Off-Brand Gospel Truth
Have you ever purchased some "off-brand cologne"? Since I had no job in high school to support my climb to popularity via clothes and cologne, I took full advantage of the samples of good smelling stuff at the counter of my local retail stores in the mall (you know those little samples that look like they could be shots of booze); however, the mall wasn't just around the corner for me to be date ready and worthy, and seeing that my wallet was full of air instead of dollars, I welcomed any form of Christmas "off brand holy water" to advance my social agenda of being someone special at school, dances, or dates.
It wasn't until I met my wife, then girlfriend, in 12th grade that I realized there was a significant difference in the quality of cologne I was using and the expensive brands on the counter in the mall. I totally didn't buy into the phrase "You get what you pay for" back then until my eyes were opened to see that pragmatism is not always the best option as a rule of life. She kept asking me regularly if I had been drinking before and after our dates, and jokingly, I would reply, "Yeah, Preferred Stock." Apparently, there was an obvious odor of drunkenness on my neck that was present long after the good smelling stuff wore off. Sadly, I was oblivious to the filth and really believed the cheap stuff was advancing my cause with the ladies. (No wonder I went out on so many "one daters"!) I'm sure they thought to themselves, "This guy is using Preferred Livestock!")
Usually we look at the past as either really great or really horrible, but I'm sure my memory of it was really somewhere between the two. Nevertheless, you get the point. Sometimes we become so inoculated with something that we can't really distinguish between the genuine article and the fake, the off-brand. Did you know that's precisely the case with the state of the church on many levels today, especially with the hub of the wheel called the Gospel.
The apostle Paul scolded the Galatian churches with these words in Galatians 1:6-7 (ESV), "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to DISTORT the gospel of Christ." [caps and bold added] That's what off brand cologne is, a distortion of the original/genuine article. Where authentic colognes use original vanilla for example, the fake brands use extracts. The sad and devastating aspect of "buying into" a "different gospel" is that it begins to smell like the authentic and look like the authentic but eventually gives off a terrible after-smell that is "a gospel contrary to the one preached to you" in Christ.
So if the goal of Christianity is to bring the authentic Gospel to bear on all of life for the glory of God in Jesus Christ, then we must quickly discern between the "off-brand" and the genuine thing. Once we make this desperate change to the real thing, then we might not only "smell good" to others, we might actually draw more people to us than repel them. May "grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." Galatians 1:3-5
It wasn't until I met my wife, then girlfriend, in 12th grade that I realized there was a significant difference in the quality of cologne I was using and the expensive brands on the counter in the mall. I totally didn't buy into the phrase "You get what you pay for" back then until my eyes were opened to see that pragmatism is not always the best option as a rule of life. She kept asking me regularly if I had been drinking before and after our dates, and jokingly, I would reply, "Yeah, Preferred Stock." Apparently, there was an obvious odor of drunkenness on my neck that was present long after the good smelling stuff wore off. Sadly, I was oblivious to the filth and really believed the cheap stuff was advancing my cause with the ladies. (No wonder I went out on so many "one daters"!) I'm sure they thought to themselves, "This guy is using Preferred Livestock!")
Usually we look at the past as either really great or really horrible, but I'm sure my memory of it was really somewhere between the two. Nevertheless, you get the point. Sometimes we become so inoculated with something that we can't really distinguish between the genuine article and the fake, the off-brand. Did you know that's precisely the case with the state of the church on many levels today, especially with the hub of the wheel called the Gospel.
The apostle Paul scolded the Galatian churches with these words in Galatians 1:6-7 (ESV), "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to DISTORT the gospel of Christ." [caps and bold added] That's what off brand cologne is, a distortion of the original/genuine article. Where authentic colognes use original vanilla for example, the fake brands use extracts. The sad and devastating aspect of "buying into" a "different gospel" is that it begins to smell like the authentic and look like the authentic but eventually gives off a terrible after-smell that is "a gospel contrary to the one preached to you" in Christ.
So if the goal of Christianity is to bring the authentic Gospel to bear on all of life for the glory of God in Jesus Christ, then we must quickly discern between the "off-brand" and the genuine thing. Once we make this desperate change to the real thing, then we might not only "smell good" to others, we might actually draw more people to us than repel them. May "grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen." Galatians 1:3-5
posted by Barry Lagg at
7:36 AM
1 Comments:
We miss your preaching! Good word.
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