engagingculture Core Beliefs

Core Beliefs: Bible

If you walk into any Christian church in the world and ask someone, “What do Christians believe?” there is a good chance you will get all kinds of different answers. I want to distill all those different things down to the irreducible core beliefs. Other things can be discussed and debated, but what is the essence of what it means to be a Christian?

In 1st Corinthians 15:3 Paul says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures…” This first importance teaching is what I want to ensure remains at the core of everything we do. I believe it breaks down into three parts:

We’ve looked at Jesus and grace previously and I hope you will read them. If you have, you will notice that there are a lot of Bible verses throughout. All of these three weave together. If there is ever a sermon that I stand to preach that doesn’t feature these three then ask me to sit down so that someone else can open the scriptures and exult the grace of Jesus. We see all three in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The Bible is an amazing anthology of 66 unique works by 40 different authors who wrote independently over a span of 1500 years. The authors were army generals, priests, shepherds, kings, farmers, fishermen, tax collectors, and doctors. The Bible was written in three languages on three continents but it all contains a cohesive message of God’s gracious plan for salvation through Jesus Christ.

We take our view of the Bible from the Bible itself. 1st Timothy 3:16-17 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” In other words, God has inspired the Bible and intends it for the building up of the believer unto good works.

The Bible is inspired by God

I get that it is hard to imagine that words written by men thousands of years ago could have any impact on our daily lives. We are always looking for the newest and most trendy thing, but the Bible is probably the oldest and certainly the most timeless thing you will ever read. It was written by the hands of men, but as 2nd Peter 1:21 puts it, “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” These are not the mere words of men. The Bible contains the very words of God.

We can get into lots of debates about issues surrounding this point and I’m not saying that those discussions aren’t important. The heart of the matter, however, must come down to an admission of faith that the Bible, as we have the tools and resources to study it today, is the word of God and as such it should be the final judge for questions of faith and doctrine. There are numerous reasons that I believe we should hold scripture in such high regard including its historical record and textual integrity, not to mention the change that has been wrought in my own heart and life.

But the kicker for me, if I needed any convincing, was that it was good enough for Jesus. Jesus is God, and he believed the Bible was divinely inspired (Matthew 22:31-32), authoritative (John 10:34-36); powerful (Matthew 5:17-18); and about him (Luke 24:25-27). Furthermore, Jesus never questioned a single event, a single miracle, or a single historical claim of Scripture. He clearly believed in and treated scripture as the revealed word of God. It’s probably best to follow his lead.

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The Bible is sufficient and understandable

The basic idea behind the sufficiency of Scripture is that in the Bible alone, God has given humankind all things that are necessary for the proper understanding of who God is, who we are, how God has acted in the past, and what God expects from us, and nothing else needs to be revealed to humanity about God or his plan for the human race. We believe that the Holy Spirit is still active today and he does use prophets to build up his people (1st Corinthians 14:3). However, any message received or delivered must come under and agree with the Bible. That is what John means in 1 John 4:1 when he admonishes the church to “test the spirits.”

Sometimes it is argued that the Bible is not clear in and of itself and that believers need some type of external authority to properly interpret and understand it. This may be some church, a creed, or a the teaching of some church leader. However, it is unreasonable to assert that God would give humanity a revelation of Himself that could not be understood by the masses. The Bible is written in such a way that people in every age are able to understand it. Every believer is commanded to study the Scriptures for themselves. Paul wrote in 2nd Timothy 2:15, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

While the Scriptures contain everything humanity needs to know about God, it does not reveal everything that we want to know about everything. The truth that God has revealed is sufficient but not exhaustive. For example, in the Proverbs we see a couple of verses that point to the behavior of the ant as exemplary, however there is no definition of what an ant is. If I was teaching a class in insect anatomy, I could not use the Bible as a textbook. However, if someone tried to teach that a believer should be lazy and let others do all the work for them, then the Bible has given clear teaching in opposition and we would disagree.

