The gospel that saves the Body of Christ is what Christ did for us, received by faith, with nothing added to it. Paul states it in four verses. When men added to it, he did not call the addition a supplement. He called it another gospel and pronounced the man who preached it accursed.
The additions come in a familiar list: a prayer to pray, a life to surrender, a commandment to keep, a church to attend, a feeling to have. Many of these are good things, and that is not the question. The question is one: is it part of what saves? This article tests each addition against Paul, and where the site has already argued one at length, it says so in a line and points to the article.
The gospel is what Christ did, and Paul defines it in four verses
"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:" (1 Corinthians 15:1-4 KJV)
Count the verbs. Died. Was buried. Rose again. Every one is done by Christ, and the death is for our sins. In verse 1 the only things said of the believer are that he received it and stands in it. Verse 2 adds a condition about holding the message, and it is taken up near the end of this article.
The same shape appears in the places where Paul states how a man is saved. Read these: "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24); "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God" (Romans 5:1); "a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16); "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God" (Ephesians 2:8); "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace" (2 Timothy 1:9); "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us" (Titus 3:5). Each names what God or Christ did and what the believer receives by faith. None of them names a prayer, a pledge, a commandment kept, an attendance or a feeling. That is the standard the rest of this article uses.
The place an objector will point to is Romans 10:9-10, where confession with the mouth appears beside believing. Is Confessing Christ with Your Mouth Necessary? takes that passage in its context. The gospel is also not the bare fact that Jesus is the Son of God. Do You Believe Jesus Is the Son of God? What a Yes Does Not Tell You shows what a yes leaves out.
Grace and works cannot be mixed, and Paul says so three ways
The first way is the plainest:
"And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work." (Romans 11:6 KJV)
The sentence does not say grace and works should be balanced. It says one cancels the other. Add a work to grace and grace has stopped being grace.
The second way is Paul's accounting. "Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt" (Romans 4:4). A wage is owed. A gift is not. If anything a man does goes into the price of his salvation, God owes it to him, and Paul will not say that of God. Then he states the other side:
"But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness." (Romans 4:5 KJV)
Take one word out and see what the verse becomes. Without not, it reads to him that worketh, but believeth, a man who works and believes together and is justified for both. Paul wrote worketh not. And look at who is justified: the ungodly. God does not wait for the ungodly man to reform, promise, or pray a certain way. He justifies him as he is.
The third way is boasting. "Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:9). A man who contributed anything has something to point to, and "Where is boasting then? It is excluded" (Romans 3:27). Every addition this article goes on to test would put something back into the hand of the man who performs it.
"Counted for righteousness" does not make faith the price
Romans 4:5 says his faith is counted for righteousness, and that must not be read as though the man's faith were the ground. The ground is not the man's faith but the faith of Christ: "by the faith of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16), "through the faith of Christ" (Philippians 3:9). The man receives it by believing. The Mystery of Faith - Part 1 and Part 2 set out why the faith of Christ, which is both His faithfulness and His own believing as man, and not the believer's own faith, is the basis of justification.
What does counted mean? Read the word as Paul uses it. To count, or to impute, is to put to a man's account, and Paul says what is put there: "unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works" (Romans 4:6). What is put to the believer's account is righteousness. And the believer is not paid for believing, because a payment is the wage of verse 4. Paul gives the reason faith is the way: "Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace" (Romans 4:16). Faith is the way because it keeps the matter on the side of grace.
He also says what the believing rests on. The righteousness was imputed "for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification" (Romans 4:24-25). The believing is on Him, and the justification is His work. That is how Paul can say the righteousness of God is "by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe" (Romans 3:22): it comes by His faith, and it comes upon those who believe.
Paul's test for any addition: it is another gospel
"I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed." (Galatians 1:6-9 KJV)
Three things stand in those verses. Which is not another: there is only one gospel for the Body, so an addition does not give a second version, it perverts the one. The accursed falls on the preacher, whoever he is, even an apostle or an angel, who brings the Galatians a gospel other than the one they received. No authority, however high, can add to what the Body was given. And the Galatians had been "called … into the grace of Christ", so the thing that was added was added to grace, after grace had been received. The Holy Apostles of Ephesians 3:5 shows why the curse does not fall on Peter and the Twelve preaching to Israel, because it is aimed at a gospel brought to the people Paul was sent to.
