Since we are saved by grace and not by our merit, God will no doubt forgive some of our theological shortcomings – places where our thinking does not currently align with Scripture.  But when a person denies certain core aspects of the Gospel, this indicates that he or she has not been granted saving faith in Christ.  The Bible itself teaches that certain core doctrines cannot be rejected by a saved person.  Let’s examine these.

What doctrines are absolutely essential to Christianity?  As the Word of God, all Scripture is equally and absolutely authoritative.  But not all Scripture is equally clear, nor equally central to salvation.  Christians disagree on certain nuanced details, yet are united by our common salvation by God’s grace through faith in Christ.  On the other hand, there are people who profess to be Christians, but who deny central, core doctrines of the faith.  Where is the line that divides genuine faith from a false faith?  At what point does theological error become heresy?
Heresy is defined as “adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma” or “an opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards.”  The problem with using such definitions is that different churches themselves disagree on some issues of doctrine.  Even individuals within the same local church may disagree on what is “generally accepted.”  Perhaps the word ‘heresy’ ought to be reserved for the most serious of theological errors – those that deny an essential aspect of the Gospel.  Then we can define ‘heresy’ as a theological error so severe that it indicates that a professing Christian might not be truly saved.
Since we are saved by grace and not by our merit, God will no doubt forgive some of our theological shortcomings – places where our thinking does not currently align with Scripture.  But when a person denies certain core aspects of the Gospel, this indicates that he or she has not been granted saving faith in Christ.  The Bible itself teaches that certain core doctrines cannot be rejected by a saved person.  Let’s examine these.
1. The Deity of Jesus Christ
The Bible not only teaches that Jesus is God, but it also teaches that anyone who denies this core principle is not saved.  Professing that Jesus is Lord (Yahweh) is necessarily associated with salvation according to Romans 10:9-13.  Verse 9 gives two conditions that must accompany salvation; the first is that a person must confess with his mouth that Jesus is Lord.  The author (Paul) then proceeds to prove that this is a necessary condition by quoting Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:13, “For whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  Jesus is the Lord, and professing this with the mouth is thus necessary to demonstrate that a person’s faith in Him is genuine.
The critic may object, “But couldn’t this just mean that Jesus is a lord, not the Lord God?”  No.  Context shows that the word “Lord” is being used here to refer to Yahweh, the almighty God.  Paul cited Joel 2:32 in his proof that calling upon the name of the Lord is necessary for salvation.  And the word translated “Lord” in Joel 2:32 is Yahweh – the unique name of God.  Paul is therefore claiming that those who call upon Jesus as Yahweh will be saved.
Jesus Himself said as much in His earthly ministry.  In John 8:24, Jesus said, “for unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.”  Some English translations add the word “He” as in “I am He.”  But in fact, this word is absent in the original Greek text.  Jesus was actually saying that people would die in sin (unsaved) unless they believe that He is the “I am.”  The “I am” is one of the names of the Holy God, first used in Exodus 3:14, and then later in Isaiah [e.g. Isaiah 43:10, 25, 45:18, 46:4].  Jesus refers to Himself as the “I am” again in the same chapter: “Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am’” (John 8:58).  The strange grammatical construction shows that Jesus is indeed applying one of the names of Yahweh to Himself.  It would be blasphemy if Jesus were not in fact God.
God the Father refers to Jesus as “God” in Hebrews 1:8-12.  Hebrews 1:8 states, “But of the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of His kingdom.”  Here, the Lord quotes Old Testament passages describing Yahweh, and applies them specifically to Christ (compare Psalm 102:1,24-27).  The Lord God says in Isaiah 45:23 that “to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear.”  In Philippians 2:10-11, Paul explains that this was Jesus speaking: that to Jesus “every knee will bow” and “every tongue will confess.”  That’s because Jesus is the Lord God.
Yet, unsaved people cannot accept and embrace that Jesus is God.  A genuine saving faith that Jesus is the Lord is something only the Holy Spirit can give (1 Corinthians 12:3).  Thus, a rejection of the divine nature of Jesus Christ is an indication that a person is not (as yet) saved (John 10:25-30).
2. The Resurrection of Christ
The other criterion for salvation that Paul gives in Romans 10:9-10 is that a saved person must believe that God raised Christ from the dead.  The resurrection of Christ shows that He has authority over life and death (John 10:17-18).  It establishes that what He said about Himself is true.  According to the Apostle Paul, faith that Christ rose from the dead is what results in (imputed) righteousness (Romans 10:9-11).
