The Essential Christian

The Essential Christian

Loosely Based on 1 Corinthians 15:1-28

Khen Lim




Image source: answersingenesis.org

Needless to say, the essential toolkit for any Christian only need to contain the Bible and not much else. The Word of God is indisputably the single most indispensable component of the Christian faith because it defines the seven crucial elements that are the embodiment of the essential Christian as they encompass our understanding and belief when we follow in the steps of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The deity of Christ

There’s no clearer way to put this than to say that Jesus is God. Even though Scripture doesn’t record Jesus putting it so directly, we do know that He gave a clear impression to the Pharisees and the Sadducees (Jn 10:30) when He said, “The Father and I are One.” 

In claiming deity, He also does not deny He is God. When He appeared before Thomas, the stunned disciple exclaimed, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28) and He did not correct him. Anyone who identifies himself as Christian knows Jesus’ rightful reign in heaven cannot be denied.

Salvation by grace

Our sins, even as Christians, rightfully separate us from a pure and perfect God. We don’t deserve anything from Him other than the fieriest punishment ever. And we know it. But then something happened in history that help repatriate us to God. 

By Jesus dying on the cross, our sins are paid, opening an offer of access to heaven and the claiming of an eternal relationship with God. In other words, no great works of charity we do on earth will earn us salvation and therefore, nothing we do can match how God the Father sacrificed His only Son.

Christians know that God didn’t even have to do that for us but it is His love that defines the ultimate undeserved favour that we call Grace. In his letter to the Ephesians (2:8-9, NLT), Paul says, “God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” Without God’s grace, there is no way of getting that ticket to heaven.

Salvation exclusively through Christ

A universalist will tell us that all roads lead to God but what he probably fails to understand is that no matter what faith we are, we will stand before the Seat of Judgement when we die. We will be judged for what we have and haven’t done when we had the opportunities to. 

Judgement will also take into account whether Jesus Christ is the Lord of our lives. For unbelievers, this is not an occasion to look forward to. Unless you know Him or be known by Him, there is no recourse while standing before God and there is no escaping the proverbial lake of fire.

But through Christ and Christ alone, there is a way to seek His mercy and avoid hell. Luke wrote in Acts 4:12, saying, “There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.” The part in the verse that says ‘no other name’ most obviously means ‘other than Jesus Christ.’ 

John 14:6 captures Jesus’ words even more compellingly when He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me.” These verses underline the tremendously powerful and saving Name of Jesus.

The resurrection of Christ

No other event in Scripture defines the essential Christian more so than Jesus’ resurrection. While it is significant that we fondly remember and joyously celebrate His birth, it is in His death and resurrection three days later that puts the whole Gospel into very clear perspective. 

By rising again to reappear before His followers in bodily form, Jesus demonstrated His ability to rise above death to fully put on display His awesome power and glory, which is far more exceptional than what He did to and for His friend Lazarus. It is this event that distinguishes the Christian from those of other faiths.

Leaders of other faiths die and never return. Their religions are purely based on works or some powerless deity or some presumed deified entity. The Christian faith, on the other hand, centres on a crucified Christ resurrected to life. 

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14, “If Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless.” Christians also know, through John’s writings (Jn 2:19-21) that if we deny Christ’s in-body resurrection, we are dangerously rejecting His work here on Earth as God’s offering for the sins of man.

The Synoptic Gospels

Scripture isn’t Scripture without the Gospel and in this alone, there are four to contend with of which the first three are considered synoptic. These Gospels are an important cornerstone and Christians embrace them and are commanded to share them with others (1 Cor 15:1-4):

“Let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and you still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you – unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place. I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and He was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said.” (NLT)

As verse 4 says, Christ died for our sins, was buried and was raised from the dead on the third day. All of this forms the very fundamental essence of the Gospel. At the same time, Paul’s wariness of ‘false gospels’ is just as relevant today and it bears re-acquaintance: 

“Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed” (Gal 1:8-9, NLT).

No Christians can ever divorce themselves from the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ. No one who calls himself a Christian can be ignorant of His death on the cross for sinners and His resurrection to everlasting life, and not know that this is the centrepiece of our Christian faith.

One God, no one else

The first of the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses to hand down to all of us says it tersely but irrevocably: “You must not have any other god but Me” (Ex 20:3, NLT). It is Him or no one else. Monotheism characterises Christianity and teaches us that only one God, Jehovah, be praised, worshipped and served.

“‘You are my witness, O Israel!’ says the Lord. ‘You are My servant. You have been chosen to know Me, believe in Me and understand that I alone am God. There is no other God – there never has been, and there never will be’” (Isa 43:10, NLT). 

This verse compels us to be cognisant of what God wants from us. We are to ‘believe’ and ‘understand’ that He alone is God, that there is no other, never has been and never will there be. If there ever were a ‘competitor,’ know that he is false (1 Cor 8:5-6):

“There may be so-called gods both in heaven and on earth, and some people actually worship many gods and many lords. But for us, there is one God, the Father, by whom all things were created, and for whom we live. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things were created, and through Whom we live.” (NLT)

The triune nature

Although Scripture doesn’t contain any particular outstanding verse that speaks specifically about the triune nature of God, it is described and widely implied throughout the Bible. As early as in the Book of Genesis, we already sense the triune presence in 1:2 when the Holy Spirit is mentioned and then the use of the personal pronoun ‘We’ in verse 26 (NLT) when God put His plan into motion to “make human beings in Our image, to be like Us.”

Perhaps even more so, Jesus makes it indisputable in Matthew 28:19 when He said, “Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations baptising them in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (NLT). 

However, as you can see, the term ‘Holy Trinity’ is nowhere in sight. What we must do as Christians is to understand from the doctrinal standpoint and to do that, we must adopt a holistic view of Scripture and then gain a more well-rounded definition from it. 

I believe all this comes together pretty well in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 where Paul says, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways but it is the same God who does the work in all of us” (NLT). 

We can sense the three Persons here, the essence of three-in-one, but nowhere is the term Holy Trinity used.

The essential Christian

What would all these be worth if it weren’t for the coherence that binds all of them together – faith. Paul says it well in Hebrews 11:1 (NLT), “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.” In John 20:29 (NLT), Jesus says, “You believe because you have seen Me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing Me.”

Christians around the world live by such verses, knowing and understanding that we believe in a God we cannot see with our physical eyes but can feel and sense with the eyes in our hearts and minds. 

However we do see His works in our lives and His creations that are all around us. From time to time, many Christians will testify to His hand nudging us, holding us, protecting us, comforting us and loving us. Many will also hear His voice calling us. 

We can experience all of these because our faith that brings pleasure to God is put to work:

“And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to Him must believe that God exists and that He rewards those who sincerely seek Him” (Heb 11:6, NLT).