Essential Doctrines
Gregory Koukl: Saturday, February 11, 1995
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What are the essential doctrines of the Christian faith? There
are differences of opinion throughout the history of the
church on this issue. For example, you might find a different group
of doctrines at different times from the Catholic Church
than you might from a Protestant church. As a matter of
fact, as I understand it, believing in the primacy of the Catholic Church
was an essential doctrine at one time. Now, not only need
you not believe in that, but you don't even need to believe in any of
these six doctrines I'll list to go to heaven now according to
Catholic doctrine. I'm just making the observation that
there are differences of opinion about what is an essential doctrine.
I'll give you what I believe are the essential doctrines,
and I will give you the verses that I believe support them.
The first one is that you must believe that He is and that He
is a rewarder of those who seek Him in order to please
God (Hebrews 11). But of course, it is clear that it is not enough to
believe just in God and leave it at that because the First
Commandment condemns those who have other gods before
them other than the true God. So the first essential doctrine is that
you must believe in God as He is in Himself. You must
have an accurate picture about the fundamental nature of God. I think
that entails the Trinity. You cannot deny the nature of God,
the God of the Scripture, and still call yourself a Christian.
In John 4:24 Jesus says, "God is spirit and those who worship Him must
worship Him in spirit and in truth." Must . Exodus 20:2,3
says, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the
land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other
gods before me."
The God of the Bible is a triune God, one God in three Persons.
Jesus seems to hint at the necessity of that in John 8
when he says, "Unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins."
He might have meant, You must believe that I am He (i.e.
the Messiah), but it looks like it was probably a reference
to His deity because later on He uses the same language and makes a
very clear reference to His deity when he says, "Before
Abraham was, I Am." You must believe in God as He is in
Himself and He is a Trinity.
Secondly, you have to believe in Jesus as He is in Himself.
That entails believing in the deity of Christ and His
full humanity. One reason that I can say this is because the Scripture
makes distinctions between another Jesus and the true
Jesus. It does this in 2 Corinthians, and I believe Galatians
does as well. There are at least two places that warn against another
Jesus. Galatians refers to another gospel.
So there is Jesus and then there is another Jesus. The Jesus
who is an incarnation of the angel Michael is not the
Jesus of the Scriptures, but the Jesus of the Watchtower Society. The
Jesus who is the spirit brother of Lucifer is not the
Jesus of the Scriptures and of salvation, but it is the Jesus of
Mormonism. The Jesus who is a Hindu guru is not the Jesus of
the Scriptures, but the Jesus of the New Age movement.
You cannot believe in these other Jesuses and be saved because you believe
in someone who can't save you.
There is an issue of general theology in the Trinity and an
issue of Christology.
Third, you must also believe the bodily resurrection. Paul makes
the comment in I Corinthians 15, "If the dead are not
raised and Christ is in the grave, our faith is worthless. We are still
in our sins and those who have fallen asleep in Christ
have perished." Romans 10:9 says very clearly, "If you
confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that
God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved."
"Those are the usual five you get on a list:
the Trinity, the deity and humanity of Christ,
the bodily resurrection, salvation by grace through faith."
What is the resurrection that is referred to here? It is the bodily
resurrection, not a spiritual resurrection because a spiritual
resurrection is not a resurrection. In a spiritual resurrection nothing
is resurrected. A resurrection is when something is revivified,
resuscitated, re-surrected. It is done again. The body that
was once dead is now alive. It may be that the body has some qualities
that are changed, but the original body is the body that
is raised. That's the bodily resurrection. When you say
a spiritual resurrection, the spiritual resurrection is not a resurrection.
Only a bodily resurrection is a real resurrection.
Fourth, you must believe in man's fallenness and culpability.
This follows from the gospel message. Romans 6:23 says,
"All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Frankly, the
issue of salvation is that you get forgiven because you've
sinned. If you say you haven't sinned and man has no sin
and hasn't fallen, 1 John 1 says that you've called God a liar and you
are still in your sins. Man is guilty. He may not even
feel guilty of certain things, but guilt is not a feeling. Guilt
is a judicial reality. If we say that we have not sinned,
then the truth is not in us and we call God a liar. Romans 11:32
says, "God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy
to all." Because of the gospel message, if you don't acknowledge
the bad news, you can't make use of the good news. The
bad news is that we have sinned and are guilty before God.
