Hold Fast or Turn Away

I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to Himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ. (Galatians 1:6-7 NLT)

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are following a different gospel — not that there really is another gospel, but there are some who are disturbing you and wanting to distort the gospel of Christ. (Galatians 1:6-7 NET.)

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. (Galatians 1:6-7 NASB)

I marvel that ye are so quickly removing from him that called you in the grace of Christ unto a different gospel; which is not another gospel only there are some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. (Galatians 1:6-7 ASV)

The reason we suffer under the effects of another gospel is that we have made a volitional choice to exit the "highway of holiness" via the interchange in order to travel on a counterfeit roadway instead! Between the corruption that lives in our own heart that exerts itself in a false wisdom and the deception of the enemy we essentially beat ourselves to the draw. We insist that we are still traveling upon the bright path because we cannot discern that the light we see is really darkness (Matthew 6, Luke 11). When our most ardent prayer is the one we say before we eat, and the inattentive listening of the weekly sermon at Sunday worship is our only meal in the Word it is no wonder that sin abounds more within the church than without. A quick sojourn in the third chapter of the Revelation will drive the point home when we see the Lord of Glory knocking on the door of the church asking to come in! Yet be encouraged! He is knocking! If only we would open the door! We would find something more precious than life itself, relationship with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Ye are so quickly removing (houtōs tacheōs metatithesthe). The present middle indicative of metatithēmi, to change places, to transfer. “You are transferring yourselves” and doing it “so quickly” either from the time of their conversion or most likely from the time when the Judaizers came and tempted them. So easily some of them are falling victims to these perverters of the gospel. That is a continuous amazement (thaumazō) to Paul and to men today that so many are so silly and so gullible to modern as to ancient charlatans. (A. T. Robertson) Public Domain

Learn hence, that men, professedly pious, and apparently ardently attached to the gospel, may become soon perverted in their views, and alienated from those who had called them into the gospel, and whom they professed tenderly to love. The ardor of the affections becomes cool, and some artful, and zealous, and plausible teachers of error seduce the mind, corrupt the heart, and alienate the affections. Where there is the ardor of the first love to God, there is also an effort soon made by the adversary, to turn away the heart from him; and young converts are commonly soon attacked in some plausible manner, and by art and arguments adapted to turn away their minds from the truth, and to alienate the affections from God. (Dr. Albert Barnes) Public Domain

Their sin and folly were that they did not hold fast the doctrine of Christianity as it had been preached to them, but suffered themselves to be removed from the purity and simplicity of it. (Matthew Henry) Public Domain