Resurrection means being raised up from the dead – going from a state of death to a state of life.  But there is an important caveat to consider when discussing life, death, and resurrection.  The Bible speaks of two types of life, two types of death, and therefore two types of resurrection.  On the one hand, there is physical life, death, and resurrection.  And on the other hand, there is spiritual life, death, and resurrection.  Physical life, death, and resurrection all pertain to the physical functioning (or lack thereof) of physical bodies.  A person is physically alive when his heart is beating, blood is flowing, and so on.  When those functions cease, a person dies.  The Bible speaks of the physical resurrection of several individuals, such as Lazarus (John 11:14-45), and Jesus Himself (Matthew 28:6-7).
Spiritual life and death both pertain to the state of a person’s immaterial spirit.  God designed humans to love Him and obey His commandments.  This is the function of a living spirit.  When Adam sinned against God, his spirit “died” in the sense that it no longer sought to live for God, but for sin.  Adam’s descendants have inherited a dead spirit and do not seek after God (Ephesians 2:1).  However, God has mercy on some and resurrects their dead spirit, resulting in spiritual life (Ephesians 2:5-6).  All true believers have already experienced this spiritual resurrection.
Jesus spoke of the difference between these two resurrections in John 5:24-29.  He first addresses spiritual resurrection: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life” (John 5:24).  This spiritual resurrection is applied to everyone who trusts in Christ for salvation, and only them.  Thus, the Lord says in John 5:25, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”  Notice that Jesus indicates that this spiritual resurrection (1) applies only to some – “those who hear,” and (2) takes place both in the present and also in the future – “an hour is coming and now is.”
Then Jesus describes the physical resurrection of the dead in John 5:28-29 which states, “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.”  To clarify that He is speaking of the physically dead, He refers to them as those “who are in the tombs.”  Those would be physical bodies of course.
This physical resurrection differs from spiritual resurrection in two ways.  First, it applies to everyone who has ever died – “all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and will come forth.”  Second, it is entirely in the future: “an hour is coming” (but not “and now is”).  Thus, Jesus indicates that there will be a time in the future when everyone who has ever died will be resurrected.  Jesus said that this general resurrection will occur on the “last day” (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54).  This indicates that temporal history will end at some point, ushering in the eternal state.
So, which of these two resurrections did Christ experience?  Clearly, Jesus rose from the dead physically.  Unlike all other men, Jesus never experienced spiritual death because He never rebelled against God (Hebrews 4:15; 2 Corinthians 5:21).  Christ obeyed His heavenly father perfectly and never needed any sort of spiritual resurrection because He was never “dead in sins.”  Moreover, Jesus physically died by crucifixion (Mark 15:24; Luke 23:46), and was therefore physically raised on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4; Acts 10:40).  He claimed that His physical body was proof of His bodily resurrection (Luke 24:39).
Therefore, it is a belief in the literal, physical, bodily resurrection of Christ that is necessary for salvation (Romans 10:9-10).  Those who believe that the resurrection of Christ is merely a spiritual resurrection, or otherwise non-literal, do not have salvation.  The physical resurrection of the dead is an essential part of the Gospel.  The Bible says, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.  Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:13-17.  Hence, the resurrection of Christ is essential to the Gospel.  Anyone who rejects that Christ physically rose again does not have salvation.
3. The General Resurrection
The resurrection of Christ foreshadows the future resurrection of all the dead.  1 Corinthians 15:20 states, “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.”  In the Old Testament administration, the Israelites celebrated the Festival of First Fruits after Passover.  In this festival, they offered a sheaf of the first fruits of their first crop to the Lord (Leviticus 23:9-11).  This showed the gratitude of the people toward God who provides the harvest.  And it also shows their trust that God would also bring forth the rest of the harvest in time.   That is, if God was faithful to bring forth the first fruits, then He will be faithful to bring forth the rest of the harvest in season.
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In the end, the bottom line here is this: if the Lord was especially concerned about this I am confident he would have given us a clear and definite instruction somewhere in his Word. That he hasn’t tells me we are likely to be making a bigger deal out of the means than God does, which rarely seems like a good idea to me.

Discussions among Christians about cremation or burial are nothing new. There have long been discussions about these things floating around. But I saw a Gospel Coalition article on this yesterday that argued for “Christian burial”, not as a command, but as a preferred practice. You can read the case made in the post here if you like. I have never been fully convinced by these arguments.
