One Truth

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS

ONE TRUTH

Gal 4:17-20

17 Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you [from us], so that you may be zealous for them. 18 It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always and not just when I am with you. 19 My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, 20 how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!

NIV

It does seem a little strange how people who accepted the gospel message of salvation as a free gift of God through faith in Jesus allow themselves to become deceived by those silver-tongued people who only want to drag them off to their own form of Christianity. That is what those Jews who came to Galatia after Paul was trying to do. Again, they held to the theological position that in order to be a believer in Jesus, one had to become a Jew first, as Jesus came to the Jews. They were either small-minded or very manipulative to gain disciples for their own personal gain. They wanted to win over the Galatians to their side, but it was for no good. How often we see this same situation in Christianity today. There have been many wolves in sheep’s clothing who came into the community of faith to steal away believers from local churches so to gain followers for themselves for personal gain. But what we need to be just as careful about is that we do not do much of the same thing. Do we try to convince a believer who attends a church to come to ours, just for the sake of numbers? Are churches just a revolving door of believers roaming around from one church to another based either on the number of people in the church, or the style of worship, or the personality of the preacher? What happened to evangelism, of going to those in need of hearing the gospel, as Paul did? Those Jews who came after Paul were not interested in evangelism but in proselytism, or converting the Galatians from their faith to the Jew's faith. That is most likely the greatest form of gaining church members in our churches today. No, we should not be looking to other churches to gain attenders in our church, but we should be looking into the world for sinners who need to be freed from the bondage of sin and its penalty of death. But at the same time, we should be aware of the silver tongues who would decimate our churches. We have to continue to teach the truth of the gospel, the freedom from the penalty of sin, the life of faith in Jesus Christ. When we see our community of faith being deceived by false doctrine, we have to step up and clear the matter up quickly and not allow those false doctrines to gain any foothold, either in our brothers’ life or our own. There is only one truth.