What Slips In?

An article by Matt    No Comments

Every Tuesday morning I join with a group of men waaaay to early in the morning to study the Bible together.  This morning we started to walk through the book of Galatians together, and I was struck by something in the first chapter:

Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. Galatians 1:7

Paul is concerned by what is slipping into the faith that he had passed on to the church in Galatia.  During this time the Judaizers were teaching add ons to Christianity based on Jewish law.  As we were talking about some of these add ons I couldn’t help but see the parallels to where we are today.  Much of what the Judaizers were teaching were culturally accepted parts of the faith of the day: circumcision, dietary law, and the like.  Today, we look back at this period of the church and often find ourselves thinking “how could they not see”… but I wonder how much of what we call Christian essentials today are the same kind of add ons to our faith.

In this day and age I see many places where Christianity and an add on are tied together without biblical basis, politics being the big one.  I have often heard the question “How can they consider themselves a Christian and not be a part of the ______ party?”  Or, “How can you be a Christian and not support _________?”

Help me think through this… where in our day to day lives do YOU see things slipping into the gospel message that are not tied to scripture and how do YOU keep from adding to your faith?