther was called to what's called the Diet of Worms. He was gathered to the Diet of Worms, and he was gathered in order to recant. His critics and his enemies wanted Luther to back away from everything that he'd said and believed. Recant, recant, recant. And if he did that, guess what? Things would've gone well.

If Luther had recanted, he could've danced on out of there at the Diet of Worms if he told them what they wanted to hear.

But what did he do?

He did the exact opposite.

He affirmed his views. He said this. He says, "Unless I'm convinced by the testimony of the scriptures or by clear reason, I am bound by the scriptures that I've quoted, and my conscience is captive to the word of God. I cannot, I will not recant anything, since it's neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me."

Luther had every reason, every motivation, if he loved his own life, to recant, but he didn't. Why? Two reasons. First reason is this. He loved God.

He loved God. Now, the second reason is this. He loved people.

He didn't want to see the people he cared about believing in something that would not save them. He was tired of seeing the broken-hearted people, the poor people in the world around him, just saving enough coins in order that they might possibly purchase someone's soul, some relative back from the depths of purgatory. He was tired of seeing his fellow men and women used and abused through indulgences and other things, other works that were added on top of them, that weighed them down, that crushed their heart, that crushed their soul. He was tired of that. He'd felt it enough himself, and he says, "I will not recant."

He says, "What they're doing is wrong."

He said what Paul said using different words. He says, "If anyone preaches something different than the gospel of grace, let them be accursed. Whether they wear tall, pointy hats, whether it's a very angel from heaven,

let them be accursed." Luther, like Paul, loved God and loved people. If you and I love people, we'll tell them the truth, even if it's not what they always want to hear. And if we love God, we'll contend for the whole of that truth, come what may. That was Paul's point in verse 10. We preach the full counsel of Christ because it is Christ. It is Christ to who we are responsible, and it is Christ who we serve. Let's pray.