A few years ago, people were introduced to the 7-Minute workout, which was a series of what they called ‘high-intensity’ exercises, things like wall squats, push-ups, running in place, etc. There were ten such exercises and you were to do these exercises back-to-back for 30 seconds, with only a 10-second break in between (hence, 7-Minutes). These exercises were designed to strengthen your ‘core’.
The core is the central part of the body: the lower back, hips, abs, and pelvis. A healthy core leads to balance and stability (to reach for glass on the top shelf, or swing a golf-club, or bending over to tie your shoe laces) without throwing one’s back out. A weak core can lead to back pain, poor posture and muscle injuries. Having a strong core is essential for our movement and health.
What is the ‘core’ of Christianity? That is, when one gets baptized as a declaration of faith in Jesus, what is that faith? When one becomes a member of any church, what is the central teaching of the church that they must be able to affirm?
What is Christianity? There is a lot of confusion about that.
Baptism is practiced differently in various denominations, but we do not say they are not a Christian church. There are differences of interpretations regarding spiritual gifts. Some people have different convictions about the end times. There are differences between peoples’ thoughts regarding the timing of the creation accounts (the universe is 7,000 years old or billions of years old). We do not (or should not) call people ‘unbelievers’ because they think differently than us.
Mahatma Gandhi called himself a Christian because he respected the personality and teaching of Jesus and thought of himself in some respects a follower of the way of Jesus. But Gandhi also called himself a Buddhist and a Hindu. Was he a Christian?
A talk-radio host identified the core of Christianity as: ‘Do unto others as you’d have them do to you.’ Jesus certainly said that, but is that the essence of Christianity? If so, then maybe all religions really are the same, for most religions have a strong ethical component and call for kindness to one another.
Now, Christianity has a lot of elements that are a part of it. Not by any means insignificant things, but basic truths that Christians have affirmed for centuries: concerning the Trinity, Scripture as the Word of God, heaven & hell, angels & demons, the resurrection, the church, the return of Christ, and so on. Books are written about this stuff. But does someone really need a graduate level understanding of Christian theology in order to be called a ‘Christian’?
So again, ‘What is the core of Christianity, anyway?’
To explain the core of Christianity, we are going to use five words. It may help to picture a diagram: a circle divided into four quadrants, each containing one word. The fifth word is placed in a smaller circle within the bigger one and ‘touches’ each of the other words.
So, four words that capture the very core (or essence) of Christianity….
The first word, in the first quadrant, is the word ‘Law’.
It is impossible to understand Christianity without first understanding what is expressed when the Bible and Christians down the centuries have spoken about ‘Law’. But that’s not difficult for even in our everyday speech we understand Law. We understand it in two senses, what you might call ‘rules’ and ‘reality’.
Laws are rules, like do not speed or rob banks, wear a helmet when you are riding a bike, do not murder anyone, pay your taxes and so on. Rules.
But ‘Law’ also means ‘reality’, the way things really are. For example, the Law of Gravity. If I step off a cliff, the Law of Gravity says I will fall downward. No one has passed a law saying, ‘If you step off a cliff, you are supposed to fall down. If you do not there is a penalty.’ It is not a rule. It is a ‘law’ in that it simply describes how things really are. There are other laws of Physics and Thermodynamics that just describe reality.
The word ‘Law’, Biblically, has those same two senses, rules and reality.
God is a God of perfect character. He is good, and is concerned with right and wrong. He is moral and has created a moral universe. What that means is that certain things are objectively right and good, and certain other things are objectively bad or wrong.
We, as moral creatures living in a moral universe, are called to be right and good. Hence, we have the Law of God, famously summarized in the 10-Commandments: worship nothing except God, honour your parents, do not slander, kill or commit adultery, or covet what someone else has. These things are rules, in that God has legislated that people ought to obey these things.
But they are also Law in that they reflect reality. They arise out of God’s perfect character, which is the very heartbeat of all he created. So it is not just beneficial to life and society to live according to these Laws, it is objectively right. It is not just a bad idea to murder. It does not just have a negative impact on society. It violates the very order of the universe and the character of God. It really is inherently wrong to steal or slander. God does not say, ‘Have no gods except me’ simply because he is making a rule to command allegiance. No, when we relegate God to second place or to the perimeter of life, we are stepping outside of reality. We are violating a Law, essentially letting something else be God when there really is only one God.
Have you ever stolen? Ever lied? Lusted? Ever relegated God from the centre? Ever coveted your neighbour’s stuff, or spouse? At some point in our lives ( actually at many points), we have all broken the rules and violated the Law. We have all done something that deviates from that which is perfectly right and good. So we are all Lawbreakers.
