Jesus and the Essentials of the Faith
Do you care about the essentials of the Christian faith? Then you’re in the right place. The essential question for Christians dialoging with each other from various traditions all hinges on the question, “What are the essentials of the faith?”
Furthermore, Christians can’t even agree on the way something becomes a doctrine. At what point does a debate over a theological issue go from a reasonable answer to a declared dogma that all Christians everywhere must submit to?
After all, if a Christian speaker says, “This is an essential doctrine of the faith,” and the hearer says, “I don’t agree,” then one of them is certainly wrong.
Some Approaches to the Problem
What or who decides what the essentials of the faith actually are, not just what they think they are? If someone says, “The Holy Spirit,” they are only reframing the question as: “Who decides what the Holy Spirit has declared an essential doctrine?” This is also problematic because the Holy Spirit never gave the apostles an inspired list of doctrines.
I guess we have a few options:
We get the smartest living Christians, lock them in a room, and tell them to debate each other until one of them concedes the debate. This has some obvious drawbacks…
We get the strongest living Christians, experts in hand-to-hand combat, and lock them in a room and have them fight to the death. Whoever wins is the Christian with the inspired list of doctrines. Unless, of course, the opponent who died in a duel comes back from the dead. In which case, we declare the essentials listed by the one who came back from the dead, the list all Christians are supposed to live by.
We decide that everyone is right because they are giving the good old college try. Figure out ways to create word salads in which no one knows what the other one is talking about. Then we smile, nod, and pray that none of us goes to hell for our complicity in purveying a culture of relativism and heresy. This seems to be the most popular approach today.
We will opt for a different way.
In Essentials, Unity…
There is a popular phrase that many Protestants say when they encounter a doctrinal difference between them and another Christian group, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity?” While this phrase is useful for fostering tolerance among various Christian sects, it does not do anything to foster unity.
This is because the phrase, “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity?” makes two major presumptions:
That we agree on the essentials.
That we agree on the non-essentials.
This means that the phrase is only accepted among individuals who already agree on the essentials. But the whole point of the phrase is to have unity among individuals who disagree with each other. If they agreed on the essentials, then they wouldn’t have different denominations.
The phrase invites us to ask several questions:
What are the essentials?
Who decides the essentials?
Where does one go to find them?
Who enforces the requirement to believe the essentials?
What are the risks of getting the essentials wrong?
We are not going to answer all of these questions today. Instead, I think we can bypass them completely by first defining what an essential is, and then looking at which teachings of Jesus apply this definition. Let’s assume that the definition of an essential of the faith is:
An essential of the Christian faith is defined as teaching or practice that is a requirement for salvation.
Put another way, these are “salvation issues.” With our definition out of the way, all we have to do is look at Jesus’ teachings on salvation and see what conditions he puts on them. In other words, where did Jesus say, “Only if you [fill in the blank], can you inherit the Kingdom of heaven.”
We have plenty of scriptural backing for this definition, but note that we don’t have an explicit scriptural backing of what scripture is, what its table of contents are, or which passages should be read in church. If you think all passages of scripture are suitable for the Church, I invite you to look at read Ezekiel Chapter 23, a chapter titled “The Two Adulterous Sisters.”
Doctrine Matters
Doctrine is clearly important from a scriptural perspective. One might say, “Doctrine is an essential issue.” There are plenty of warnings about getting the teachings of Christ wrong. As Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew,
“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven…“Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock…
Mt. 7:21-24
It’s passages like this that inspire one of my closest Protestant friends to say, “I’m not worried about what I think we have correct. I’m worried about where I’m wrong, but I think I’m right.” And who doesn’t, if they are honest, share this sentiment?
When we move into the epistles, we see more emphasis on the importance of sound doctrine. As 1 Timothy 4:16 says,
Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.
Clearly, sound teaching has a salvific effect, not just for us, but for those who receive the doctrines. Whether we like it or not, based on this definition, the doctrinal unity is far more narrow than we might want to admit.
False doctrines can even destroy. One of the marks of false doctrine is its destructive nature. According to St. Peter,
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled.
— 2 Pt. 2:1–2
From this, we can gather that erring on what is essential is a dangerous thing to do. Furthermore, even if we correctly identify those essentials, we could get their meaning and application wrong.
We also can’t say that denominations agree on the essentials; if they did, there would be far fewer denominations. Furthermore, doctrine is what unites us, and false doctrine is what divides us. One essential we will discuss later is unity, something that St. Paul says in his letter to the Galatians is a damnable offense:
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
— Gal. 5:19-21 (NIV)
From these verses, we can conclude that doctrine matters. That denominational schisms have salvific implications. This is not an appeal to the Catholic Church being the true Church, though I believe it to be, but rather to point out that none of the founders of their respective denominations believed that the list of essential doctrines in one denomination was just as good as the list of essential doctrines in another.
