Anathema Upon False Gospellers (Galatians 1:8-9) by Rev. Angus Stewart
I. The False Gospel
II. The Terrible Anathema
III. The Holy Reasons
Matthew Henry on Galatians 1:6-9: “That they were removed to another gospel, which yet was not another. Thus the apostle represents the doctrine of these judaizing teachers; he calls it another gospel, because it opened a different way of justification and salvation from that which was revealed in the gospel, namely, by works, and not by faith in Christ. And yet he adds, ‘Which is not another—you will find it to be no gospel at all—not really another gospel, but the perverting of the gospel of Christ, and the overturning of the foundations of that’—whereby he intimates that those who go about to establish any other way to heaven than what the gospel of Christ has revealed are guilty of a gross perversion of it, and in the issue will find themselves wretchedly mistaken ... How confident he was that the gospel he had preached to them was the only true gospel. He was so fully persuaded of this that he pronounced an anathema upon those who pretended to preach any other gospel (Gal. 1:8), and, to let them see that this did not proceed from any rashness or intemperate zeal in him, he repeated it (Gal. 1:9) ... It is only against those who forge a new gospel, who overturn the foundation of the covenant of grace, by setting up the works of the law in the place of Christ’s righteousness, and corrupting Christianity with Judaism, that Paul denounces this.”
John Calvin: “[We] pronounce anathema upon everyone who has not confessed himself a sinner before God, before the angels, before his church, and in short, before all men” (Institutes 3.4.6).