The Gospel According To PaulSample

There Is No Other Gospel

Paul himself might have begun a study of this subject by stating categorically that there is only one true gospel. Anyone who suggests that Paul introduced an altered or embellished version of the apostolic message would have to contradict every point Paul ever made about the singularity of the true gospel. Although he expounded the gospel far more thoroughly and pains­takingly than any other New Testament writer, nothing Paul ever preached or wrote was in any way a departure from what Christ or His apostles had been teaching from the start. Paul’s gospel was exactly the same message Christ proclaimed and commissioned the Twelve to take into all the world. There is only one gospel, and it is the same for Jews and Gentiles alike.

It was the false teachers, not Paul, who claimed that God had appointed them to polish or rewrite the gospel. Paul flatly repudiated the notion that the message Christ sent His disciples to preach was subject to revision. Far from portraying himself as some kind of super-apostle sent to set the others straight, Paul wrote, “I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."

Indeed, one major factor that set Paul apart from the others was the abundance of divine grace that had transformed him from what he once was (a fierce persecutor of the church) to the man we know from Scripture (an apostle of Christ to the Gentiles). The vast scope of the mercy shown to Paul never ceased to amaze him. His response, therefore, was to labor all the more diligently for the spread of the gospel and the honor of Christ in order to make the most of his calling.

He wrote, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I [Paul] or they [the rest of the apostles], so we preach and so you believed." Notice he expressly states that all the apostles preached the same gospel.