“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel–” Galatians 1:6

Martin Luther’s commentary on the above verse states:

“When the devil sees that he cannot hurt the cause of the Gospel by destructive methods, he does it under the guise of correcting and advancing the cause of the Gospel. He would like best of all to persecute us with fire and sword, but this method has availed him little because through the blood of martyrs the church has been watered. Unable to prevail by force, he engages wicked and ungodly teachers who at first make common cause with us, then claim that they are particularly called to teach the hidden mysteries of the Scriptures to superimpose upon the first principles of Christian doctrine that we teach. This sort of thing brings the Gospel into trouble. May we all cling to the Word of Christ against the wiles of the devil, “for we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Within the Galatian church, the false prophets to whom Paul referred were those who would add to the sufficiency of the gospel of grace through faith. Luther, like Paul, was concerned with the adding of works to the principles of faith. Paul’s clear teaching is that adding ‘works’ to grace is ‘another gospel’.

When we look around at the landscape of American Christianity we can find, even today, examples of adding works to the principles of faith in the matter of the salvation of the soul, as well as in the matter of the assurance of our salvation. In contrast, a far greater danger today might be what has been taken away from the teaching of the gospel rather than what is added. Gone, for the most part, is clear preaching and teaching concerning the problem of sin (before and after salvation), along with the adjacent topics of wrath, judgment to come, and the spiritual warfare faced by every believer as he/she works out their salvation with ‘fear and trembling’.

Without mentioning specific examples of today’s popular ministry methods, here’s the question/food for thought: Are omissions from the gospel as preached and taught in Scripture, for whatever reason, examples of ‘another gospel’?