This is how the Bible puts it in James chapter 2: For whoever keeps the Law but stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. For he who said ‘Do not commit adultery’ also said, ‘Do not murder’.
Think of it: if someone robs a bank, but does not murder, he is still a criminal. If one parks illegally, but does not speed, the Law has still been broken. A white shirt that has only one spaghetti-sauce stain, we still call dirty. A cracked mirror is considered defective, even if the surface area of the crack is only 1% of the entire mirror. A bone broken at only one place still is a broken bone. And so on.
And so we are all Law-breakers. So the Bible is not off the mark at all when it says that ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’.
All have sinned. That is, all have violated God’s Law. I have. You have.
And again, it is not just about keeping or breaking rules, about disobedience or obedience to the authority of God. By violating God’s Law, even once, we have not just broken a rule. We have stepped off the cliff and are hurtling downward.
That, incidentally, is the context for what Jesus and the Bible taught concerning hell. Hell is the bottom of the cliff. It is not just where God ‘sends’ sinners. It is the natural destination of those who violate the Law. For having violated the infinite perfection of God, Hell is the infinite consequence.
So all of that is what is expressed in the word ‘Law’ as a foundation of Christianity. Rules and reality, the fact that all of us are Law-breakers and therefore have sinned against God. We are guilty and deserve that God, in his justice, should rule against us. And as Lawbreakers, we have all stepped off the cliff. All of us. And we are in big trouble! That is the necessary starting place for understanding Christianity, just as you need to understand the ideas of health and sickness before the good news of a cure can make sense.
Our second word has to do with the cure, and that is the word ‘grace’.
C.S. Lewis has famously identified grace as the defining element of Christianity as a faith system.
All religions have people working to gain favour with the gods, or with God. All religions put the onus on us to make things right. Only Christianity has God taking the initiative to make things right.
Grace is the theme of the whole Bible. It underlies the sacrifices of the Old Testament, the idea of the innocent giving its life to atone for the sins of the guilty. It finds its perfect expression in Jesus Christ, who laid down his life for our sins. In fact, the earlier sacrifices were only shadows or pictures of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus. The death of a goat or lamb has no value in really atoning for our sins, but those sacrifices provided the context by which the death of Jesus would be understood.
It is an astonishing reality: that the son of God would die for us, die in our place.
Eight hundred years before Jesus the prophet Isaiah prophesied about a coming Saviour. It is a stunning summary of what Jesus’ death means for us:
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
That is grace.
Mercy is not getting what we do deserve. Grace takes it further and gives us what we do not deserve.
Say, there was a person speeding through a school zone. He was not paying attention and slowed down only because the car in front of him was going the speed limit. A police officer stepped into the street and waved him over. He said, ‘You were going 40 miles per hour in a 25 miles per hour school zone, and you only slowed down because the car in front of you did. That’s a $129 fine…. So be more careful next time.’ And he walked away. That was mercy. The man’s breaking of the law was removed and he was, to all intents and purposes, innocent.
But what if the police officer said, ‘I have no choice here. The radar camera recorded an infraction and the Law says that the fine has to be paid. But I’ll pay the fine out of my pocket. You’re free to go.’ That is grace.
2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it this way: God made him – that is, Christ – who had no sin to be sin for us (mercy) so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (grace).
Christianity is about the fact that we are Law-breakers, and guilty as such. But God did not exact retribution from us, nor did he just let us go. He paid the fine out of his own pocket when Jesus gave his divine life on the cross for us. That is grace.
Those two words – law & grace – are often thought of as summarizing the whole of the Christian message. But they do not. There are a few more essential concepts, and so we go to the third word, and that is: ‘Lordship’.
Without an understanding of the idea of Lordship, we cannot say we understand Christianity. The Lordship of God is a Law. Not like a rule, but a Law that defines reality. It is not simply that we ought to treat him as Lord, but he really is Lord. God is the Creator, Master and Owner of everything. All power ultimately resides in him. The existence of everything that is, is ultimately grounded in him.
That is why the first commandment, to not have any gods before God, is not just a rule, but a Law. Because if we live our lives in such a way that we do not recognize the Lordship of God, we are not living in conformity with reality.
Christ, who is the eternal Son of God and so shares the divine essence, we rightly call ‘God the Son’. You remember that the angels proclaimed to the shepherds not only that a Saviour has been born to you, but that he is Christ the Lord.
