Without A Doubt - The Essentials Of Saving FaithSample

Essential and non-essential businesses became a new part of our vocabulary and understanding during the COVID-19 order to stay at home. Before the pandemic, those terms weren’t ever considered in our minds as a classification. They were all just referred to as “businesses.” Thankfully our faith is not that way. When it comes to a saving faith in Jesus Christ, there are no new categories that have been established concerning what is essential for genuine conversion and assurance of salvation.

The essentials of saving faith begin with one’s personal beliefs about Jesus Christ and how salvation is accomplished. God is not silent about what one must believe in order to be saved. Jesus said that entrance into the kingdom of God requires that one believes (Mark 1:15). It is critical to understand what in fact people must believe in order to be saved. Assurance begins with right belief. As Aaron Menikoff succinctly puts it, “While these beliefs are more than intellectual adherence to sound doctrine, they are not less.” There are beliefs that Paul classified as being of “first importance,” the essential business of the faith.

In summary, the Scriptures are our source for what we must believe, and the gospel is the essential business. Jesus Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He rose from the grave. If there was a NCAA basketball tournament-style bracket for necessary Christian beliefs for saving faith, these would be the number one seeds. These beliefs cannot be a casual hat tip to the idea of Jesus but actually must center on rightfully believing in the work of Christ as the Bible presents it, the only hope for sinners to be reconciled to God.

Peter preached his first recorded sermon at Pentecost, where he claimed that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21). Salvation begins with the acknowledgment of one’s need to be saved from God’s just punishment of sin, the consequence of which being death. This is how one must believe in the saving work of Jesus Christ. Rather than symbolic of the cause du jour, it was a substitutionary death in our place that caused God’s wrath to be satisfied. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (Heb. 9:22). In our place, condemned He stood.

This is a far cry from the Pharisee in the parable in Luke 18, who trusted in himself that he was righteous (Luke 18:9). There is no assurance of salvation in the goodness of oneself or in the belief in Jesus as some sort of symbolic figure, if one is to “know with certainty” (Acts 2:36). We are not called for a generic faith in some abstract word called “faith,” but faith in the Jesus Christ of the Bible, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). In Him, we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1:14).

Paul also names the resurrection of Jesus as an essential business of Christianity, to the extent that he admits the entire Christian faith is a farce unless there is an empty tomb (1 Cor. 15:12–18). Our salvation depends on Jesus being alive. While His death was because of our sins, our justification was the reason for His resurrection (Rom. 4:25).

Easter Sunday is not a metaphor for new beginnings or a celebration of spring. It is the celebration of an essential Christian belief of first importance, Jesus Christ has been raised for our justification. Without the resurrection, there is no salvation, but thankfully He has certainly risen, “raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor.15:4–6). It is clear that Paul wanted the Christians to know this without a shadow of a doubt, as by his own admission, that there is no Christian faith or salvation without it. If there is no faith without the resurrection, it means there is everything for the believer’s assurance with it, as Christ’s resurrection guarantees ours. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ, all will be made alive (1 Cor. 15:22). While there are certainly other doctrines of the Christian faith that matter greatly, the saving power of the gospel is found in what Christ has accomplished for sinners, and this is understood in His death and resurrection, the essential truths of first importance.