[Please note that I’m including my scriptural references in the links, and that they also link to articles with extended exegesis that I couldn’t fit into this post, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references. Please also keep in mind, however, that I don’t necessarily agree with everything that all of the writers of the articles I link to believe and/or teach (aside from the ones I myself wrote, of course). Some of them just happen to have some good supporting material on the specific point I’m making in this article.]
While those of us in the body of Christ discover pretty quickly that there are at least two Gospels taught in Scripture, the vast majority of the members of the Christian religion have somehow missed this fact, and many are extremely insistent that there’s only one Gospel taught in the Bible. In fact, even after one shows them just how clear it is that there is more than one Gospel, many of them still feel like they aren’t allowed to accept the possibility that this could be true.
Now, there are a number of reasons they feel they have to deny the existence of two Gospels in Scripture, but one of the major reasons is due a misunderstanding of the warning Paul gave in his epistle to the Galatians about preaching any other Gospel to the body of Christ than the one they’d already received. Unfortunately, most Christians read more into this passage than it’s actually saying, leading them to believe a whole doctrine that wasn’t what Paul was getting at there at all.
You see, Paul wasn’t saying there is only one true Gospel there, or that nobody could ever preach a Gospel to someone other than the one he taught the body of Christ. Most people who base their assumption on this passage don’t realize what Paul meant when he wrote “another gospel which is not another” in the verses before his warning. The problem is, if one doesn’t look beyond this figurative translation, they can easily get confused. Is it another Gospel or is it not another Gospel? It can’t literally be both another Gospel and not another Gospel at the same time, so obviously this has to be read figuratively.
Simply put, Paul wasn’t saying people who taught that there were other Gospels were under a curse, since he did so himself just 24 verses later; he was only teaching that those who would preach any other Gospel to the body of Christ than the one they had already received as something they should follow were, but Peter and the rest of the apostles could preach their particular Gospel as something to be followed to anyone that they wanted to without fear as long as it wasn’t to members of the body of Christ, based on the words “unto you” in verses 8 and 9 since Paul was writing to those who had already believed his Gospel, not those who hadn’t. Unfortunately, the evangelists and teachers of the Christian religion today aren’t even proclaiming that one, but instead are the very people who are guilty of preaching the adulterated gospel that isn’t even another legitimate Gospel at all like Peter’s or Paul’s was, bringing the curse Paul warned about upon themselves.
A misunderstanding of this warning isn’t the only reason that most Christians assume there’s only one Gospel taught in Scripture, however. There are a number of other passages they also misinterpret, one of the most important ones being the statement about there how there is “neither Jew nor Gentile,” and if this is something that also has caused you to assume there can only be one Gospel, I urge you to read my next article now, where I explain why that statement doesn’t mean what most Christians assume it does any more than what Paul wrote about the different ”gospel” he condemned does.