Essential Doctrines are doctrines that put you outside of the faith if you deny them. To reject these teachings means you are not a Christian, and the word “Heresy” is usually invoked for this category of error. Examples of essential doctrines are the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Some Christian doctrines are weightier than others. When discussing Christian theology, many of us have heard the helpful quote attributed to Augustine, “In the essentials, unity, in the non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity.” There is much to be learned from this quote, but did you know that many Bible teachers identify four different categories of doctrinal weight?
Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel (Matthew 23:23-24)! In this passage, Jesus says that some teachings of Scripture have more theological impact than others.
One way to describe a doctrine’s weight is by understanding the consequences of being wrong about it. Believing the wrong thing about some doctrines could send us to hell, while being wrong about others has little impact on our spiritual life.
The categories have different names depending on who you ask, but they are essentially the same regardless of what we call them. Graham Cole names the four categories this way.

Level 1 Convictions
Level 2 Convictions
Opinions
Speculations

Those are valuable categories and might be what you have heard. My professor, Craig Hawkins, taught me the following: these are more descriptive.

Essential Doctrines
Cardinal Doctrines
Non-Essentials
Tertiary and Peripheral

Essential Doctrines are doctrines that put you outside of the faith if you deny them. To reject these teachings means you are not a Christian, and the word “Heresy” is usually invoked for this category of error. Examples of essential doctrines are the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and believing in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
Cardinal Doctrines Are extremely Important and have significant ramifications in our lives, but Christians can disagree and still be Christians.
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The Church was the first to create universities, and law was the first area of study. As the political and secular realms needed to catch up to these advances in law, they all studied at law schools run by the Church. There are countless other ways Christianity and its doctrines are foundational to the Western legal system, and these presuppositions are precisely what many from the critical legal theory school of thought are working to remove. The only problem is they are unclear on what they want to replace it with. 

Understanding the Western legal system and its formation is impossible without understanding Christianity’s role. One key point involves the doctrine of the atonement. Before you think this is the fabricated rambling of some guy sitting at a keyboard, which is all too common today, you must understand that this theological link is traced clearly in a classic work by Harvard Law professor Harold Berman called Law and Revolution. Written in the 1980s, Berman is a key source for understanding the formation of the Western legal system. Whether you agree or disagree, you must interact with him. So, what impact did the Cross of Christ play in our understanding of law?
The Western legal system, as we know it, began formation around 1050 A.D. Before that time in the West, there was no centralized institution of law. Feudalism and tribalism were the primary political structures of the land. Folklaw held sway with all its rituals, superstitions, and blood feuds. Around 1050, the Papal revolution took place and began to centralize the authority of the Catholic Church. The Abbot of Cluny begins to have authority over other monasteries, and as their authority spreads, they seek a better understanding of the law. They found a copy of the Justinian Code compiled by Roman Emperor Justinian half a century earlier and began to utilize it as their framework. Still, they also reinterpreted and reworked it more systematically, following the Scholastic method.
Around the same time, Anselm is writing and showing that the Christian faith is reasonable, and he uses logical arguments to make his point. He makes a rational argument to prove the biblical revelation that God must punish sin. In other words, a just God cannot simply let sin go. The penalty must be paid, which was the purpose of the cross. The argument flows as follows.

To remit sin without satisfaction or adjustment is not to punish it.
And if sin needs no adjustment or punishment, then the one who sins is no different before God than the one who does not sin.
And if no adjustment needs to be made before God, then what must be forgiven?
Following this logic, there is no reason for forgiveness because being unrighteous or righteous makes no difference before God.
Therefore, it is unbecoming of God not to punish sin because it would make evil and good equal in His sight.
Since this cannot be the case, then God must punish sin.

This idea of a just penalty for sin is foundational for understanding justice as we know it today.
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If realizing how short we have fallen moves our hearts to repentance, then we are headed in the right direction. Let that contrition burn within us and move us to heartfelt prayer and worship while trusting in the blood of Jesus to wash us clean. Possessing the cleansing we need, let us worship our Savior with gratitude.

Merely going through the motions is unacceptable in the Christian life. This truth is a key part of what Paul tells Titus when he says, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure (Titus 1:15).” This statement presents such a severe dichotomy that it should leave our cold hearts speechless because a ritualistic heart is an impure heart.
We are performative by nature. We like formulas and tend to think that if we do the right things, no matter how insincerely, all is well. For many of us, going to church has become a ritual. We stay in step with the liturgy, but our hearts are elsewhere as we “worship.” What Paul is saying here is that, even if we do all the right actions, if our hearts are far from God, it is all defiled.
In Crete, the church had a problem with false teachers teaching Jewish myths (Titus 1:14). These false teachers were from the circumcision party; they taught all kinds of rituals, saying, “Do not handle. Do not taste. Do not touch.” They were Judaizers at heart, believing these rituals made someone right with God.
Because of cleanliness rituals, they were willing to destroy the work of God for the sake of food (Romans 14:20). This means that the kinds of food you ate or did not eat were more significant to them than Christ’s work on the cross.
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If you were to attain your worldly desire, you might find yourself in a better position amongst your peers, but your soul would not have improved. Possessing things does nothing to improve the inner man, but possessing contentment does. Finding contentment in God conforms us closer to the image of Christ—something possessions cannot do.