Fifth, salvation is by grace through faith. You must believe
in the substitutionary atonement. Romans 11:6 says, "If
it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works otherwise grace
is no longer grace." "This is the work that we are to
do, believe in Him whom He has sent," Jesus says in John 6. We
are saved by grace through faith in the substitutionary atonement
of Jesus Christ. There are quite a number of verses that
make the point that Jesus is the only way. This is probably the best
substantiated of all of these.
Those are the usual five you get on a list: the Trinity, the
deity and humanity of Christ, the bodily resurrection,
salvation by grace through faith.
"You don't go to hell because you just happen
to mistake a doctrine. You go to hell because
you have broken God's law."
Sometimes people add the Scriptures. You've got to believe that
the Bible is inspired. That is not essential doctrine, although
I would consider the authority of Scripture is a functional necessity
because without it none of the other truth could be affirmed or
asserted with confidence. Once you get rid of the authority
of Scripture, the other ones fall one by one like dominoes. I've added
man's fallenness and culpability because it seems to be
a necessary qualifier for the gospel, although most don't
include that on other lists.
I will tell you another essential doctrine that the Scripture
makes very, very clear that I have never seen included
on a list. You must believe that Jesus is the Messiah. If you repudiate
such a notion, you cannot be saved. By the way, whenever
the word "Christ" appears in the New Testament, that is
simply the Greek translation of the Hebrew word meshiac. Christ is the
Greek for Messiah. When the Bible says "Jesus the Christ"
it means Jesus the Messiah. Whenever it says Jesus Christ--by the
way, Christ isn't Jesus' last name, that's His title--it means
Messiah. 1 John 2:22 says, "Who is the liar, but the one
who denies that Jesus is the Messiah? This is the antichrist, the one
who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the
Son does not have the Father, the one who confesses the
Son has the Father." That's pretty clear. 1 John 4:2 says, "By this
you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses
that Jesus Messiah has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit
that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this
is the spirit of antichrist." 2 John 7 says, "For many
deceivers have gone out into the world. Those who do not acknowledge
Jesus Messiah as coming in the flesh, this is the deceiver
and the antichrist."
The Scripture has no kind words for people who repudiate the
Messiahship of Christ. A very strong conclusion can be
drawn from this. The New Testament teaches that Jews who repudiate Jesus
as the Messiah do not ultimately have a love for the Father.
That is not my opinion. That is the opinion of the Apostle
John, and it is also the opinion of Jesus Christ. "You have rejected
Me because the love of the Father is not in you." Those
are strong words.
Someone could say, How can you say that about Jews? You don't
know all the Jews. No, I don't. God does. This is not
my opinion. To be honest with you, I don't personally like this particular
teaching. If it were up to me, I would change it. But it's not
up to me. It is not my opinion. I don't like it, but there
it is. It is God's opinion. And if we are people who hold the Bible
to be revelatory on the issue of salvation, then we cannot
at the same time be people who acknowledge that nice people
who are Jewish but reject Jesus as Messiah find their way into heaven.
That is not in the Bible. If we say that, we are saying
something that is contrary to the biblical teaching. The Bible
makes it clear that an essential doctrine is a belief in Jesus
as the Messiah.
The six essential doctrines would be: the Trinity, the deity
and humanity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, man's
fallenness and guilt, salvation by grace through faith by the substitutionary
atonement of Jesus Christ, and belief that Jesus is the Messiah.
And you have a seventh doctrine that strikes me as a functional
necessity, that is the ultimate authority of Scripture without which
none of the other truths can be affirmed or asserted with confidence.
By the way, it's really important that people know these doctrines
because many Christians are quite kind-hearted and they
end up not being very careful about drawing distinctions between truth
and falsity because they don't want to disagree. I understand
that. But if you were really kind-hearted then you would
be honest and straight-forward with people about the demands of the
gospel on their lives. The demand of the gospel is that you believe
particular things to be true. It's not just a matter of
mere belief, as if these are just some incidental details of theology
that you might happen to be mistaken about. And if you
just happen to be mistaken, why should you go to hell
because of that?
You don't go to hell because you just happen to mistake a doctrine.
You go to hell because you have broken God's law. It is
very critical to understand that. God only judges guilty people. People
get judged by God not because they mess up on their theology
but because they are guilty. People who are guilty get
condemned. That's it. There is a way to get around that but you've to
know a couple of particular things that are true before
you can take advantage of the forgiveness God offers.
That's where the essential doctrines come in.
This is a transcript of a commentary from the radio
show "Stand to Reason," with Gregory Koukl. It is made
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