So, where do we even start?
WWJT - What Would Jesus Teach?
All my life, I have enjoyed talking about theology. Coming from a family of six kids, all of whom now attend different denominational churches, there is always a potential opportunity to discuss our differences, especially now that there is a Catholic in the mix.
In all our conversations, everyone attempts to maintain a spirit of “In essentials unity, non-essentials liberty…” There is just one problem that inevitably leads us to an impasse, and that is the question, “What did Jesus consider a salvific issue?”
There are at least five essentials that Jesus explicitly linked to our salvation. They are:
☑️ Belief
☑️ Obedience
☑️ Baptism
☑️ Body & Blood
☑️ Unity
1# Jesus & Belief
When we ask, “What are the essentials?” we are asking the question, “When did Jesus say that the topic of his teachings was a requirement for salvation?” This does not mean we do a deep dive on the meaning of the word belief. This is simply to identify what is or is not an essential issue. We are simply attempting to identify those categories of Christian theology that have salvific conditions attached to them. Meaning that if we fail to meet these conditions, we void our salvation.
For example, in John 3:16, Jesus says, “…Whoever believes in Him, shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Clearly, from this passage, whatever it means to “believe in Jesus” has eternal consequences. Does this mean that someone who simply believes that Jesus existed on earth at some point in history has eternal life, or does belief here mean something deeper and more concrete? For our purposes, it doesn’t really matter. What’s clear from the Gospels is that belief is an essential requirement for salvation.
…Whoever does not believe will be condemned.
Mk. 16:16
Regardless of how you answer the question, “What does belief mean?” is irrelevant to whether or not belief is an essential issue. Again, we must first identify the essentials before we can start unpacking them. The fact that Jesus associates belief in Him as a necessary condition for eternal life is precisely what makes theological discussions around what is or is not belief an essential issue.
Therefore, the first essential of the Christian faith is:
✅ Belief
☑️ Obedience
☑️ Baptism
☑️ Body & Blood
☑️ Unity
#2 Jesus & Obedience
Many Christians will stop at belief. They will say that as long as you believe in Jesus, you’re saved, and there is nothing that you can do to forfeit that. But if one were to keep reading the Bible, it would become clear that there are more essentials to the Christian faith in Jesus’ teachings.
First, recall that Jesus condemned the idea of “mere intellectual ascent.”
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
Mt. 7:21
Clearly, merely praying a prayer or saying a few contrite words does not meet the requirement for salvation. We are not permitted to simply think that our belief in Christ’s existence or merely that He was God is sufficient for salvation. As St. James says, “You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble” (Jm. 2:19).
Now, some Christians will immediately be thinking of the verse in John 6:40,
“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”
We will address this later, but this does not imply that the only essential of the faith is belief in Christ or acknowledgement that He is God. We must take the whole of Christ’s teaching, not just the parts we like.
If we return to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew, we find Jesus emphasizing that we must not only hear his words, but do them.
Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock…And everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand…
Mt. 7:24-27
Notice that people who hear, but do not act, are the ones who are the fools. This means that belief is not merely intellectual ascent, but active. That activating element of belief is obedience. As St. James says, “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.”
In John 3:36, we see that Jesus finishes his discourse on baptism and belief by affirming that one must believe and obey. But here is a wrinkle on the essentials discussion. Our denominations do not translate our Bibles in the same way, and this can lead to confusion.
Here is the passage in question, first as the Protestant New International Version (NIV) translates it,
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
— Jn. 3:36 (NIV)
Here is the translation from the New American Bible (Revised Edition) (NABRE), a Catholic translation.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.
— Jn. 3:36 (NABRE)
It’s not that there is nefarious work here on either part of the Catholics or the Protestants. Translation work is hard and presumes a theological framework before there is ever a translation decision made. It would take too long to dive into this, and it’s not my area. But as we investigate the tension around the essentials, it’s worth noting that sometimes our translations mislead us. This is particularly important for the Protestants who argue that scripture is perspicuous or clear in its teachings on salvation, such that anyone can just read it and know what is required of them for salvation.
Regardless, it’s clear from Jesus’ own teaching that obedience is an essential category for salvation. This implies that there are specific and essential teachings that we must be obedient to.
✅ Belief
✅ Obedience
☑️ Baptism
☑️ Body & Blood
☑️ Unity
#3 Jesus & Baptism
It was alluded to in the previous section, but the previous two essentials that we discussed are pretty obvious for anyone who takes the words of Jesus seriously. But as we go deeper, we will discover why Jesus describes salvation as a “narrow way.” Christ’s teachings about salvation were not limited to belief and obedience. When we see what it means to obey him, we find ourselves echoing the confusion of the religious leaders, like Nicodemus, who said, “How can a person once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?”