First, let’s start with what we all agree to be true. Indeed, a true point that is often quickly overlooked as the definitive point that I think it might be. Namely, burial is nowhere commanded in scripture. There simply is no command nor instruction for burial to be the preferred method of bodily disposal. Whatever else we make of that, we have to accept there is no biblical instruction here so we are not dealing with a sin issue regarding whether we bury or cremate.
One might argue against that, in the face of no specific command, we still want to look to God’s original design. Something akin to what Jesus does with the Pharisees concerning his teaching on divorce. But we can’t do this in relation to burial and cremation because God’s original design did not include death. We can’t go back to the original blueprint in that way to determine what God would have us do in the world in which we now live. The practice of burial or cremation is a necessary consequence of God’s design being broken.
Some would then argue, in the face of no expressed command and no original design to guide us, we can look to biblical example. Here we might have more joy; it is certainly true that the prevailing practice in scripture is burial. However, when we look at the reason for the first burial in scripture, it has nothing to do with the rightness or appropriateness of burial itself. Interestingly, death occurs and is specifically mentioned a number of times prior to the first burial but there is no mention between Adam and Abraham concerning how those particular bodies were disposed. We’re just told people died.
The first burial we read about comes in Genesis 23 when Abraham buries his wife Sarah. But the particular concern of the passage isn’t primarily to do with the importance of burial. It is to do with Abraham gaining and owning a stake in the land for him and his descendants. It is interesting (though in no way conclusive) that burial simply is not mentioned before this point and in this particular case is very much linked to issues to do with inheritance in the land itself. The later instances of burial in Genesis are similarly concerned with this same issue.
If that is true in Genesis, it may well make more sense to view later comments about burial in the same vein. So, for example, in Numbers 20:1 in which Miriam is buried in the wilderness of Zin, the point seems less concerned about the mode of bodily disposal as the geographical location in which she was buried. The point seems to be less that Miriam was buried as part of a repeated example-cum-instruction for God’s people and more to do with the fact that the wilderness generation have no stake in the land. They not only fail to enter it, but fail to even be buried in it like their forefathers. The same is true of Moses in Deuteronomy 34:6.
This point is even more pronounced and clear in Joshua 23:32, in which Joseph’s bones – which were already buried in Egypt – are moved to Israel. The concern is not the means of disposal and very particularly about where the body is laid to rest. The emphasis is on being buried in the land and being associated with the Patriarchs and the land God had given them, even to the point of moving already buried people. This is precisely the point made of David’s burial in 1 Kings 2:10 where the emphasis is on being buried “with his ancestors… in the City of David.” The only break from this apparent pattern is the burial of Elisha in 2 Kings 13. Nothing is particularly said about it other than ‘he died and was buried’ but the purpose for its inclusion becomes clear in the next couple of verses that describe a miraculous event surrounding the body of Elisha. The burial itself is not deemed significant and is only mentioned because of the miracle that followed.
If that contention is correct and burial was to do with association with the land itself – and I think that is clear in most the examples we read and explicitly clear when Joseph’s post-interment body is moved from Egypt to Israel for this reason – we surely have to question the assumption that this is a pattern for Christian burial rather than a pattern concerning the land of Israel and its people. To put it another way, if my contention about burial and the land is correct, does that make any difference to us when we consider the New Covenant people of God who are from every tribe, tongue and nation and not connected to the physical land of Israel in the same way?
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Life is very short, you have few decades, and you won’t make much of a mark on the world. So live. Eat good food with others. Have as many kids as you’re able to and raise them well. Give yourself to your local church and community. Build something that will outlast you. Follow Jesus with everything you’ve got.

Behind my desk is a wall of words: 16 quotes or phrases that encourage me, each done in attractive typography.
One of them is from N. D. Wilson, a writer whose wordsmithing I appreciate, even if I think we would think differently about very much where church and faith are concerned:
heartbeats cannot be hoarded
Which is obvious enough. It comes from his book Death by Living, where his central conceit is that lives are for living. If you have to die from anything (and you do) then living is probably the way to go.
I find the idea helpful. For me, when I’m tempted to hold back, or to not act through fear, or most often to not try because failure seems possible, even likely, I try to remind myself that my heartbeats are not for hoarding. What is the point of having ideas and not trying to do something with them? What is the point of living a life of bland mundanity where you don’t even attempt anything?
Did Jesus not tell us he came to live life to full?
We do have to be careful to define this as he did—so we’re not talking about life needing to be high octane, or that our achievements should be of a particular kind or variety. Instead, we’re talking about attempting to do things for the Lord.
And again, we should recalibrate our expectations, away from extraordinary, towards ordinary faithfulness.
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