We are consumers at heart. Many people today believe that life’s goal is to strive for abundance so they can consume abundantly. The underlying assumption is that this is the way to happiness. However, possessing contentment is better than possessing anything you believe will make you happy. It is common to think, “If I only had this one thing, then I would be satisfied,” but if we cannot be satisfied without it, we will likely not be satisfied with it. Jeremiah Burroughs gives us four reasons this is the case.
Before he lays out these reasons, he gives us an example of a King who wanted to go to war against another nation. One of his political advisors was concerned about this decision, so he asked the ruler, “Why is it necessary to go to war against the nation?” The king replied, “Because then we will be able to conquer the neighboring nation easily.” His advisor asked, “And what then?” The king answered, “Then we will have access to three other nations lined up beyond that. The advisor pressed further, “Then what?” The king smiled and said, “That is the glorious part. Then we will be quiet, take our ease, and feast every day. We will be merry with each other continually.” The advisor asks, “We are secure as a nation now, without any threat. Can you not sit down and be merry now?”
This short-sightedness is the condition of many of our hearts.
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If we don’t look to Jesus, sermons will be dull, and television will be more appealing than God’s Word. The way to stay awake is by remembering what Christ has done for us on the cross, how he washed our sins away, and that he will return to call his children home. We do not stay awake by sheer determination and conflict with the world. We do so by living in gratitude for the cross. 

He sat in church while the pastor delivered eternal truths but could not stay awake. Soul-saving exhortation was coming at him, but he was busy catching his head every time he nodded off. It wasn’t that he had had a busy week or even stayed up too late the night before; it was that he was bored. He felt he had heard it all before, so he let his eyelids droop.
His sleepiness also manifested itself in other ways. The surrounding culture had been moving further and further away from the truth, but it happened so subtly that he didn’t find it interesting enough to note. Sure, there were the occasional moments when it became so glaring that he couldn’t help but notice, but he would be asleep again in a few days. For example, he recently saw the uproar about the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. The controversy was whether the creators meant to create a scene that resembled DaVinci’s Last Supper painting using transvestites. He was fired up for a while because he thought they had mocked his faith. He settled down when the creators said everyone misunderstood their intention. His once crystal-clear perception of the situation was now muddied, so he let go of his concern.
The problem was the culture had already desensitized him enough that he failed to realize that even if they didn’t intend to mock his faith, it was still the normalizing presentation of transvestites, and other strange pagan perversions on a world stage. Those depravities had become so commonplace that it didn’t register on his Richter scale.
Later that week, he intended to pick up his Bible and read it, but there was a new movie streaming that he wanted to watch, so he opted for that instead. Afterward, he called his friend to rave about how much he loved the show, unconscious of the fact that the film promoted some of the same sexual deviations represented in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.
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When we stand before the Lord, there is only one to whom we will point for our acceptance before God: Jesus Christ. He fulfilled the law that we could not, paid our debt on the cross, and credits his righteousness to our account. Even when we experience significant sanctification in this life through the work of the Holy Spirit, we will never point to our righteousness as the basis for our salvation. Remember, even the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like other ungodly men gave God credit for his righteousness and all his works, yet he walked away unjustified (Luke 18:9-14).

Those who teach that works must be added to faith as a condition for salvation can never tell you when you have done enough. This fact alone exposes why you will never find assurance of salvation in their systems. The problems with believing our right standing before God is a result of Christ’s work, plus our merit are innumerable, but the inability of its proponents to answer the question, “How much work is enough?” exposes its destructive effect on the hearts of those who adhere to it.
I refer to the effects of this doctrine as destructive because there are only two possible responses to imbibing this theology, and neither is edifying. The first is bondage to pride. Someone who is blind to their sinfulness will begin to rejoice in their goodness. After all, they are contributing some merit to their salvation. Jesus has not done it all, so there is room for boasting. The second response is bondage to constant anxiety. Anyone awake to their corruption will tend in this direction. They will strive and struggle but will never find themselves able to rest in Christ because, as long as they live, Christ’s work will never be sufficient, and their work will never be complete.
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The primary interaction was between two boys about the same age. I saw the one who was evangelizing get up off the ground after being pushed down. With tears in his eyes, he came close once again to the kid who had pushed him down and said, “I love you and just want you to know Jesus.” With that, the kid who had pushed him down said, get out of my face, and then swung a wide punch and hit him squarely on the cheekbone, which caused the kid to stay down for a while as his friends gathered around him to make sure he was alright. Seeing this, I was torn. 

