By Rev John Chew
Before I became a Christian, I didn’t know anything about the Gospel or how valuable it is. After I received Christ as my personal saviour, I grew gradually in the knowledge and understanding of the Holy Bible. God opened my spiritual eyes to comprehend the depth and width of the Gospel as well as the value and significant impact it has over life.
In accepting the Gospel, I have the privilege to be a child of God living in this sinful world. I am thankful to Him in so many ways, this paragraph is insufficient to share about God’s continual guidance through the Holy Spirit. My family and I are thankful for His faithful and abundant providence, daily care and protection from dangers and temptations as we seek to live out Christ in this complicated and changing world. I also praise God that believing in Christ really helps me to seek to live in righteousness and holiness. I am still learning daily to rely on God’s power to follow Him.
It is indeed very important for us to continue to uphold and live out the Gospel. Reading Gal. 1:1-9, we might be astonished and ask, “Why did some of the Galatians abandon the Gospel?” The reason is that there were false teachers confusing them with false teachings such as we are justified by law not by faith, and we need to live by the law. But Paul reminds the Galatians in Gal. 2:19-20, Paul therefore had to rebuke them for being foolish.
The world that we live in is flooded with many false teachings and we could fall victim to them. We could be trying to gain salvation through legalism by doing good works.
How then can we avoid being influenced by false teachings? One solution is to grow in maturity in Christ, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14). In other words, to counter false teachings, we need to grow in our relationship with Christ through growing in the knowledge of the Bible and applying its teachings in our lives. This is vital to spiritual maturity. We will experience God through answered prayers. His words of promises will help us overcome spiritual battles. Our faith in Him will grow deeper and our love for Him and others will be more real.