Many Protestants will say, “I can read the Bible all on my own, and that will be enough to get me to heaven.” Not only is this not taught in scripture, but it’s explicitly condemned.
Jesus said to the religious leaders,
You search the scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.
— Jn. 5:39-40
Obviously, scripture testifies to Jesus, but the scriptures alone are not enough for salvation; you need scripture and Jesus, and not Jesus merely in the “intellectual” or “emotional” sense, but in the objective sense.
Jesus tells us the answer to this in his conversation with Nicodemus,
“Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.
— Jn. 3:5
Jesus is speaking authoritatively here about needing to be born again. The condition is clear: if you’re not born of water and the Spirit, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. This has always been historically understood to mean baptism.
Regardless of your view on the meaning of baptism or its modes (sprinkle vs dunking), those who think it’s optional and therefore not a “salvation issue” are rejecting what Christ and his apostles taught.
If we need a more explicit teaching from Christ, we can go to Mark 16:16
He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.
In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul explicitly links Baptism to eternal life as well.
“Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”
Rom. 6:3-4
Regardless of your beliefs about the meaning of Baptism, whether it is merely a symbolic or sacramental, is not the question we are answering today. What is extremely clear from scripture is that Baptism is intimately linked with eternal life. Those who reject the idea that a theology of baptism is not essential for salvation are in error.
This means that Baptism is also an essential of the faith.
✅ Belief
✅ Obedience
✅ Baptism
☑️ Body & Blood
☑️ Unity
#4 Jesus & His Flesh
So far, we have identified that Belief, Obedience, and Baptism are all essentials, or “salvific” issues that Christians must get correct, lest they be considered false teachers. It’s clear from Jesus that he undeniably links all of these to salvation.
We are now coming to what is probably the most dangerous passage in all of scripture because most people interpret Jesus’ words in the same way that those in John 6:66 did.
In John 6, Jesus famously tells his followers that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood.
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.
— Jn. 6:53-54
Whatever you think this passage is teaching, two things are undeniable:
The meaning of these passages is not immediately clear.
Misinterpreting Jesus’ words here has eternal risks.
As we saw earlier, belief is necessary. But then we saw that belief without obedience is not true belief. Now, we see that obedience means being baptized and eating His flesh and drinking His blood.
Jesus’ words here are essential to the Gospel. That means that if we get our interpretation wrong on what His words mean here, we are committing an error that could lead to loss of eternal life. Furthermore, if we didn’t share the perspective of the apostles on these issues, baptism and communion, we would be considered false teachers and would have been excommunicated from the early Church.
St. Paul tells us this in 1 Corinthians,
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
1 Cor. 10:16-17
Again, regardless of what you think about communion, whether it should be grape juice or wine, whether it’s supposed to be an open table or not, these are not the questions we are trying to answer. All that is being demonstrated here is that if Jesus said “unless you do this…you do not have eternal life” or “unless you do this…you will not inherit the Kingdom of heaven,” then it is undeniable that the issue in question is a salvific one.
The reason why so many people debate the subject of the Eucharist being Christ’s actual body and blood is that they recognize the stakes are extremely high. When one comes to realize that this teaching is not merely symbolic, they are obligated by obedience to leave their churches and find one that teaches rightly on this subject.
Anyone who says that a church’s theology of communion is a “non-essential” is not reading their Bible, or they are trying to ignore an uncomfortable truth, that they might be wrong about something Jesus takes more seriously than they do.
At this point, we have four essentials:
✅ Belief
✅ Obedience
✅ Baptism
✅ Body & Blood
☑️ Unity
That leaves us with one more. Unity.
#5 Jesus & Unity
Many Christians today have become numb to the idea of “Christian Divisions.” Nowhere in scripture are Christians encouraged to break off from the Church; in fact, we are told by St. Paul to,
…Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received…striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
— Eph. 4:1-6
This does not mean that you can’t be kicked out of the Church, but abandoning the Church is not an option. It is clear from St. Paul’s perspective that there are not multiple versions of Christianity in terms of its essential teachings. There is “One Lord, one faith, one baptism…” That leaves us with very limited options on how we are to understand the significance of unity:
There is one form of Christianity that is doctrinally correct.
There is one form of Christianity that is the most doctrinally correct.
No one form of Christianity is correct; all of them have heresy in them.
Clearly, the third version is not biblical. It’s clear from Paul’s writings that he doesn’t see “denominations.” He sees Christianity having distinctive teachings, practices, and visibility.
But what about Jesus? What did he have to say about Unity?
At the end of his life, Jesus prays for something counter to our current experience with Christianity. The main subject of His prayer is that Christians would be one. This takes place before he dies, and is presumably during the Last Supper accounts where Christ says the bread is His body and the chalice is His blood.
Before Jesus speaks about the importance of unity and its role in salvation, He reminds His disciples, and us, that eternal life is knowing the only true God, and that we come to know this truth through Jesus Christ, the one God sent.
Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ…
— Jn 17:3
This sounds like we are talking about our first essential, Belief. But how do we come to this knowledge and put our belief in it? How can you believe in something that you don’t know?
Jesus is recognizing that we need to have a means of coming to the knowledge that He was truly sent by God. Jesus is not referring to His miracles as the primary mode to know this, but to unity.
Jesus is looking ahead to a time when He will not be on the earth in human form. He is praying not just for his current disciples, but “for those who will believe…through [the disciples’ word]”. He explicitly acknowledges that the primary means of coming to know Christ, the Son of God, will be through the visible unity of the Christians on earth. Unity is the “capstone” that makes us listen to Christ on all other essentials of the faith.
Here is Jesus’ prayer for unity, found in John’s Gospel,
Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are… (11)
“I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Jn. 17:11; 20-23
If we come to know that Jesus was sent by God, then it follows that we must listen to him on all other essentials: Belief, Obedience, Baptism, and the Eucharist. But we come to know that Jesus is sent by the Father through something Jesus calls unity. It is clear that knowledge of Christ is essential for salvation, but if the believers do not have unity, then it will make it harder for those outside the fold to know God.
Also, keep in mind, Jesus does not frame Christian unity as the basis for having a “generic” knowledge of God. The unity he is praying for among believers is the same unity that Jesus shares with the Father.
Without this unity, salvation becomes psychologically impossible, unless God divinely intervenes.
For many Christians, they will say, “Well, the unity is invisible. We have our differences, but we all love Jesus.” Is that the kind of unity that Jesus is talkinga bout here? Are there “differences” about theological truth claims held by different members of the trinity within the Godhead? No.
Furthermore, an invisible unity makes Christianity a kind of gnostic religion, where you require a secret knowledge of the invisible unity so that you can be a part of it. So the topic of unity must not be a secret unity or an invisible one; it must be a unity that even the world recognizes.
That also means that whatever the Church claims to have this unity, will necessarily have to claim to be exclusive, since you can’t have multiple doctrines and still have unity. They will also make the claim that their visible institution, whether that be Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Reformed, Catholic, or Orthodox, has fulfilled, better than any of the others, Christ’s priestly prayer.
While I believe the Catholic Church to be the best representative of Christian Unity on earth, I’m not arguing for the veracity of the Catholic Church here; Unity being a salvific issue has implications that undermine Protestantism.
Unity is considered by Christ to be the epistemological — fancy word for “how we know” things — tool by which we come to know, not merely think, that Christ was sent by God. Protestantism, per se, is not united. In fact, many Protestants consider its divisions to be a feature, not a bug. Given what Christ says about the importance of unity and it being the means by which people come to know Christ, I find the divisions in Protestantism to be a threat to the salvation of souls.
One might be curious how I could say this.
Let’s take one of our essentials: belief in Jesus. Do you think that God the Son and God the Father have disagreements about whether baptism is salvific or not? Obviously, they don’t.
If baptism is not required for salvation, the Father and the Son agree on this 100%.
If baptism is required for salvation, they agree on this 100%.
This is not to say that I think Jesus and God the Father are unsure of baptism; they are certain of its role in salvation. It’s merely to point out that Trinity is not trying to play a shell game with us about what is or is not important for salvation. What is clear is that our unity on the essentials of the faith is expected by Christ to mirror the unity of the Trinity. That’s a high bar.
As Paul says in Romans,
I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who create dissensions and obstacles, in opposition to the teaching that you learned; avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord Christ but their own appetites, and by fair and flattering speech they deceive the hearts of the innocent.
Rom. 16:17-18
Recap
We have identified five doctrinal issues that Jesus introduced the world to in his ministry and which He considered to be necessary for eternal life.
✅ Belief
✅ Obedience
✅ Baptism
✅ Body & Blood
✅ Unity
If these were essential to Jesus, then that means they should be essential to you. For example, we can’t get belief right and baptism wrong if Jesus considered both of those essential for salvation. Furthermore, we can’t get unity right and say that the topics of Christ’s body and blood and baptism are non-essentials for the Christian life.
There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. If there is one faith, then that means that there can only be one group of Christians that is teaching correctly on these issues. There can only be one institution that has these doctrines properly defined and taught, despite the failings of its members. Otherwise, the phrase “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” is meaningless. Additionally, what would it mean for two distinct Christian sects to get unity right, but not be united with each other?
“In essentials, unity…” I agree with that statement, but as we have seen, unity necessarily leads to a “narrow way.” The reason we have so many denominations is precisely that Christians believe different things about what is essential and how those essentials are to be taught.
There are other essentials we did not discuss that do appear in Jesus’ teaching (i.e., Peter’s role and care for the poor), but these five are a good start for anyone, Protestant or Catholic, wanting to take their faith seriously and be obedient to Christ’s teachings.
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