What are the essentials of Christianity?

Question

Are there any Biblical verses that tell us which doctrines (beliefs given to us by God) are essential and which aren't?

How does one explain these verses:
- 1 Tim 1:3 “I repeat the request I made of you when I was on my way to Macedonia, that you stay in Ephesus to instruct certain people not to teach false doctrines.”

- 1 Tim 4:1 “Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the last times some will turn away from the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and demonic instructions.”

- Ephesians 4:14 “so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery, from their cunning in the interests of deceitful scheming.

We see in Ephesians that we can be as infants, tossed and swept by every wind of teaching.

-Titus 1:9 “holding fast to the true message as taught so that he will be able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents.

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We can see from these previous verses that doctrines DO matter. Since there exists many doctrines that are contradictory from different churches, can we accept those differences as being non-essential compared to some who would be called essential doctrines? No we can’t, there is no distinction between non-essential and essential doctrines in Scripture. In effect, we find the exact opposite in the book of Matthew.

- Matt 4:4 “He said in reply, "It is written: 'One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.'"

-Matt 5:18 “Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”

And

-Matt 5:19 “Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven.
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Please point to Bible verses that tell us that certain doctrines are not essential versus some that are.

God BLess
Robin

Answer 1

Hi, Robin,

It seems to me that there are some essentials, without which one is not a fully believing and practicing Christian, and there are some options for expressing Christian faith.

The chief danger, as your question suggests, is oversimplifying Christianity into a simple rule. Situation ethics commits this error by saying the only rule is love. This oversimplification can lead to a sort of moral agnosticism; it doesn't tell us how to morally respond to handicapped prenatal babies, or to adults in long-term comas. It doesn't help us to recognize the only legitimate relationship for expressing love sexually. In short, reducing Christianity to a simple formula misleads us to chart our own paths rather than taking up the cross to follow Christ.

The same is true in doctrine. We need a doctrinal understanding that encompasses the whole of Jesus' teaching, without oversimplification. Jesus' whole Gospel includes essential teachings about baptism (Mark 16:16; John 3:5), believing Christ and putting faith in him (e.g., Luke 7:50, 8:12), self-renunciation (e.g., Matt 5:3, 10), repentence (Matt 3:2; 4:17; 18:8-9; Mark 9:42-48), obedience to God, doing what is right and just (e.g., Luke 10:25-28; John 12:50), adopting the humility of a child (Matt 18:3-4; 19:14), eating the bread of life (John 6:51, 53-54), and endurance to the end (Matt 10:22, 24:13; Mark 13:13, Luke 21:16-18).

Are there nonessentials? We Catholics genuflect and make the sign of the cross. We abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent. We require celibacy for priests. Such actions and policies are expressions of good faith, but not essential for Christianity. For example, the disciples probably did not genuflect or make the sign of the cross, and at least one, Peter, was married.

Cheers,
Bruce

Answer 2

36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."

As reported by the Gospel writer Matthew in Chapter 22

I think that any doctrine that is not understood and practiced with the spirit of Love goes wrong.

Answer 3

Paul wrote he was content to know nothing except "Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

To me that means the only essential belief is the resurrection.

Really hard to be a Christian I think without believing Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.

Without the empty tomb, He's just another prophet; a good man who taught some nice things.

With it, the very Son of God.

Answer 4

Essentials in Christianity are: God Love everybody with an unlimited, unconditioned, extraordinary Love.

Answer 5

Essentials: gullibility, irrationality, willful ignorance, self-delusion, intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy and drooling stupidity.

Consider this... you believe that a (fictional) cosmic Jewish zombie, who is his own father, can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced, by a talking snake with legs, to eat from a magical tree... (etc.)... and that there is something horribly wrong with people who ARE NOT so gullible and droolingly stupid as to believe such outrageously ridiculous codswallop.

Now... can you see how each of those 'essential' elements are necessary, in order to 'believe' that nonsense?

For the sane and rational mind, that is simply too high a price to pay for the ILLUSION of salvation and the DELUSION that one will have eternal life at the side of a vile and evil ('though thankfully imaginary) diety who would set up his own son to be cruelly tortured and suffer a gruesome and agonizing death... in a public spectacle of blood sacrifice... to APPEASE HIMSELF...

... and having one's thinking become so bizarrely and grotesquely twisted as to regard this as a 'good' thing is not 'good' at all... it is, in fact, quite insane.

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion." ~ Robert M. Pirsig
.

Answer 6

Believing in and following God and Jesus

Answer 7

and maybe see how it compares with the Old Testemant.

"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" Micah 6:8

Answer 8

Love...It conquers all things..