What the Galatians were adding was not a vice. It was circumcision, a commandment God had given to Israel. An addition does not have to be wicked to be another gospel. It only has to be a condition. Paul's answer to the addition is this: "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Galatians 2:21). And his question to them is the test to put to any proposed addition today: "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? … having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:2-3).
So three questions can be put to any gospel presentation. What does it say Christ did? What does it say I must do to be saved? And is that second thing something I perform or something I receive? An addition answers the second with something performed. Fallen from Grace: A Fall Toward Law, Not Into Sin reads Galatians 5:4 and what fallen from grace does and does not mean.
Loving God, loving your neighbor, honoring your parents and doing good are right, and none of them is the gospel
Justin Johnson of Grace Ambassadors lists five good things, each drawn from the Ten Commandments, that cannot save and should not be preached for salvation: love God with all your heart, love your neighbor, go to church, put family first, live for God and do good. What follows tests the list against Paul, because Paul himself writes about most of it. He puts it somewhere else.
Love God with all your heart. That is the first and great commandment, and it was spoken to "a lawyer" who asked "which is the great commandment in the law?" (Matthew 22:35-36). It is the law's own summary, given under the law. Paul says what the law can and cannot do for a man: "by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight" (Romans 3:20), and "the law is not of faith" (Galatians 3:12).
Paul does speak of loving the Lord, and the verses must be read as they stand. "Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity" (Ephesians 6:24) is a blessing on the saints. And the sharpest of them: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha" (1 Corinthians 16:22). Read it where it stands. The letter opens, "Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 1:3), and that is doctrine, not a pleasantry: grace and peace come to the saints from the Father and the Lord Jesus. It closes with greetings to the saints: "Greet ye one another with an holy kiss" (1 Corinthians 16:20), "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you" (1 Corinthians 16:23), and "My love be with you all in Christ Jesus" (1 Corinthians 16:24). The anathema sits between those greetings, and it is pronounced on any man who loves not the Lord. He is not in the company greeted on either side of him. The verse is a word about someone outside that company, and it is not a test laid on the believers. It does not tell the unsaved man to produce love as the price of being saved.
This verse does not measure the love it speaks of. Love not is a flat negative. It describes a man who has none and names no degree. Nowhere in the verse, or in the greetings around it, is anyone told to look for this love in another man. Works could not measure it either: a man may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, bestow all his goods, and give his body to be burned, "and have not charity" (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
Where Paul speaks of the love that moves the believer, he starts with Christ's love and not ours: "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8), "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20), and "For the love of Christ constraineth us" (2 Corinthians 5:14). In Paul, Christ's love comes first and ours follows. And Paul puts love into the walk as an instruction: "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us" (Ephesians 5:2). What is instructed is shown by an obedient walk. It is not the proof that a salvation is possessed.
Paul does speak elsewhere of love being heard of, proved and increased. He hears of Philemon's "love and faith, which thou hast toward the Lord Jesus, and toward all saints" (Philemon 1:5), prays that the Philippians' love "may abound yet more and more" (Philippians 1:9), and asks the Corinthians "to prove the sincerity of your love" by what they give (2 Corinthians 8:8). Every one of those is said to men he already addresses as saints, and every one concerns their walk. None of them makes love a test of whether a man is saved. They belong with the instruction to walk in love, quoted above: what is instructed is shown by an obedient walk.
Paul also speaks of love lacking in men who are not among the saints, and those places stand on the same ground as 1 Corinthians 16:22. Of those who perish he says "they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (2 Thessalonians 2:10), and of the same men two verses on, that they "believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:12). The love of the truth is something received, and its absence is described as not believing the truth. Of the men of the last days he says they will be "lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God", "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (2 Timothy 3:4-5). Both describe men who stand over against the saints, the one group perishing and the other to be turned from. Neither lays a gauge on the saints.
Love your neighbor. "Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law" (Romans 13:8), and "all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" (Galatians 5:14). It is Paul's own word, and it is addressed to "brethren" who "have been called unto liberty" (Galatians 5:13). It is a debt the saved owe, not a payment the unsaved make. The Commandments of the Lord: Why Paul's Commandments Are Not a New Law shows how Paul keeps that command in the walk without bringing back a law.