Last night, I woke up thinking about something I had witnessed long ago that had disturbed my young faith. The years have stolen most of the details of that night from my memory, but the impactful aspect of the event still lingers. It was one of those moments when the simplicity of youth is confronted with the complexities of reality.
Here is what I remember about the night. It was the late 1980s. My parents, a good friend, and I had traveled to another small town in western Kansas, and we were at a county fair. It was one of those nights when the warm air feels good on your skin. My friend and I had gone off alone to do what 15-year-old guys do—look for cute girls. I can still see the short brownish buffalo grass that carpeted the fairgrounds. It was almost dry enough to crunch under your feet when you walked. That detail probably remains with me because I would soon see a kid about my age lying in it after he was knocked to the ground.
The incident I am about to describe might seem trivial compared to the more shocking scenes we see on social media today, but it left a lasting impression on me. To help understand, you will need to recall what it was like to be young if you are not currently living it. Remember the time when everything was bright and new. Think back to when your primary mode of transportation was a bicycle, and romance was an exciting new prospect you did not fully understand. Other than schoolwork, nothing yet had begun to lose its sheen. During this time of life, we feel everything emotionally, and it does not take much for something to be a learning experience.
My faith had seen few challenges and, though real, was simplistic. I still held the idea that just about anything considered Christian was unequivocally good, and anything opposed to it was, without mixture, bad. It was this freshness of youth and simple faith that accompanied me as I walked with my friend to the outskirts of the fair, where we saw a commotion. There were about five kids our age, a couple of girls and three boys, surrounded by about six or seven other guys. The smaller group had been sharing their faith with the larger one, and when we walked within distance to see what was going on, some of the guys in the larger group started to grow hostile.
The primary interaction was between two boys about the same age.
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Pausing to recognize the unremarkable should help remind us that even when we do routine things, we are still privileged to participate in the long history of human life. Many of us get up in the morning, pour a cup of coffee or orange juice, pull out a chair, and sit down at a simple table for breakfast. We do homework, we pay bills, we write emails, we laugh, and we hurt. As in the years long past, we are doing the same things today. Sure, we have different technology, but we are still people being people. And we still sit at tables.

Many of our mundane moments go unnoticed, but we should pause to appreciate them occasionally because they will soon come to an end. I am sure this will sound strange to some of you, but I take pleasure in pulling out a chair and sitting next to a table or desk. The simpler, the better.
We own an antique secretary’s desk we picked up at a yard sale for next to nothing. Someone built it either in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I like to pull up a chair and write there, usually with pen and paper. Occasionally, as I write, I wonder who else sat at this desk and what else had been written on this old wooden surface long before computers and mobile phones.
Did someone sit here and write a letter to a loved one who was away at war with a heart full of concern? Did tears fall on this surface while a couple tried to figure out how to pay bills larger than their income during the Depression? Was it used to write wedding invitations, baby announcements, or tell loved ones about a cancer diagnosis?
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Sin is the reason the horrors of sickness exist. This truth does not mean that if someone is sick, it is because of some specific sin in their life, but when Adam fell, all manner of distress was unleashed upon this world—even death. But for those of us whose sins are forgiven, even if disease takes our life, we will one day be healed when these mortal bodies are raised immortal. In heaven, where there is no sin, there will also be no sickness.

If a Christian is facing an illness that will not go away and needs encouragement, the Lord healing the paralytic who was lowered through the roof in Mark 2:1-12 can touch our deepest wounds but not in the way many might think. When the man who could not move of his own volition was lowered to Jesus in the crowded room, Jesus did not immediately heal him. Instead, he forgave his sins. The forgiveness of sins is where we find our ultimate reassurance. Only later, when the Pharisees complained that Jesus did not have the power to forgive sins, did he heal the man. The healing was secondary and served the express purpose of letting everyone know he had the power to blot out our transgressions.
We need the forgiveness of sin much more than we need physical healing. When we think of the horrible diseases that wreak havoc on our bodies and the lives of those we love, such as cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and many others, we know the devastation they can unleash. The Christian does not make light of the horrors of disease to make sin seem worse. Instead, we look at infirmity with all its bodily indignity and pain and then remember that sin is even more devastating because it destroys our souls. Considering the horrors of illness while understanding that sin is worse only sheds light on how much we desperately need forgiveness.
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If you are a child of God through faith in Christ Jesus, he will rescue you because he delights in you. He will either draw you out of many waters or carry you through them. He may even invite you to walk on the waves with him by keeping your eyes on him. The Lord is your rock, your fortress, and your deliverer. So, I ask you again, why are you so afraid?

I know from experience that when faced with troublesome circumstances beyond our control, our natural reaction is to fear, but we must ask ourselves, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” Have we forgotten our Father, and how many times he has delivered us? Yes, the storm is raging, but he can calm the storm. All he needs to do is say, “Peace, be still,” and the winds will cease (Mark 4:35-41).
Your Lord once freed a man tormented by a legion of evil spirits. The man used to walk day and night among the tombs, cutting himself with stones. The mere presence of Jesus caused the demons to cry out, “Jesus, Son of the Most High God, what have you to do with us?” Immediately, the unclean spirits came out of him, and he was clothed and in his right mind (Mark 5:1-20). Why are you so afraid? Do you think your troubles are more significant than this?
He raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead and fed the 5000. A woman with a flow of blood for twelve years only needed to touch the hem of his garment, and he made her well. Is your distress too much for him?
Sometimes, Jesus uses the very wind and waves to approach us.
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