A Different Gospel; The gospel distorted Part 1

Galatians 1:6-7 NASB I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; (7) which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

What is the pristine gospel? What is the gospel that the first century saints heard and understood? Could it be possible that the gospel that we have today is a "different gospel," and a "distorted gospel?" Well, let's look at the gospel first mentioned. Genesis 3:15 NASB "And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel." Yes, this is the first gospel proclamation. He served Satan notice... that though he/Satan would be able to bite at the heels of humanity... humanities seed would eventually crush his head. Moving forward, God presented the gospel to Abraham in this way; Genesis 12:3 NASB "And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." These are general promises that are explained in the New Testament. Galatians 3:16 NASB "Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, "And to seeds," as referring to many, but rather to one, "And to your seed," that is, Christ." So we see that the gospel was the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ the promised seed of Abraham.

I just opened my HCSB Reference Bible that I keep on my desk, and there are 1176 pages in it of mostly all scripture verses. There are 920 chapters in the Old Testament and 260 chapters in the New Testament making a total of 1180 chapters in the bible. There are 23,195 verses in the Old Testament and 7,957 verses in the New Testament for a total of 31,152 verses in the bible. Anyone would have to admit that is a lot of material to wrap your mind around.

All of that was written at least two thousand years ago, and much of it long before that. It was written to a different time and a completely different culture. Add to this, century upon century of millions of pages written to interpret what the bible says, with literally tens of thousands of people writing the interpretation. Further, of the interpretation, much if not most of it was written with the view that the scripture was written mainly to their time and culture. It should not be hard to believe that the gospel as it has been handed down to us is distorted. In fact, in the opposite vane, it would not be sensible to believe that it wasn't. If during Paul's time, the gospel was being distorted by people who had just heard it, how much more is it logical that it would be distorted as passed down from generation to generation. Actually it would only be common sense that this were so.

Going back to the source:

The logical thing to do then would be go back to the original first century writings and, try to read what is said, but also to read between the lines with an understanding of historical context. When one does that, a different perception comes to the fore. When I mention historical context I mean the following:

1. What were the expectations of the intended readers?
2. What did the intended readers believe at the time of the writing and was it meant to reinforce what they believed, or was it a correction?
3. Who had the intended readers held up as authorities before the writing?
4. What was the cultural climate, and how did it affect their behavior?
5. What did the intended readers see as authoritative?
6. What were the accepted and unaccepted norms for the intended readers?
7. What was the political, social, and financial environment of the intended readers?

The above list is in no way exhaustive, but it shows the level of exploration and study that should go into reading the scripture in preparation to then, move on to read between the lines. If you do this, it is easy to find and understand, that the audience that Jesus spoke to about the gospel, was an entirely different audience, than the one Paul addressed. Jesus audience were Jews, under the Old Covenant BEFORE the installation of the New Covenant. Paul's audience was both Jews and Gentiles but toward the end mostly Gentiles, after the New Covenant had been installed. And still, even Paul's time was a transitional period awaiting the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, whereby God would make manifest his true sons and daughters.

In this series, I want to explore why I say that  today, we have a different gospel, a distorted gospel compared to the one that the first century saints proclaimed. In a lot of ways, it resembles the gospel that Paul warned the Galatians about in the above text. It is a gospel that does not properly acknowledge the mechanism that the Holy Spirit uses to transform lives. Therefore, people are left to try to transform themselves and then, it is not transformation but rather reformation.... it is a lot of work, and proves to be very ineffective. Please join in with me on this series.