There is only one Gospel. It is the good news that God sent His only Son into the world, while we were still sinners, to die on the cross and rise from the dead to pay the penalty for our sins and to purchase a place for us in heaven which he offers to us unworthy sinners as a free gift. That FREE gift is received through the channel of faith. Though there is only one true Gospel there are many “distortions” of that Gospel. Paul is shocked that the Galatians had been deterred from the one true Gospel and were being beguiled by a distortion of the Gospel. It happens to us all at times. There is a tendency for us to attempt to add something to the Gospel like the beguilers Paul was addressing. But as Paul said in Galatians 1:6, that is to proclaim “a different” gospel. Then in Galatians 1:7 Paul clarifies, “…not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” Boice observes, “Paul’s agitation results from the fact that by embracing legalism the Galatians have actually turned their back on the gospel in order to embrace ‘a different gospel,’ which, however, does not even deserve to be called by that name.”

The “beguilers” were doing two things. First they were “perverting the Gospel.” The late F. F. Bruce described this perversion like this, “Gospel it is not; it is a message of bondage, not of freedom. It is a form of doctrine of salvation by law-keeping from which Paul himself had been liberated by the true gospel which he received on the Damascus road ‘by revelation of Jesus Christ’ (v 12). That was the gospel which he preached to others, including the Galatians, and there could be no other. It might be expressed in a variety of ways: its presentation to Jews no doubt differed from its presentation to Gentiles (cf. 2:7), but its touchstone was the proclamation of salvation and life through the grace of God, to be appropriated by ‘the hearing of faith’ (cf. 3:2, 5).”

The second thing they did was “disturb the peace” in the Church. Paul says they are “troubling” the believers. Distortions of the Gospel always bring “trouble” to a church. Richison says, “Legalists came to ‘trouble’ the Galatians with their false doctrine (Acts 15:24; Galatians 1:7; 5:10). Legalism always unsettles the soul and throws the church into confusion (5:10–12). ‘Trouble’ carries the idea of to shake back and forth. Legalists are troublemakers.” They always have been and always will be. Leroy Lawson suggests that adding any requirement to salvation by grace through faith alone “is to deny any freedom at all. It is to return to prison. ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5:1).”