Galatians 1:7
Not another gospel
- The gospel’s word εὐαγγέλιον euangelion · gospel
Original
Translations
which is not even a gospel. Evidently some people are troubling you and trying to distort the gospel of Christ.
Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
not that there is another, except there are certain who are troubling you, and wishing to pervert the good news of the Christ;
다른 복음은 없나니 다만 어떤 사람들이 너희를 요란케 하여 그리스도의 복음을 변하려 함이라
그것은 또 다른 참 복음이 아니며 다만 너희를 어지럽히고 그리스도의 복음을 왜곡하려 하는 자들이 더러 있도다.
Commentaries
Matthew Henry on Gal 1:6-9 as a whole
Those who would establish any other way to heaven than what the gospel of Christ reveals, will find themselves wretchedly mistaken. The apostle presses upon the Galatians a due sense of their guilt in forsaking the gospel way of justification; yet he reproves with tenderness,…
Read the whole commentary →Wesley Gal 1:7
Which, indeed, is not properly another gospel. For what ye have now received is no gospel at all; it is not glad, but heavy, tidings, as setting your acceptance with God upon terms impossible to be performed. …
Read the whole commentary →
Note
Having called the Galatians' new message "a different gospel," Paul corrects himself at once: it is "not even a gospel." There is no second good news to choose between. What there is instead is a group of people "troubling you and trying to distort the gospel of Christ."
In verse 6 the adjective was ; here it is . Many commentators read the pair closely: a gospel of a different kind, which is not another of the same kind. The sense fits. But the Greek of this period does not always keep the two words apart (2 Corinthians 11:4 uses both of rival messages), so the weight falls on the sentence rather than on the shade between the words. The gospel is one. Paul calls it the gospel of Christ, using the noun with a genitive that can be read as news about Christ or as news that comes from him.
The troublers' verb, tarassontes, is the verb of the letter the apostles and elders sent from Jerusalem to the Gentile believers of Antioch, Syria and Cilicia, which said that some men "unsettled you" (Acts 15:24). The other verb, , means to turn a thing into its opposite. Acts uses it when "the sun will be turned to darkness" (Acts 2:20). Nothing in the letter suggests that these teachers told the Galatians to give up Christ. They added circumcision and the keeping of the law (Galatians 5:2, Galatians 6:12). Paul's verb says what the addition did: it turned the gospel into its opposite.
The KJV's "Which is not another" and the LSV's "not that there is another" keep the Greek's bare words; the BSB's "not even a gospel" spells out the point, that what has no claim to the word has no claim to be good news. For the second verb the KJV has "pervert" and the BSB "distort"; Wesley's gloss makes it stronger still: "Subvert or overthrow the gospel of Christ" Wesley.
Wesley draws the answer out of the word itself. What the Galatians had now received, he writes, is no gospel at all: "it is not glad, but heavy, tidings, as setting your acceptance with God upon terms impossible to be performed" Wesley. Matthew Henry names the change in plain terms: "Some would set up the works of the law in the place of Christ's righteousness, and thus they corrupted Christianity" Matthew Henry.
Add one condition to the gospel, and the result is not a stricter gospel but no gospel; in Wesley's words, glad tidings become heavy ones. The verse lets a hearer ask whether the news they were given is still glad, or whether it has quietly become news that grace needs help with.