Go to church. Paul's instructions about the assembly are written to the saved who already meet: "when ye come together … Let all things be done unto edifying" (1 Corinthians 14:26). Edifying is building up those who are in. None of the passages quoted at the top of this article names attendance, and none could be made to without adding to them. To preach it as the way to heaven is to put a thing the saved do in the place of the thing Christ did. The verse brought from the other side is Hebrews 10:25, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together", and Hebrews was written to the believing remnant of Israel, as Who Was the Book of Hebrews Written To? sets out. It is not Paul's word to the Body, and even there it is an exhortation to believers, not a condition of being saved.
Put family first. Paul does quote the fifth commandment: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother" (Ephesians 6:1-2). It is addressed to children in the Lord, inside a household the gospel has already reached. It is the walk of the saved, again, and not the way in.
Live for God and do good. This is the one on the list that needs its own section, and it follows next.
So every item on the list appears in Paul, and not one appears in the places where he says how a man is saved. That is the difference between the walk and the gospel.
Good works follow the gospel; they are not the way in
The last item on the list, live for God and do good, is Paul's own word too, and he says where it belongs. Take the verse that closes the saving passage:
"For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:10 KJV)
Verse 9 has just said not of works. Verse 10 says the saved are created … unto good works. The works are what the new creation is for, and they come after it. Titus puts it in the same order: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us" (Titus 3:5), and then, a few verses on, "that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works" (Titus 3:8). They which have believed. The believing comes first, and the works are urged on those who have done it.
An objector will say that works are the proof, that a man who has no works was never saved. Take a verse he may bring: "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (2 Corinthians 13:5). Read what Paul tells them to look for. He says in the faith, and Jesus Christ is in you. In this verse he lists no works, no behavior and no feelings. What he points them to is what they know: Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you? They are to know it by faith. The closing clause, except ye be reprobates, does not say that Christ is not in them if they fail an inspection. It says they should know this, unless the truth has to be proved to them again. The King James uses the same word in the verses that follow. The Corinthians sought "a proof of Christ speaking in me" (2 Corinthians 13:3), and Paul answers, "I trust that ye shall know that we are not reprobates" (2 Corinthians 13:6). There the word is about standing approved, and Paul turns their demand for proof back on them. He is not sending them to look for evidence that Christ is in them. He expects them to know it, and the verse leaves it with them as something known.
Nor can what Paul instructs the saints to do serve as the proof. An instruction can be obeyed or not: he addressed the Corinthians as saints (1 Corinthians 1:2) and told them they were still carnal and walked as men (1 Corinthians 3:3). What is instructed shows an obedient walk. It does not show a salvation possessed.
The other texts offered for works as proof, James 2 and the First Epistle of John, belong to the kingdom program, and Kingdom Salvation sets them there. In Romans 5:1, quoted above, and Ephesians 1:13, quoted below, the ground of assurance is what God has done.
None of this makes the walk optional. The point is its place. A man who is careful to maintain good works is obeying what Paul instructs the saved. A man who is told to do them in order to be saved is hearing another gospel.
"Make Jesus Lord of your life" and "surrender all": the Lord is preached; the yielding is urged on the saved
The five above come from the law, on Johnson's list. The additions that follow are not, and each needs its own answer. The first runs like this: a man cannot be saved unless he makes Jesus Lord of his life, gives everything, or promises to obey. Take it to Paul in three steps.
The Lord is preached; the believer does not make Him Lord. "For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord" (2 Corinthians 4:5). Jesus is Lord because of who He is, and Paul preaches Him that way. And the saying of it is itself the Spirit's work: "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost" (1 Corinthians 12:3). Some turn that verse into a test: if a man says Jesus is Lord, he has the Holy Ghost, so his saying it proves he is saved. But the verse does not say that a man who utters the words is saved. It says that the saying can be done only by the Holy Ghost. The Spirit is the one who makes it possible, and a man's saying it is not the thing that saves him or the thing that proves it. Where the saying is not by the Holy Ghost, the verse gives no assurance about the man at all. Paul puts it among the gifts: "Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant" (1 Corinthians 12:1), to men who "were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols" (1 Corinthians 12:2). Then, "Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed" (1 Corinthians 12:3). Justin Johnson reads the opening of the chapter as Paul first showing the Corinthians how to tell the Spirit of God from another spirit. The verse is about what is spoken by the Spirit. It does not tell them to take any man's confession as proof that he is saved. The ground Paul gives for assurance is the sealing, which comes after that ye believed (Ephesians 1:13, quoted below), and not after a man says it.
