Was the Reformation really necessary?

After all, the Roman Catholic Church affirms salvation is by grace. They simply don’t believe it is by grace alone in the sense that the Reformers meant it. But how significant could that one word be?

A similar question could have been asked of Paul, when he insisted on a grace-alone gospel in his letter to Galatia. One hundred years ago, J. Gresham Machen pointed out the smallness of the difference between Paul and the Judaizers.

What was the difference between the teaching of Paul and the teaching of the Judaizers? What was it that gave rise to the stupendous polemic of the Epistle to the Galatians? To the modern Church the difference would have seemed to be a mere theological subtlety. About many things the Judaizers were in perfect agreement with Paul. The Judaizers believed that Jesus was the Messiah; there is not a shadow of evidence that they objected to Paul's lofty view of the person of Christ. Without the slightest doubt, they believed that Jesus had really risen from the dead. They believed, moreover, that faith in Christ was necessary to salvation. But the trouble was, they believed that something else was also necessary; they believed that what Christ had done needed to be pieced out by the believer's own effort to keep the Law. From the modern point of view the difference would have seemed to be very slight.^[1]J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Sanford, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2023), 21. Emphasis added.

They had so much in common, but Paul recognized the danger of adding to the gospel. That’s why he opens Galatians with such strong language,

I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is really not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed! (Galatians 1:6–9)

In his sermon “The Danger of Adding to the Gospel,” John MacArthur explains how Paul’s conviction to keep the gospel pure led him to confront the apostle Peter (Galatians 2:11–12).

John explains,

What is behind this confrontation is what is behind the book of Galatians. What is behind the book of Galatians is Paul’s desire to defend and declare the true gospel in the face of certain men who have come into the churches of Galatia and propagated a false gospel. This is a polemical book—it is a fight.

Paul taught in Galatians what Martin Luther recognized in the Reformation: Any modification of the gospel—however slight—renders it useless.

Watch John MacArthur's message "The Danger of Adding to the Gospel."