Another Gospel?

The Spirit of Religion nearly destroyed the Gospel before it even had a chance to get going good.

It seems “certain men” (i.e., Messianic Jewish believers in Jesus) were trying to convince Gentile believers that they had to become “Torah observant” or they could not be saved.

Standing up for the Truth and trying to fix this mess was the motivation behind many of Paul’s letters.

He called it “another Gospel” that is really “NOT another.”

Because there is nothing about Religion that is “Good News.”

Religion is always Bad News.

And it is always instructive for us to see how they discerned it and how they dealt with it.

Because, as I say, that Spirit of Religion continues to this day.

Sure, it shows up in different forms.

But the fundamental error is the same.

What is the error?

That Jesus isn’t enough – that we need Jesus plus this, that, or the other.

Jesus + Moses.

Jesus + Baptism.

Jesus + Spiritual Gifts.

Jesus + Church.

Religion is on the side of Addition; Jesus is on the side of Subtraction.

Simplicity is always about reducing, getting rid of the non-essential extra.

Religion gets more and more complex-  like when your “Statement of Fundamental Truths” grows from 7 to 14 to 23 and beyond…

And the longer your list of “essentials” the more complicated and error-prone the whole mess becomes.

From the simplicity of One Body in Christ we now have 45,000+ denominations worldwide and millions of splinter sects and groups claiming to have the “real Gospel.”

The New Testament addresses this specifically in response to the Jewish controversy, but the principle applies to all similar religious controversies today:

Is Jesus enough?

Law says, “No!”

Love says, “Yes!”

What say you?