We may rejoice to know of persons preaching Christ, or even the law; because God uses the preaching of the law to convince many a sinner. Yet we are not to suppose, because God works even where there is a perverted gospel preached, that the children of God ought to make light of error. It is one thing to acknowledge that God works sovereignly, but it is another when the question for us is what is His true testimony. There we are bound in conscience never to allow anything except the simple and full truth of God for our own souls. One ought never to listen to anything short of that, and truth can avoid hearing error. I am not now speaking of mistakes that may be made in preaching. A slip or ignorance is not a perversion of the gospel. It is one thing to listen to what may be a mere mistake; but to go where one knows beforehand that the law is mingled with Christ, is sin.
People may say, This is unjustifiably strong language. But am I going to set myself up to judge the Holy Ghost? For we must remember that the apostle wrote not as a private man, but that which the Holy Ghost wrote for our instruction. And what he tells us is this: “There be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ: but though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which I have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” Let a fair person weigh such a word as this, and then judge whether any language of mine can too strongly insist upon the duty of a Christian in reference to a perverted testimony of the gospel. For this is what was coming in among the Galatians.
(From “Lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians” by William Kelly. G. Morrish, London. P. 22, 23.)
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“The foundation is gone if anything is brought in to justify a man except Christ, who ought to be dearer to me than all other things―dearer even than Christian institutions. To care for Christ is the very best evidence of a saved soul. But I do not admit that there is a lively care for Christ, where a soul knows His will in anything, and does not make it of the very first importance.”
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“There is no one part of foundation truth on which Christians are generally feebler than in their apprehension of the place into which the resurrection of Christ brings the believer. It is the death of Christ that terminates all our questions. If it were our own death, it would, as judgment, be ruinous; but the death of Christ has precisely as much, yea, infinitely greater, efficacy in the way of grace. And Christ rising into a new condition, where there is no possible condemnation, the believer passes before God into the same sphere. The power of God in the death of Christ puts away evil; the power of His resurrection brings us into the good of which He is the center and the head.”
(William Kelly)