Chris Jones said even though the Apostle Paul probably wasn’t a coffee drinker, the first chapter of Galatians reads like he had taken in a few shots of espresso and was ready to get right to the point.
“He skipped his normal thanksgiving section,” said Jones, pastor of Meadow Brook Baptist Church in Birmingham, to those present at the opening session of the Alabama Baptist Pastors Conference on Nov. 11 at First Baptist Church Fairhope.
He said that’s because the matter at hand was of utmost importance — Paul was astonished that the churches he had planted in Galatia were already turning to a different gospel.
Preaching from Galatians 1:6-10, Jones said Paul warned those churches against a message of “Jesus plus” — a gospel where they needed more than grace to save them.
“The only gospel that saves is the gospel of grace,” Jones said.
Any gospel revision is a rejection of Christ, he said, noting that he preached that warning to himself as well.
“I’m prone to drift and prone to wander into a form of self-dependence,” he said. “Paul is saying, ‘Build your confidence on Christ alone.’”
Jones challenged pastors to “cling to Christ — He’s enough. In fact, He’s everything.”
Any gospel revision also equals theological perversion, he said. To change the gospel is to reject Scripture at the most fundamental level.
“This is the main thing, the central message, the foundational truth of God’s grace for the undeserving upon which everything else depends,” Jones said. “May this good news so permeate our messages and our ministries that our hearts and the hearts of those we shepherd are constantly overcome with the grace of the Good Shepherd.”
Any gospel revision also brings condemnation, he said. “Getting the gospel right matters. Without Jesus we remain dead in our sins and on the road headed for divine judgment.”
Truth trumps title, Jones said, even though that isn’t always what is reflected in church culture. “In a day and time of idolizing professionals, the messenger is more important than the message.”
That shouldn’t be the case, he said. Every messenger needs accountability for what they preach.
“How many of us are inviting others to speak into our lives and to measure our ministries by the plumb line of the gospel? Perhaps some of us need to invite some others from the outside and even from the inside, faithful brothers or sisters in Christ, to provide the kind of constructive counsel and feedback we need to ensure that we are walking the line of the gospel of grace,” Jones said.
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