Month: June 2012

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Is Belief in the Resurrection Required?

Answering a question today, submitted via email from Aaron in Alexandria. “My brother asked me the other day if the belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a mandatory essential for salvation. I wasn’t 100% on the answer so I told him I wasn’t sure but that it was definitely the quintessential proof that Jesus was the truth. I know Paul teaches you must believe in the resurrection, but the thief on the cross obviously was not aware of it.”

First, belief in the deity of Christ is required to affirm Christianity — in fact, it is arguably the defining belief of Christianity. Believing in the existence of Christ but denying his deity places you in the same camp as the Jews and Muslims. Similarly, believing in the deity of Christ but denying his resurrection presents at the very least a consistency problem. It seems to me that the step from existence to resurrection is a smaller step than from existence to deity, and the resurrection is the primary way in which Christ demonstrated/proved His deity.

Second, we have to understand what the resurrection accomplished. It gets back to the basic gospel message — we are sinners in need of salvation, and we are unable to save ourselves. We are completely reliant on someone (or something) else, and for the Christian it is complete reliance on Christ for our salvation. The effectual means of that salvation is the resurrection. The penalty for our sin is death, and to be reconciled with a perfectly just God, that penalty must be paid. Christ paid the penalty. He was crucified to pay the penalty for our sins, but it was his resurrection that provided the justification — that is, the resurrection is how we are seen good before God. If you don’t believe the resurrection occurred, then how are you justified before God? See Romans 4:24 – 25: “…God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” It was the resurrection that provided the justification.

The point is made even more strongly a few chapters later, in Romans 10. When discussing the disbelief of the Jews, in verse 9 Paul very clearly lays out what is necessary for salvation: “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” However, Paul seals the deal, firmly and unequivocally, in his letter to the Corinthians. In the earliest known creed of Christendom, the Apostles’ Creed in 1 Cor 15, Paul passes on to us that which he received of “first importance” — that Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared. This all-important Creed is followed by almost an entire chapter on the resurrection, where we are told very specifically, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” A Christian faith devoid of the resurrection is simply not a Christian faith.

In short, denying the resurrection comes very close to denying the deity of Christ, it denies the means of our justification, it denies the earliest Creed of the church, and it likely denies our resurrection (and thereby salvation) as well. It doesn’t get any more essential than that.

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What Must We Believe?

I fear the the encroachment of relativism and postmodernism has greatly affected the Christian message — in fact, it has undermined the very definition of Christianity. When I meet someone today and they tell me they’re a Christian, I’m sorry to report that it tells me very, very little about what they actually believe. I know people who call themselves Christians, but deny the unique deity of Christ, or deny the historicity of the resurrection, or other key doctrines I would consider “essential”. This leads to an obvious question — what does it mean to say,”I’m a Christian?” If I make that claim, what does it mean that I believe?

John Wesley is reputed to have said, “In the essentials, unity; in the non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.”. But what if we can’t agree on what the essentials are? About 10 years ago, I started teaching a lesson series called “Essential Christian Doctrines,” or ECD, with the goal of answering this very question. Many of the issues we deal with among Christians are secondary issues, those which we can discuss and debate but not divide over. This includes young-Earth versus old-Earth creation, Calvinism versus Arminianism (and Pelagianism and other variants), and basically every flavor of eschatology (end-time theology) including pre-trib, post-trib, amillennialism, premillennialism, dispensationalism, and so forth. When we boil it down to the simple question of the Centurion in Acts 16, “What must I do to be saved,” it even relegates evangelical sacred cows like inerrancy and the canon of scripture to secondary status.

So what essentials remain? The easiest way to do this is to examine what the first Christians considered essential – those beliefs that they thought and taught were necessary for salvation.
There are a number of places in Scripture where we can turn for guidance — for example, 1 Timothy 3:16. In this one verse, you have the deity of Christ, His incarnation (humanity), resurrection, and ascension. Another key passage, perhaps the most well-known on this issue, is 1 Cor 15:3 – 5. Like the verse in Timothy, this passage affirms the death, the atonement, and the resurrection. Most theologians believe that these two passages are the foundation for what later became the Apostles’ Creed. Finally, we can look at Peter’s sermon (commonly called the “Kerygma”) in Acts 10:36 – 43. This passage is perhaps the best expression of the core doctrines maintained and taught by the early church. It affirms the deity of Christ, the personality and power of the Holy Spirit, the humanity and death of Christ, His resurrection, his second coming and final judgment, and salvation by faith in Christ.

So, based on the stated beliefs and doctrines of the first Christians, we can eliminate quite a few from the “brainstorming” list above. Those that remain, those that were taught by the followers of Christ, include:

i. The Deity of Christ, the Father, and the Holy Spirit (the Trinity).
ii. The humanity of Christ (the incarnation).
iii. The death and resurrection of Christ (the substitutionary atonemtent).
iv. The sinfulness of man.
v. Salvation by grace through faith.

If you do not affirm these basic, core beliefs, then you do not fall under the minimum essentials to be called a Christian. If you believe the essential doctrines, and do not hold to others that are contradictory to these, then you can confidently and proudly proclaim that you hold to the same historic Christian faith taught by Christ and the apostles. To be sure, there is some room for discussion here…but I think this is a fair conclusion based on an examination of the relevant Scriptures and Christian history. What to you think?