Nearly 2,000 years ago, a very real danger presented itself to the early Church. As the Apostle Paul writes to the church in Galatia, the claims of the Judaizers represented a different gospel than the one he had preached to them, by which they had come to a saving faith in Christ.
Central to the controversy was the Old Testament Law, and circumcision in particular.
Gentile believers in Christ had been told by Paul that repentance and faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross was primary. The death, burial, and resurrection of the Messiah was a promise for all who believed, whether Jew or Gentile.
But then the Judaizers came insisting that circumcision was also necessary. And Paul was very clear and direct in confronting them, and in warning the Gentiles not to believe their alternative claims.
Not only new converts were deceived and led astray. The Apostle Peter was even intimidated for a time. And Paul told the church in Galatia that when he had been in Antioch, he had rebuked Peter to his face publicly for having tried to appease the Judaizers by no longer associating with Gentile Christians.
Peter had been afraid of offending the Judaizers. But in his effort to placate them, he had undermined the gospel message.
At heart was not circumcision in and of itself. Paul demonstrated that clearly when he had his disciple Timothy circumcised before undertaking missionary work with Jews.
Rather, the chief concern was that circumcision was being made into a primary issue, and the Judaizers were dividing the early Church in a way that represented a real threat not only to unity among true believers, but to the very message of the gospel.
In America today, the modern equivalent of the Judaizers is this new brand of Woke Christianity which insists that embracing Leftist ideology is the "works" when James the brother of Jesus says that "faith without works is dead."
If we are not clear about that, and if we do not confront this threat of false teaching from within, we will undermine the gospel just as Peter did for a time before he was reproved by Paul at Antioch.
As Paul writes in Ephesians 2:8-10,
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
If social and political activism according to the new Woke orthodoxy are the "good works" which God prepared for us to walk in, we should all be asking how the Church - even the Apostles and all the Church Fathers - missed this for 2,000 years.
But then that is just it. They did not miss this because it was not there, and it still is not. Nor will it ever be there, however persistently the manipulative claims confidently issued from the most persuasive sources might tug on our heartstrings.
