Imperishable Inheritance

One of the great­est strug­gles in the Chris­t­ian faith is clearly defin­ing what exactly one must believe in order to be saved and a mem­ber of Christ’s church. There is much con­fu­sion, espe­cially in our post­mod­ern, rel­a­tivis­tic cul­ture, that to be a “Chris­t­ian” becomes leaner and leaner. When this accu­mu­lates, then all of the sud­den Chris­tians think and act the same as the world.

One of the other things I want to note is that most lay peo­ple don’t worry about things such as this, and they also tend to despise denom­i­na­tion­al­ism. Chris­tians who strug­gle with this are those who have deep the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions, and these Chris­tians find them­selves in a denom­i­na­tional church out of con­vic­tion. This list is at the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor; the sine qua non or “with­out which it could not be.” This is a hard topic, and I hope that my read­ers will con­tribute their thoughts on this topic.

If you hold these beliefs that doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily believe you had “good the­ol­ogy,” but these faiths are min­i­mum that I believe the Scrip­tures teach that one needs to hold in order to be saved. Jesus says that “unless you are con­verted and become like chil­dren, you will not enter the king­dom of heaven” (Mat 18:3), and this reflects the hum­ble, child-like, basic belief we must have. This does not believe that I believe in “doc­tri­nal regen­er­a­tion,” but I do think the Scrip­tures speaks to this list.

Essen­tial Chris­t­ian Beliefs

» The Exis­tence of God. This seems rather obvi­ous, but I ran into the prac­ti­cal­ity of this when I met a self-proclaimed “Athe­is­tic Chris­t­ian.” The Bible doesn’t pro­vide an apolo­getic for the exis­tence of God’it assumes it.

» The Deity of Jesus Christ. If Jesus is not God then he could not be sin­less, serve as our sac­ri­fi­cial lamb, and then he would not have raised from the dead. This also includes pre-existence of Christ.

» The Atone­ment of Jesus Christ. By this I don’t mean that we have a “lim­ited” or “unlim­ited” view on the scope of the atone­ment, but I do mean that we believe that Jesus did pay for their sins in order to appease a holy God.

» The Res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus Christ. This is the cor­ner­stone of Chris­tian­ity, and Paul lays this out in 1 Corinthi­ans 15. With­out the res­ur­rec­tion Chris­tian­ity is futile, and we are still in our sins.

What About…?

» Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion By Faith Alone. This is prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult one, because it lies on the line between Catholics and Protes­tants. Even though I think it is a hall­mark of ortho­doxy, I can­not say this is “sal­va­tion essen­tial;” because of the book of Gala­tians. Paul rebukes the Gala­tians for trust­ing in their fol­low­ing of the Mosaic Law (Gal 3:1–4); these Chris­tians were saved in Paul’s mind, but they had a ter­ri­ble mis­un­der­stand­ing. ¹

» The Inerrancy of Scrip­ture. Does the Bible ever say that one must believe in one or another view of inerrancy defin­ing that to the let­ter? No. The truth is that the only inerrant Scrip­tures were those that the authors wrote by the lead­ing of the Holy Spirit, and we have none of those man­u­scripts today. That means that we trust the process of tex­tual crit­i­cism and the faith­ful­ness of God to pre­serve his mes­sage for his people.

» The Trin­ity. This is also a huge stick­ing point, but I would put this in the area of beliefs that there may be a mis­un­der­stand­ing in the begin­ning; but I think it is a belief that should be in a mature Chris­t­ian. There are so many nuances in this, and the church has bat­tled here­sies through the his­tory of the church. The ques­tion is: How much should we under­stand con­cern­ing the onto­log­i­cal nature of God in order to be saved?

» The Hypo­sta­tic Union. This is the unity of Jesus’ (post res­ur­rec­tion) divine and human nature as being “con­joined but not con­fused.” It cer­tainly must be true that he had to become human in order to secure our bod­ily res­ur­rec­tion and that he could be our high priest. This is an under­stand­ing that can come with doc­tri­nal men­tor­ing and correction.

» The Holy Spirit. Now I’m not say­ing we can overtly deny the exis­tence of the Holy Spirit, but I can say that we can have a mis­guided view in both our under­stand­ing of the Holy Spirit in his role in the God­head and his role in both regen­er­a­tion and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion.²

Resources

I lis­tened to two good talks from a radio show called “The­ol­ogy UnPlugged” on this very issue. I sug­gest the talks, because they speak in humil­ity and wres­tle with the issues honestly.

• Sal­va­tion Essen­tials (Part 1)
• Sal­va­tion Essen­tials (Part 2)

1. Now I do believe that if you con­tinue to believe this after study­ing the Scrip­tures for an extended amount of time then I would call into ques­tion their faith, because this doc­trine sum­ma­rizes that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, by the work of Christ alone. [Back]
2. My pas­tor right now is doing a good ser­mon series on the basics of pneu­ma­tol­ogy or the doc­trine of the Holy Spirit.  He real­izes that we very well can be saved and have a mis­un­der­stand­ing on this doc­trine. [Back]