The words alone are not the mark, and Scripture shows it in more than one place. Paul says that one day every tongue will confess "that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Philippians 2:11), and Is Confessing Christ with Your Mouth Necessary? reads that as an acknowledgment of His supremacy, made even by those who rejected Him, and not as salvation. The unclean spirits spoke true words about Him: "Thou art the Son of God" (Mark 3:11), and "I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God" (Luke 4:34). In the Gospels, which are addressed to Israel under the kingdom program and not to the church, the Lord Himself says, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 7:21), and, "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord" (Matthew 7:22). The foolish virgins also cry, "Lord, Lord, open to us," and are answered, "I know you not" (Matthew 25:11-12). Those texts do not describe the church, and they put nothing on a believer today. They are used here for one point: a man can say Lord, Lord, and say it of the right Person, and still not be His. Philippians 2:11 and the unclean spirits are not set under 1 Corinthians 12:3: the one is a confession made at the judgment, and the others are spirits, not men. They show only that true words about Him can be spoken without salvation. The men of Matthew 7 and the virgins are men who called Him Lord. If 1 Corinthians 12:3 is true, they said it by the Holy Ghost, and it still does not prove they are saved. That verse is written to the Body and those texts are not, so it is used here only for what it says about the saying. The Holy Ghost working through a man is not the same as the sealing of a believer, which is "after that ye believed" (Ephesians 1:13). Scripture has men through whom the Spirit moved who are not set down as saved: "the spirit of God came upon him" was said of Balaam (Numbers 24:2), and Peter says he "loved the wages of unrighteousness" (2 Peter 2:15). So the saying, even by the Holy Ghost, is not the mark of salvation.
What Paul says he gave up was his own righteousness. An objector will bring Philippians 3: "I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Philippians 3:8). Read what the all things were. Verses 4 to 6 list them: circumcised the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee, zealous, and "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (Philippians 3:6). And the loss is stated by its purpose: "not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ" (Philippians 3:9). What Paul gave up was his confidence in his own standing. A promise to live a certain way is not that. It is a performance offered in its place, and Romans 4:5 has already said the man who is justified is the ungodly, not the man who has pledged to stop being one.
The yielding is real, and Paul urges it on brethren. "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead" (Romans 6:13). Notice who is told to yield: those alive from the dead, who in the same chapter are "made free from sin" (Romans 6:18). And the order in Romans 12 is plain: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1). Mercy first, then the appeal. The addition takes an appeal Paul makes to the saved and moves it in front of the gospel as its price. Repentance Rightly Divided: What Paul Meant — and What He Did Not reaches the same conclusion from the other direction: there is no prior reformation and no list of sins to give up before faith counts.
Two more texts come with this addition. The first is Romans 10:9, with its Lord Jesus, which the confession article linked above takes in its context. The second is the Lord's own calls to deny oneself and forsake all (Luke 9:23; 14:33), which are discipleship under the kingdom program, as the article on borrowed words, linked below, sets out.
"Ask Jesus into your heart": the invitation is not in Paul, and the nearest verses say something else
The King James has the words into your hearts once: "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Galatians 4:6). Who does the sending? God. To whom? To those who are sons already. Nobody in that verse asks anyone in.
The nearest Pauline words are a prayer for the saved: "That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith" (Ephesians 3:17), offered by Paul on behalf of people who already believe. And when he says when a believer is sealed, he says "after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise" (Ephesians 1:13). The order is hearing, believing, sealing. A prayer to invite Him in is nowhere in that order.
The verse offered for it is not Paul's. "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him" (Revelation 3:20) is written to "the church of the Laodiceans" (Revelation 3:14), in the book given to John, not in the letters where Paul states the gospel the Body was given. It cannot be the ground for what the Body is told to do to be saved. The other verse sometimes used comes with a setting of its own. It is in the Gospel of John, which says why it was written: "that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31). That is the kingdom's question, as Do You Believe Jesus Is the Son of God? sets out, and the verse just before the one in question names whose own were in view: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not" (John 1:11). What follows speaks of those who did receive Him, in that setting, before the cross. It is not Paul's statement of the gospel the Body was given. Nor does it need to be, because it defines its own word: "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God" (John 1:12), "even to them that believe on his name". Receiving there is believing, not a prayer.
