The Truths That Define Your Faith

In Jeffrey Johnson's sermon "The Fundamentals," he emphasizes the core, essential truths of the Christian gospel that cannot be compromised. He begins by referencing 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, where Paul reminds the Corinthians of the gospel message: Christ's death, burial, and resurrection according to the Scriptures. Johnson stresses that Christianity is not just about being a good person or vaguely believing in Jesus, but involves specific, non-negotiable beliefs. These include Christ's incarnation, sinlessness, death, burial, and resurrection.

The sermon addresses the issue the Corinthian church faced, which was influenced by Gnostic thinking that downplayed the physical body, focusing only on the spiritual. This led some Corinthians to deny the resurrection of the dead, which Johnson points out is a fundamental error. He argues that if Christians deny the bodily resurrection, they deny the gospel itself, because Christ’s resurrection is the foundation of Christian hope.

Johnson further explains that faith in the gospel is not just a one-time event but an ongoing commitment. Believing in the essentials of the gospel—Christ's death and resurrection—saves initially and continues to sustain the believer. He emphasizes that faith is not something we generate ourselves but comes from hearing the Word of God. Johnson highlights the importance of maintaining this faith and warns that failing to do so renders one’s belief vain. True faith in Christ is the only way to salvation, and it is faith in the power of the gospel, not in human wisdom or strength, that gives life and hope.

The sermon concludes by reminding listeners that faith is not about self-confidence or human effort but trusting fully in Christ’s work on the cross and His resurrection. This is how believers are saved and stand in grace—through the power of Christ, not their own.

