The Foolish Gospel

Reflections for this date are based on the following scripture passages:
Galatians 1	Galatians 2	Galatians 3	Numbers 2	Numbers 3	Psalms 52	Proverbs 16

"I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing." (Galatians 2:21)

Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, was chiding them for turning aside from faith through Christ as the means for salvation and turning back to the law. They had responded to Paul's preaching of the gospel and were now being influenced by Judaizers to embrace another "gospel," though, of course, there is no other gospel.

This tension regarding the gospel continues today. The tension may or may not involve faith in Christ versus the law, but it involves adding other components to the gospel, or even making the gospel unnecessary.
There have always been those who find the gospel to be foolish, as Paul wrote, "we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles." (1 Corinthians 1:23) There must be more to it than simply placing our faith in Christ's death and resurrection, it is reasoned. And every effort to devise a more reasonable "gospel" shifts the effort back to man instead of what God did through Christ. We like having the control and defining things in our terms. We like things to be "reasonable" to our ears. We will say on the one hand that God is all-wise and all-knowing, and on the other hand that He is not wise enough to devise a plan for salvation that is better than we can come up with ourselves.

But whatever direction one might go with the matter of salvation, it all comes down to Paul's statement in Galatians. To paraphrase it we could say, "If righteousness comes by any other means, then Christ died for nothing."