The Bible is profitable to teach and equip believers for godliness

So again, we look at 1st Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

The profitable effect of Scripture, according to verse 17, is “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” And the way it comes about is by the Scriptures. Scripture, in the hands of the Holy Spirit, has the power to make us the kind of people who can discern and do the good that needs to be done. The God-breathed Bible aims to make us doers of good in this world. The doctrines of the Bible are designed to produce good deeds. And they do it by teaching and that teaching has three sequential effects: reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.

When we are rightly taught by the Scriptures, we are first reproved, that is, our errors are pointed out and we are stopped in our tracks. Then we are corrected, that is, we are turned around from the harmful way we were going, and pointed in the right way. And third, we are trained in righteousness, that is, the Bible enables us to be trained, to grow, in righteousness. And as the teaching does these three things (reproof, correction, training) the Scripture equips us for every good deed.

engagingculture Core Beliefs

Core Beliefs: Grace

If you walk into any Christian church in the world and ask someone, “What do Christians believe?” there is a good chance you will get all kinds of different answers. I want to distill all those different things down to the irreducible core beliefs. Other things can be discussed and debated, but what is the essence of what it means to be a Christian?

In 1st Corinthians 15:3 Paul says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures…” This first importance teaching is what I want to ensure remains at the core of everything we do. I believe it breaks down into three parts:

We looked at Jesus first and I would encourage you to read that before you jump into grace. These three pillars could also be described like the three legs of a stool. If you take anything away, you topple over into error. To talk about grace without first knowing who Jesus is from the Word of God and not the culture, and what he has done is very much putting the cart before the horse. We don’t believe in some general idea of grace by which God just forgives us and forgets all about his standard of holiness. Sometimes, we think of grace as synonymous with elegance, or a blessing we say before supper. But the biblical idea of grace is God’s unearned and undeserved favor towards sinners.

Romans 3:23-26 puts all of this together, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” 

There are a lot of big words there, but in essence this is saying that all people have sinned and God can’t just let that slide. So instead of rightly punishing me for my sin, he sacrificed Jesus on my behalf. That in and of itself would be amazing. But I imagine that we would listen waiting to hear what this amazing offer is going to cost us. The outrageous claim that Christians make, which sets them apart from every other religion, is that God is willing to freely give this gift to us as sinners without any payment or expectation of return. Let’s look deeper as we see that we don’t do anything to earn grace and explore how it empowers us for a life of service.

Salvation is received by grace through faith

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “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.”

We all need salvation because we are sinking in the quicksand of sin and the more we work on our own to try to get out, the deeper we sink. Jesus doesn’t just come along and hand us a branch and allow us to pull ourselves out. Instead, we have died in our mess and he comes along and scoops us out breathes new life into us and sets us on firm footing. We do nothing at all to earn this salvation and it’s received through faith, because unlike actually being pulled out of quicksand, we are dealing with spiritual realities that we can’t see.

The life of a Christian is lived by grace through faith. It is grace that allowed us to hear the gospel in the first place. It is grace that allowed our blind dead hearts to be stirred by the truth of his sacrificial death on our behalf. It is grace that awoke our hearts and allowed us to respond with faith. No one comes to Jesus unless the father draws him. When God awakens our dead hearts in grace then the natural response of this new born heart is faith. Then the rest of the Christian life and the struggle with sin is lived by grace through faith.

Good works are empowered by grace

Inevitably, after explaining this free grace for salvation, people will ask, “So does that mean that I just get to keep on sinning?” Of course not. Paul responded to this question in Romans 6, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” We are fundamentally changed at salvation. Galatians 2:20, calls it being “Crucified with Christ.” It is no longer our lives that we live, but instead we live by faith in the son of God who loves us and gave himself for us.

Does that mean that we have to live perfect lives or else risk losing our salvation? Do you imagine that the God who sacrificed so much for your salvation would then just leave you to your own devices to keep that salvation? If that is the case then we are all doomed. If we did nothing to merit our salvation in the first place then we can do nothing to hold onto our salvation.

