{"id":26126,"date":"2023-05-07T22:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T05:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/galatians-2_11-21-copy\/"},"modified":"2023-04-18T12:33:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-18T19:33:26","slug":"galatians-3_1-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/galatians-3_1-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Common False Teaching Today – Don’t Fall For it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Galatians\u00a0 3:1-5\u00a0 \u00a0Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/p>\n

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Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

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Today\u2019s passage is Galatians 3:1-5.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n

Galatians 3:1-5 (NIV)<\/strong>
\n1\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.
\n2\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
\n3\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
\n4\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Have you suffered so much for nothing–if it really was for nothing?
\n5\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?<\/em><\/p>\n

What is the most common false teaching that billions of people believe about God and heaven?\u00a0 It’s believing that through your own goodness or effort you can go to heaven or reach God.\u00a0 That’s what Paul was warning the\u00a0Galatians\u00a0against in his letter called “Galatians”.<\/p>\n

Galatians<\/em><\/strong>\u00a03<\/em><\/strong>:<\/em><\/strong>3<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(NIV)\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
\n3<\/sup>\u00a0<\/em>Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Christians in the region of Galatia had placed their faith in Jesus previously, but were being duped now into thinking it wasn’t enough to believe in Jesus in order to be saved and forgiven of your sins.\u00a0 They were becoming increasingly influenced by a group called the Judaizers.\u00a0 The Judaizers were an unhealthy Jewish sect who taught that in order to be saved you needed not only to believe in Jesus but also to follow Jewish customs like circumcision.\u00a0 Since this teaching goes against the very heart of the Gospel, the goal of Paul’s letter in\u00a0Galatians\u00a0was to warn the Christians in Galatia about believing in a heresy (false teaching).\u00a0 That’s why Paul asks them in verse 2-3:<\/p>\n

Galatians<\/em><\/strong>\u00a03<\/em><\/strong>:2-<\/em><\/strong>3<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(NIV)\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>
\n2\u00a0<\/sup><\/em>I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?\u00a0<\/em>
\n3<\/sup>\u00a0Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t personally know anyone today who believes the exact same heresy that the Galatian churches believed.\u00a0 You don’t see people holding up posters saying “Be circumcised or go to hell”.\u00a0 But in a broader sense, billions of people today make the same mistake the Galatian Christians made, duped into thinking that they can be saved by their own human effort.<\/p>\n

For example, here are some clues that you’ve made the same mistake that the\u00a0Galatians\u00a0made:<\/p>\n

Clue\u00a0<\/strong>1<\/strong>: You think that the reason why God lets someone into heaven is because they were a “good person”.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Truth: The Bible says that “no one is good, not even one” (Romans\u00a03:12).\u00a0 None of us can earn our way to heaven on our own merit.\u00a0 That’s because God’s standards are perfect whereas we will never be perfect.\u00a0 So if you think you can earn your way to heaven, either your view of God is too small or your view of yourself is too big.<\/p>\n

Clue 2: \u00a0You think you can get rid of your sins if you try hard enough. \u00a0<\/strong>For example, a friend of mine has a relative who is deeply involved in a form of meditation where they will cut themselves with knives, believing that if you don’t bleed from the cut that means you don’t have any more sin.\u00a0 The goal is to keep cutting yourself until you don’t bleed to show that you are holy.<\/p>\n

In India last year, a four year old boy was\u00a0abducted and beheaded<\/a>\u00a0by a 35 year man who believed that by making this “sacrifice” he would gain divine powers.<\/p>\n

These sound like extreme examples, but in fact, every religion in the world other than Christianity is a modern day version of the Galatian heresy.\u00a0 Every humanistic philosophy that preaches “Believe in yourself” is a form of the Galatian heresy.\u00a0 They’re all based on the same belief that through your own merit or effort you can reach God, however they define “God” to be.<\/p>\n

So the Galatian heresy is alive and well in our day.\u00a0 There are people you bump into every day who believe in a form of the Galatian heresy.\u00a0 So when you’re having a conversation with someone who is sharing their belief in a form of the Galatian heresy (reaching heaven by one’s own effort or merit), what can you do?\u00a0 Do your best to gently and respectfully share with that person about Jesus. If appropriate you can say, “I used to think that I could reach heaven because I was a \u2018pretty good person\u2019.\u00a0 Then I realized that God’s standards are much higher than just “pretty good” and that I will never meet God’s perfect standards.\u00a0 But then I read the Bible and discovered some great news: \u00a0while we can never reach God on our effort or merit, God sent Jesus Christ to live the life we could never live and to die on the cross for our sins.\u00a0 He bridged the gap between us and God, between earth and heaven.\u00a0 That’s why Christians sing songs like \u2018Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me\u2019.\u00a0 It’s not because I am good that I’m going to heaven.\u00a0 It’s because of God’s amazing grace that He loved me and, through Christ’s death on the cross, forgave a sinner like me.”<\/p>\n

Father, please help me to be sensitive to any form of Galatian heresy that may creep into my life or the lives of those around me. May I always go back to the cross where Jesus died, remembering that it’s not our good works, but Christ’s finished work on the cross that saves us.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 name, AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Galatians 3:1-5.\u00a0 Let\u2019s go!<\/p>\n

Galatians 3:1-5 (NIV)
\n1\u00a0\u00a0You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.
\n2\u00a0\u00a0I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
\n3\u00a0\u00a0Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
\n4\u00a0\u00a0Have you suffered so much for nothing–if it really was for nothing?
\n5\u00a0\u00a0Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?<\/p>\n

What is the most common false teaching that billions of people believe about God and heaven?\u00a0 It’s believing that through your own goodness or effort you can go to heaven or reach God.\u00a0 That’s what Paul was warning the\u00a0Galatians\u00a0against in his letter called “Galatians”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26129,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26126\/revisions\/26129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}