Thoughts on Galatians 5:7-9

“John Calvin comments, ‘Satan’s stratagem is, that he does not attempt an avowed destruction of the whole gospel, but he taints its purity by introducing false and corrupt opinions.’ The blatant heresy endorsed in many churches today did not come out of nowhere. Only through the slow erosion of truth do the visible churches of Christ come to the point where they deny Jesus.” (Sproul)

There are two ways in which we can keep this leaven, or false doctrine, from permeating the church today. The first and most important is to appeal to Scripture. For every belief or doctrinal stance we hold we should be able to back up our belief in Scripture. If you cannot find support for your belief in the Bible then you cannot claim it as doctrine. Often times someone will tell me a belief or opinion they hold to as doctrine but upon questioning they are unable to back up their stance with Scripture. My point is that if you hold a belief then make certain that belief is grounded in Scripture. In this case we should follow the example of the Berean’s in the book of Acts: “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” The Berean’s did not take what they believed for granted. They were always “examining the Scriptures” to ensure they were not being led astray. Practically this means that if your friend, your spouse, your mentor, or even your pastor makes a claim or statement that he or she declares as Biblical truth, it is our duty to compare the statements made to our ultimate authority, our sola scriptura, the Bible.

The second way to keep false doctrine from invading the church is to appeal to apostolic tradition. Of course this is always subordinate to our appeal to Scripture but is nevertheless a useful tool in examining truth claims. “Arianism and Pelagianism – both of which would be condemned as heretical, although for very different reasons – appealed to an impressive array of Biblical texts in support of their teachings. Their opponents, however, argued that their interpretation of these texts was incorrect. It was not enough simply to quote the Bible; it was necessary to interpret it in an orthodox manner.” (McGrath) Almost anyone can pull a sentence from the Bible and make it mean whatever they want it to mean. This was as much a problem in the early days of the church as it is today. The way that some of the early church fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian dealt with this problem was through an appeal to apostolic tradition. They asked the question “does this interpretation line up with the what the earliest church fathers understood this particular text to mean?” They argued that “Scripture could not be allowed to be interpreted in any arbitrary or random way: it had to be interpreted within the context of the historical continuity of the Christian church.” (McGrath) The closer we can trace any given doctrinal stance to Jesus himself, the less chance we have of any human influence on that particular issue. Because of the tendency for humans to twist a text to mean what they want it to, a simple appeal to Scripture is sometimes not good enough. Whenever a difference in interpretation arises we should appeal to the earliest church fathers and see how they understood the issue at hand.

The point is this: in order to keep ourselves from being led astray by the dangers of false doctrine we must always appeal to the inerrant word of God and look to see how the earliest Christians interpreted that particular text.