Paul, in the very next chapter of Romans, wrestles with this saying, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

For the rest of our lives as Christians we will never get beyond his saving grace. Every day we lay down our lives and take up our cross to follow him. And every day we fail in countless ways and we rest in his grace knowing that our works are not the way we get salvation or keep salvation. 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” Thank God for his inexpressible gift of grace! Praise God that we get to live in this abundant grace!

engagingculture Core Beliefs

Core Beliefs: Jesus

If you walk into any Christian church in the world and ask someone, “What do Christians believe?” there is a good chance you will get all kinds of different answers. I want to distill all those different things down to the irreducible core beliefs. Other things can be discussed and debated, but what is the essence of what it means to be a Christian?

In 1st Corinthians 15:3 Paul says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures…” This first importance teaching is what I want to ensure remains at the core of everything we do. I believe it breaks down into three parts:

Jesus is the big E on the eye chart. If you ever ask someone what it means to be a Christian and they don’t immediately start talking about Jesus, go talk to someone else. This is where it has to start. We are called Christians for a reason. When we talk about Christians believing in Jesus, that means belief in who he is and what he did.

Mosaic of Jesus Christ

Who is Jesus?

Let’s set the stage. The Jewish people had been hearing for hundreds of years about this coming anointed one who was going to save them. Think Isaiah 53 and Psalm 72 where we see a coming ruler who will be greater than David but who will be a suffering servant. In this time, the Romans were the rulers of the day and everyone was under their control. Some people imagined that the Messiah would be a new king that was able to strengthen Israel’s army and get them out from under Roman rule, but Jesus stepped onto the stage as a carpenter’s son from Nazareth and didn’t seek political power but made the outlandish claim that he was the Son of God.

When we say that Jesus is the “Son of God,” we mean that he is God. John writes, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14). Paul said in Colossians 2:9, “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” Hebrews 1:2–3 says, “In these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of His glory and the very stamp of his nature, upholding the universe by his word of power.”

We understand Jesus to be God. He is not a mere man or a high-ranking angel in human form. He is truly man and truly God. He is of the same nature as God, not created, but begotten. You create a work of art, you make a sandwich, but you beget a son. So when we say that Jesus is the Son of God, we mean that God has begotten his Son in his very same divine nature, nothing less, from all eternity.

It is important to make two notes about Jesus’ relationship to God the Father. First, God the Father is not God the Son and God the Son is not God the Father; they are distinct persons and can relate to each other. Second, the Father and the Son are one God not two Gods, one essence, one divine nature. From all eternity, without any beginning, the Father has always had a perfect image of himself and a divine reflection or radiance equal to himself, namely, the Son.

The fact that Jesus is God should be enough for our devotion. He is the goal of our faith. Anyone who speaks of temporal blessings through Jesus or the future glory of heaven more than Jesus should not be trusted. We love the good gifts that Jesus gives us, but none of the gifts are greater than Jesus himself. He is the one in whom our souls find their rest.

What did Jesus do?

But, that reality is only true because of what he has done. We would have never been able to see Jesus as infinitely true and beautiful and the solution for the longing of our souls was it not for what he did. So what exactly did Jesus do?
He reconciled men to God through his sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.

We see it all in Romans 5:10, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” This is what Christians mean by salvation. We stand at odds with the Almighty Holy God because of our sin. In Jesus’ death, we can receive reconciliation, and in his resurrection, he defeated death and promises those that are reconciled that they will not suffer the ultimate consequences of their sin.

You see, when men die they are making the payment for their lives of sin. (Romans 6:23) But when Jesus died, he was lifted up as a sacrifice by God the Father. He died so we wouldn’t have to. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is what Martin Luther called the great exchange.

God lays our sins on Christ and punishes them in him. And in Christ’s obedient death, God credits his righteousness to us. Our sin on Christ; his righteousness on us. I can’t say it enough, Christ is God’s answer to our greatest problem.

Jesus is the first great pillar of the Christian faith. You can’t love Christ too much. You can’t think about him too much, or thank him too much, or depend upon him too much. All our forgiveness, all our justification, all our righteousness is in Christ.