Christianity is not just about the forgiveness of sin (which, if you stopped only after Law & Grace, you might be tempted to think), but it is a restoration to God’s Lordship. It is not only repenting and seeking forgiveness for acting against his Lordship, it is choosing to order your life again under his good Lordship.
Christianity is not fundamentally about believing in Jesus, or even loving Jesus, but about ordering our lives under his Lordship. That is why the Bible does not talk about ‘accepting’ Jesus, or ‘asking Jesus into your heart’. But it does talk about ‘obedience to the gospel’.
The Bible is clear that at the end of it all, this process will be complete for all of creation, for even those who resist this submission all of their lives will one day acknowledge the Lordship of God the Son, to the glory of God the Father.
For after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Bible says that God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth – that is, spiritual beings and all humanity, even those who have already died – and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
So when we invite people to embrace Christianity, we need to be clear so that they understand what we are calling them to. ‘Lordship’ is one of the basic component parts of Christianity. If you are thinking of Christianity merely in terms of forgiveness or avoiding hell and gaining heaven, you need to understand that Christianity means surrender of your life to the Lordship of God.
This surrender, this obedience is not sheer duty. It would be sheer duty if it was all about rules. But this obedience means that we are conforming our lives to the way things really are, we are living as we were made to live, and that is why Jesus said that his yoke was easy, and the apostle said, ‘His commands are not burdensome.’ It i’s not obedience out of duty but obedience out of adoration. Because ultimately to live under the loving Lordship of God enriches life.
So, then, the fourth word is: ‘Life’.
Christianity is about ‘Life’. It is about really living, fully and completely.
‘Life’ is not just eating and breathing and walking around. It is so much more. When we go to a cabin on the shore and relax on the beach with our cell phones turned off, we say, ‘This is the life!’ Or a 25-year-old who lives in his parents’ basement and never goes outside, we say of him, ‘He has no life.’
The Bible talks about ‘life’ in these terms.
Real life was lost when our parents Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit he had commanded them not to eat. They disobeyed him, thus choosing to live outside of his Lordship. God had said, ‘On the day when you eat of it, you will surely die’, and they did. They did not die physically for many years, but on the day they sinned they stepped outside of the Lordship of God, and therefore outside of reality. There has been a dissatisfaction in human existence ever since, the sense that this is not what life should be. We find ourselves hungry, feeling like something is missing: ‘There must be more to life than this’, we cry.
In our desire to be free from the Lordship of God we lose all that makes life good and satisfying. Imagine a fish wanting to be free from the confines of the pond, and flopping himself onto the shore. What life and freedom awaits him there? Imagine a game of hockey or Monopoly free from the obligation of ‘rules’. What enjoyment is there in the game?
Christianity is like that. In conforming to the Law and ordering ourselves under the Lordship of God, there is life. That is why people who seem to have everything can be desperately unhappy and empty. Even Christians, who by rights should be the most ‘alive’ people in our world, when we reduce our Christianity to rules and religion we lack joy, because we are not really living in grace or in the knowledge that the Lordship of God is good, life-giving.
We were made to live under God.
The Psalm writer King David said this. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God… When can I go and meet with God?
There is a need in us for God, and when we live without the knowledge of him, or when we live deceiving ourselves about his Lordship over us, our lives just are not right. We cannot be said to be truly living at all.
Jesus said, I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full.
And so just as Law and grace go together, so Lordship and life go together: to live under the Lordship of God in Christ is to really live, to live abundantly, to be fully alive. It is to finally find that which satisfies the deep longing of your heart.
Author John Piper writes of people who gave up everything they had to live fully in service to God all of their lives, and said, ‘I never made a sacrifice’. Is it a sacrifice to pay $500 to buy a house? Is it a sacrifice for a farmer to give up a bushel of grain in the spring to gain fifty bushels at harvest time? Nor is it a sacrifice to order our lives under God, only to find that we are truly living for the first time.
The invitation to Christianity is a call to surrender to the Lordship of God, but to surrender in the knowledge that this means life: abundant, full, free, even eternal.
So these four words – Law, grace, Lordship, life – these four words together sum up Christianity. No one word can be missing. If we speak only three words, we cannot be said to truthfully understand what Christianity is. And how can we communicate it rightly? Christianity has often been communicated wrongly, or incompletely. No wonder, then, that it is so easily dismissed or rejected!
Without understanding Law, how can there be any understanding of forgiveness or grace? No one receives medication unless they know they are sick.