And notice what receiving is said to give. It is not sonship. It is "power to become the sons of God". Those who received Him were given power to become sons; the verse does not say they had become them. That is not where the Body stands. Paul writes to the Body, "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26), and the verse quoted above says "because ye are sons" (Galatians 4:6). Sons already, and not given power to become sons.
A feeling is not the gospel
A man may be told to wait for a feeling, or to trust one he has had. The gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 is three events, and none of them is a feeling. When Paul speaks of how he lives, in Galatians 2:20, he does not point to how he feels. He points to what was done: "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20). The ground is a death, a burial, a resurrection, and a Person who did them for the believer.
The exclusions already argued: one line each
Several additions have their own articles on this site, and this article does not repeat them.
- A confession or a sinner's prayer as the price: Is Confessing Christ with Your Mouth Necessary?
- Repentance as turning from sins first: Repentance Rightly Divided: What Paul Meant — and What He Did Not
- Water baptism: Why Water Baptism Is Not for Today
- Enduring to the end as a condition for the Body: Shall Be Saved vs. Are Saved: Two Programs, Two Tenses, One Divided Word, and Borrowed Words, Borrowed Doctrine
- The Sabbath and holy days: No Such Thing as a Christian Sabbath or Holy Day: Contradictions in Terms
- Kingdom conditions carried over to the Body: Kingdom Salvation: The Conditions, the Covenant, and the Coming King
- The tithe: Grace Giving: What Replaces the Tithe in Practice
"If ye continue" and "keep in memory" guard the same thing Galatians does: nothing added to Christ
Two texts are brought against a believer's assurance, and they should be read where they stand. The first is in the passage already quoted: "By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:2). What must be kept? What I preached unto you, and the next verses say what that was: Christ died, was buried and rose. And what is believed in vain? The King James uses the same word in the same chapter, when some at Corinth said there was no resurrection: "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). Then he answers his own supposition: "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). The faith that is vain is the faith with the resurrection taken out, which is what the deniers at Corinth held. The faith that keeps in memory what Paul preached is not vain, because Christ is risen. In this verse the condition is about the content of what is held. It names no work.
The second is Colossians: "If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard" (Colossians 1:23). The site has already worked through this verse at length in If Ye Continue in the Faith — What Colossians 1:23 Really Means and in The Hope of the Gospel, and three things from them bear on this article.
The sentence has already said what God did. Two verses earlier Paul wrote, "yet now hath he reconciled In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight" (Colossians 1:21-22). Hath he reconciled is past tense and God's act. The if that follows does not retract it.
Paul uses if this way in the same letter. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above" (Colossians 3:1), and two verses on, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3). The if states what is already so and presses the conclusion from it. Grounded and settled describe the people to whom the declarations belong. They are not a threshold to be kept.
What he is guarding against is an addition. The warning comes in the next chapter: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Colossians 2:8), and "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days" (Colossians 2:16). His answer is "And ye are complete in him" (Colossians 2:10). To be moved away from the hope of the gospel is to be talked into thinking Christ is not enough. That is the Galatians' error again.
The conditions of the Hebrew epistles, such as "if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end" (Hebrews 3:6), belong to the audience they were written to, and Shall Be Saved vs. Are Saved explains why.
So the curse of Galatians 1 and the if of Colossians 1 guard the same thing. Nothing is to be added to what Christ did, and no one is to be talked into thinking he must add it.
What to do with this
Take the three questions drawn from Galatians to every gospel you hear, and to your own. What did Christ do? What must I do to be saved? Is that something I perform, or something I receive? If the second answer is anything but believe the gospel, it is another gospel, and Paul says what follows for the man who preaches it.
When you tell someone the gospel, tell it the way Paul did: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day, and God gives righteousness to the one who believes. Do not tell them to pray a certain prayer first, or to give up their sins first, or to promise their life first. Do not tell them to find a church or find a feeling. Tell them what Christ did and that it is finished.
And when you have believed it, the whole walk lies open before you. Walk in love, as Christ loved you and gave Himself for you. Love your neighbor, honor your parents, let all things be done unto edifying when you come together, yield yourself to God, and be careful to maintain good works. That is the walk of a saved man, and Paul instructs it. Walk in it because you have been saved, and never in order to be.
© 2026 Edward R. Cross
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