Transcript

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Verse one will read to verse eight and then will skip to verse 11. Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached to you unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as the first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scripture that He was buried that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve of any appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time most of whom were still alive though some have fallen asleep then appeared to James then to the all the apostles last of all as to one untimely born He appeared also to me then we'll skip the couple verses which we'll deal with the next time then we go to verse 11 rather than it was I or they so we preached and so you believed can you get to a point in your Christian walk that you reject one of the fundamentals of the faith one of the core doctrines that one of the first principles of the gospel there are certain truths that are not secondary or tertiary they're primary they're essential for salvation if you don't believe them you're not a Christian Christianity is belief in certain core doctrines it's not just if you are a good person in fact you're not saved because you're a good person it's not just that you believe in certain things or believe that there's a Jesus there's certain truths you must believe and if you don't believe you're not a Christian these beliefs are the soul saving doctrines and they include among many things the incarnation of Jesus Christ the sinless sinlessness of Jesus the death of Jesus the burial of Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus if you take any of these truths away then the gospel is destroyed and you have no gospel and you have no truth and you have no hope thus this text is warning the Corinthians that they had to maintain their faith maintain their their confidence in the gospel in their confession of faith it wasn't sufficient that they just believed initially that they must maintain their faith and what was happening in the Corinth at the time in fact I think this is the underlining problem behind all the problems the church of Corinth was plagued with problems but I think the problem that was leading them away from true spirituality was this false notion of Gnosticism and Gnosticism is this idea that the flesh or the body is something weaker in its being and so therefore real being or real reality is the spiritual realm they boasted in being spiritual and they took little to no notice to the flesh or to the physical body now Gnostics in that day had two forms of Gnosticism one was to beat the body you know to subject the body into some cruel methods in order to bring the body in such a subjection and so some people went that route others went to the route like the Corinthians that what matter is your soul what touches the body doesn't really matter and of course Jesus speaks in that way that's not what goes in your mouth or what's into your body that corrupts the body it's what's already in there it's the soul so there's an element to truth to this but this is what led the Corinthians to be able to overlook infidelity and sexual immorality and and they would say what touches the body doesn't affect the soul and so they were tolerant over such sins and therefore they they prided themselves you know in spirituality is what you know in the heart not really what you do and it led to all kinds of problems but even to the point that they were denying their resurrection of the dead why would God raise the body if the body is fundamentally evil the body in itself flesh is sinful or flesh is not what matters it's the soul and so they just believed in a spiritual salvation without a bodily salvation that God's not concerned about the flesh therefore he's not going to raise the flesh up at the last day so they rejected the resurrection because of this Gnosticism that they were holding to but in this text especially the one we're reading verses one through eleven is talking about the importance of maintaining the belief in the resurrection that is essential if you reject the resurrection of the dead you're rejecting the essential gospel message because if there's no future resurrection of the body then Christ didn't raise from the dead and if Christ didn't raise from the dead then there's no hope there's no gospel and then and then what he does from verses 12 through 34 which we'll look at in the weeks ahead he gives 12 reasons why the resurrection is essential not just the resurrection of Jesus Christ but our resurrection the resurrection of our physical bodies that we cannot not believe in this this is something we must believe in and so what I want to do this morning with that being the backdrop of this text I want us to see the importance of maintaining our faith in the gospel believing the gospel was not and is not a one-time event where you just had to have faith when you were converted and it doesn't matter if you maintain that faith or carry on in faith now according to this text if you do not maintain faith in the essentials of the gospel if you don't maintain faith in the resurrection of the dead then you have believed in vain so we have to not just believe in the gospel initially we must believe in the gospel today in fact I have two points faith in the gospel is what initially saved us and secondly faith in the gospel is what keeps us saved so let's look at this first of all we see in verse one faith in the gospel is what initially saved us this is how we're saved we're not saved by any other message but by the message of Jesus Christ crucified buried and resurrected he says now I would remind you brothers of the gospel which I preached to you when Paul came to Corinth he did not give them a TED talk he didn't give them a self-help 10 ways to better your life he wasn't telling them how to live their best life now he wasn't giving them a motivational speech was he he had determined he says when I came to you he says this in the beginning chapters chapter one I determined to know nothing else besides Christ and him crucified I determined to preach the gospel to you he says I'm not ashamed of the gospel in Romans 1 16 I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the message not the TED talk not other messages but it's the message as in unto salvation it's the power of God unto salvation if you're going to be saved it's going to be by the message of Jesus Christ crucified buried and resurrected there's no other message in which we can be saved by this is why Paul says I'm going to keep that at the heart of my preaching it doesn't mean he didn't preach on election and predestination and many other doctrines he taught the whole council of God but at the heart of all his teaching was the gospel message because that's the message that saves he says in chapter two when I came to you brothers I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech of wisdom for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified and when I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling in my speech and my message were not implausible words of wisdom but in the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and with power so that your faith might not be in the wisdom of man but in the power of God when you hear the preached word and when you're saved by the gospel you know it's not by the power of the preacher you know it's not by the persuasion of the messenger you know it's because of the message it's the message that has power to salvation the Bible tells us that faith comes by hearing that you're saved by faith but where does faith come from it doesn't come from within you and this is one thing we're going to understand about faith you cannot just sit there and go I want to believe I want to believe I want to believe you can't drum up faith it's impossible where does it come from it comes from the word faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God and the word of God comes by the preacher you see this is the gospel that was preached to you if you're saved today you've heard the gospel you know the gospel and not only have you heard it not only did you receive it I mean not only did you heard it you received it this is what it says now I would remind you brothers of the gospel which I preached to you which you received this word received we can understand as believed you believe this you've received this the Greek word here is paralimbano it means to aggressively take hold of it's not that you just oh I think that's nice that's a quaint little word I think I might believe that no you embraced it you you aggressively brought it to yourself you clung to it you took hold of this message you have to have it you know you're you're dry you're thirsty and you needed some water and here comes the living water and it wasn't like oh that was nice no you just drunk it in and he said I embrace this I have to have this it became precious to you it became life to you it became your hope it became everything to you that christ died for your sins and that meant everything to you because you knew you were lost you knew you were dying you knew who had no hope and so when you heard the gospel of good news that someone died for you and took your place you said I have to have this gospel you received it the whole says I was there when you received it when you believed it you made it your own this is the message you heard this is the message that you received and now we can talk about eschatology and we may all divide up into four probably 25 different camps if we start trying to divide in what we believe on end times but all of us may or may not agree on that but does that mean we're not going to go to heaven because we don't have the same belief systems on secondary issues or tertiary issues but I'm going to tell you if you know the Lord Jesus Christ you believe the essentials of the gospel it's something you've embraced it's not something you've rejected it's something that means something to you in fact it's your hope it's your life we stand upon the gospel of Jesus Christ in fact it says not only did you receive it you're currently standing in it read the text with me in verse one I remind you brothers of the gospel I preach to you which you received and which you stand this word stand means it's it's being used metaphorically is is this is what this is how you're saved this is why you're saved today Romans 5 1 tells us therefore since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through him we also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand Romans 11 20 talking about the Jews they were broken off because of unbelief but you Gentiles you stand you've been grafted in you've been brought in you stand by faith this is the only way we stand we stand before God not because we're good we stand before God is not because we have great faith we stand before God not because we walked the owl or said a real contrite prayer we stand for one reason only is because Jesus Christ died in our place and not only did he die he was buried and he came out of the grade and that is how we stand we stand by the works of another not by our own strength and thus we stand by faith in what Christ has done yeah I want before I go to point number two I want us to stand this because I I truly want to know more about faith I've been inquiring about faith in and though I've been walking with the Lord for 30 years now I still trying to grab my hands around what faith is now I can give you definitions and I can give you the Puritan three elements of faith I can give you all that all day long but one of the ways I think faith should be understood as it's not a power in us grace is a power in us but faith is not something you can conjure up and say I believe and exercise your faith no faith is not something we do it's something we don't do faith is more of a letting go than grabbing onto faith is realizing I have no strength I have no power I have no ability it's coming to the end of ourselves and saying Lord if you don't catch me I'm going to fall and it's simply trusting or letting yourself go and having no other hope but in the promises in the word and the reality that Jesus died for us we're we're the strongest in faith when we're the weakest we're not strong in faith when we're confident in self faith is kind of the opposite of self confidence and self strength if you want to have strength if you want to have godly strength you become weak you lose confidence in self and you realize that Christ is death in his burial in his resurrection that is your power that's your strength that's your hope that's your life that's everything to you this is how we stand this is how we're saved if you're saved here you're saved by the same message but that's something[BLANK_AUDIO][BLANK_AUDIO][BLANK_AUDIO][BLANK_AUDIO][BLANK_AUDIO]