But who wants Law with no grace? That is just to live under constant guilt. Without grace, we just keep trying to be religious or good, hoping we will be good enough to earn God’s favour. Which, of course, we can’t. No amount of good works enables you to step back onto the top of the cliff.
What is the Lordship of God without the knowledge of life? It simply becomes rules, a burden to be borne. Without his Lordship, he is in no position to judge or pardon sin and so he cannot save us from our fall off the cliff. And there is no life without embracing Lordship.
No. These four words all occur together. Unless they do, you do not have true Biblical Christianity.
But there is one more word, and it is the one that lies in the centre of the other four. It is the only context in which Christianity can not only be properly understood, but properly experienced. And it is the word: ‘Relationship’.
Because without it, frankly, we can still misunderstand the whole thing. We might think of God’s Lordship, and order our lives under it and find life finally satisfying, and we might confess our failure to live under the Law, and on that confession receive God’s forgiveness and grace, but God could still be a distant, abstract God.
But that is not how things are. God is personal, near. He loves, personally and passionately. He loves the world he has made. He loves all people, not just generically and collectively, but specifically and individually. That means he loves you. His eye is on you right now. His heart is set on you.
The Bible uses all kinds of relational analogies when it describes God’s dealings with his people: parent/child analogies, husband/wife analogies, friendship, even the erotic language of intimate lovers. Because God created us for intimate relationship. Jesus died to restore us to that relationship. And that is what God calls people to.
Christianity is not primarily about a belief system, or adherence to a set of rules and practices. It is living in a dynamic relationship, a personal, experiential knowledge.
Hence things like prayer and Bible reading are not just religious activities, but the cultivation of relationship.
Jesus described eternal life saying, this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
So even the concept of Lordship is relational, like parenting. When our kids were growing up, we were ‘Lords’ of our kids. There was inherent authority in our home, and we asserted it. They needed to obey and respond and submit. But it was not purely rules. Our lordship was not that of bosses, but that of parents. Our authority was exercised out of love, and out of a desire for what we knew is best for our kids. And it is exercised in a context of relationship: our kids knew us, loved us, and we spent time together.
So with God. He calls us to live under his Lordship not because he is petty and demands to be in charge, but because he loves us and wants what is best. Submission to God is always what is best. Always. Please hear and understand this: God will never, ever call us to something that is not in our best interests. Never. He is a Father, and Christians are children of God.
So the apostle Paul wrote in the book of Romans: Because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father’. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirits that we are God’s children.
The apostle John marvelled not just at this relationship, but at the depth of the love God has for us: How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are.
So the heartbeat of Christianity is not the worship and obedience of some aloof and powerful deity, but the reality of a personal and present God, a God who can be delighted or grieved, honoured or offended, loved or betrayed.
Relationship is the central idea of Christianity, and it is the only context in which Christianity can be properly understood and experienced. Jesus died on the cross so that, by God’s own pleasure and will, we might be reconciled to God.
So the essence of Christianity, which has been so often misunderstood by Christians and those who are not Christians, can be captured in these five words:
Law: we have broken or violated God’s Law.
Grace: God loves us and sent Jesus to die for the forgiveness of our sins.
Lordship: God is the Lord and it is both right and good to live under his Lordship.
Life: Submitting to God’s Lordship means fullness of life.
And at the centre of it all, relationship: As Christians, God is our Father and we are his children and friends.
In light of this, how does one respond to the message of Christianity? Maybe you are understanding it for the first time today. You may have been a Christian for many years, but only today does it really click for you. Maybe you know you are not a Christian, but now understand it and do want to embrace it. How do you do that? In light of these five words, five simple steps:
Admit: Yes, I have broken God’s Law. I have sinned and admit my guilt.
Accept: Jesus died for my sins. Not at all because he had to, but out of the sheer grace of God, I believe that Jesus paid my fine, took my punishment.
Submit: I choose now to live under the Lordship of God.
Receive: I embrace the fullness of life that is mine in Jesus now.
And, enjoy: Exult in the knowledge of God’s love for you. Give yourself freely in love to him. Rest in the reality that he is your loving Father, and you are his child.
I have tried to be clear as possible today, and I hope that there is now no confusion as to the essence of Christianity. Everything else is just details. But these five words encapsulate what Christianity really is. You know enough to respond and give yourself to it. If you choose not to, you now know what you are rejecting and are accountable for your decision. I pray that you will embrace Christianity, give your life to God through Jesus. Be forgiven. And find life. Respond today if you never have.
Admit. Accept. Submit. Receive. And enjoy….
Amen.