Chris Kamp, 1/4/2019

A Solid Foundation

What is the foundation of our faith? As Christians, what grounds our worldview? Many of you might suggest the Holy Bible, and for good reason. As Christians we believe in the authenticity of the Holy Scripture as divinely inspired and without error (that is, we believe in biblical inerrancy). Unfortunately, if you believe the foundation of our faith is “God’s Holy Word,” you are wholly mistaken. Here’s why, Christianity thrived for hundreds of years without even having a Bible. You may be asking yourself this question, “If first century Christians faith was not grounded in the Bible, what was it grounded in, or was it simply ungrounded and therefore unfounded. Fortunately, early Christian faith was founded and grounded on solid theological ground and certainly not limited to just a book and collection of letters. If not, Christianity wouldn’t exist today.

Unstoppable

Think about it, early Christianity was smooshed smacked-dab between the Jewish Temple and the Roman Empire, both hellbent on the utter eradication of the Christian movement that, against all odds, was gaining momentum in an openly hostile and skeptical world. The fact that Christianity exist today despite tremendous efforts to crush it, testifies to its authenticity. In fact, the world was so set on the destruction of the Christian movement that they murdered its founder, and thus simultaneously laid its foundation. Therefore, the foundation of our faith is the founder of our faith and the author of our salvation, and not the author(s) of our book. That’s right, (and probably so obvious now) the foundation of our faith is the belief that Jesus is who He said He was and did what He said He was going to do.

Out of This World

Jesus proved He was who He said He was by being out-of-this-world. Jesus was so out-of-this-world, in fact, that the world wanted him, well… out. So those considered righteous in the eyes of man plotted the torture and execution of the only righteous man in the name of nothing other than, you guessed it… righteousness. In this despicably disgusting ironic twist in human history, Jesus did what He said he was going to do. While the world was exercising its unjust wrath on God, God was exercising His unjust mercy on man. Simultaneously, Jesus was bearing the weight of human sin, while human men punished him, and God the Father crushed Him, for salvation’s sake of human men. And while being murdered for His holiness and judged for our wickedness, Jesus said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” That’s right, while he was nailed to and dangling on the cross, He was thinking about you. Three days later, Jesus would rock the foundations of human history once more, subsequently and permanently changing the symbol of the power of the Roman Empire into the Symbol of Christianity. The cross would never be the same, and neither would the world that deserved rage, but received Love instead.

 

Something Special

As we attempt to wrap our minds around the unrelenting love and unimageable sacrifice of Jesus’ life, the lights turn on in our hearts and minds, and truths about who God is begins to be revealed to us. Revelation about God in this manner is called Special Revelation. Special Revelation is found in the life of Jesus and in the Bible and is necessary for salvation. Jesus proved He was who He said He was and did what He said He would do. Now the Bible comes into play, not as the foundation of our faith, but an all to necessary component of it. Jesus affirms and validates the Bible, not the other way around. You see, Jesus is the key. Jesus affirmed the Bible’s divine authority, imperishability, unbreakability, supremacy, factual inerrancy, historical reliability, and scientific accuracy. Jesus proved to be God and the Bible to be God’s Word and this sets the stage for God to be revealed to us in a special way.