Galatians 1:9
The gospel you received
- The gospel’s word εὐαγγελίζομαι euangelizomai · to speak good news
Original
Translations
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be under a curse!
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.
As we have said before, and now say again: if anyone may proclaim to you good news different from what you received—let him be accursed!
우리가 전에 말하였거니와 내가 지금 다시 말하노니 만일 누구든지 너희의 받은 것 외에 다른 복음을 전하면 저주를 받을지어다
우리가 전에 말한 것 같이 내가 지금 다시 말하노니 만일 어떤 사람이 너희가 받아들인 것 외에 어떤 다른 복음을 너희에게 선포하면 그는 저주를 받을지어다.
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
Nothing on this verse itself.
Read the whole commentary →
Note
Paul says it again: "As we have said before, so now I say again." Repeating the curse is not a loss of temper; it marks a boundary that will not move. Yet the second sentence is not a copy of the first.
Verse 8 was a supposition, ean with the subjunctive: if we, or an angel, should ever preach otherwise. Verse 9 uses ei with the present indicative, euangelizetai: if anyone is preaching to you. The supposition now describes what is happening: the troublers were already in Galatia (Galatians 1:7). The verb is the same , here taking "you" (humas) as its direct object. "We have said before" is a perfect, proeirēkamen, and may point back to verse 8 or to a warning Paul gave while he was with them.
The standard shifts as well. In verse 8 it was the gospel "we preached to you"; in verse 9 it is the one "you received." The verb parelabete is the word for receiving what is handed on, the word Paul uses in "what I received I passed on to you" (1 Corinthians 15:3). The gospel now belongs to the Galatians too, and they are its keepers.
Here the English versions differ in a way that matters. The KJV's "If any man preach any other gospel unto you" uses the subjunctive "preach" in both verses, so the shift from a supposition to a present case cannot be seen; the BSB's "If anyone is preaching to you" keeps it. The LSV's "if anyone may proclaim to you good news different" leans back toward the supposition. Each is a fair English sentence; the BSB is the one that shows the change of mood.
Matthew Henry sees two directions in which a gospel can be bent: "All other gospels than that of the grace of Christ, whether more flattering to self-righteous pride, or more favourable to worldly lusts, are devices of Satan" Matthew Henry. He warns as firmly against putting good works in the place of Christ's righteousness as against throwing off the moral law as a rule of life.
The word anathema later became the church's way of marking a boundary of the faith. The council of Nicaea in 325 closed its creed by declaring that the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes those who say there was a time when the Son was not the Nicene Creed. The councils drew that boundary with the very word Paul uses in these two verses.
The severe words of this verse are not aimed at its hearers. They guard what the hearers received from those who would change it.
Source
- Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, The Nicene Creed 325/381 — The creed shared by the churches of East and West. In 325 it confessed the Son of one substance (homoousios) with the Father; in 381 it added the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son; the Western churches later added that the Spirit proceeds from the Father 'and the Son' (the filioque). Read