What is Christianity and what do Christians believe?

These verses are the touchstone for the Christian who wants to be biblical. Biblical Christians believe that Christ is God and that He died for our sins. Biblical Christians believe that by nature they are sinners, spiritually dead, and that their only hope of salvation from sin is faith in Christ's death and resurrection. Biblical Christians believe they have a Bible that is inspired by the living God, and it is the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

It is well perhaps, in view of the infidelity which is spreading everywhere, to begin by saying that I hold, and I can add that we firmly hold, all the foundations of the christian faith - the divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, one God, eternally blessed - the divinity and humanity of the Lord Jesus, two natures in one person - His resurrection and His glorification at the right hand of God - the presence of the Holy Ghost here below, having descended on the day of Pentecost - the return of the Lord Jesus according to His promise. We believe also that the Father in His love has sent the Son to accomplish the work of redemption and grace towards men - that the Son came, in that same love, to accomplish it, and that He has finished the work which the Father gave Him to do on earth. We believe that He has made propitiation for our sins, and that after having accomplished it, He ascended to heaven - the High Priest seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

"Look to me and be ye saved," says Christ. The moment a soul looks, in simple living faith, that moment it has salvation, for it has the Saviour. Christianity is no dry set of doctrines, for the mind to take in, but it is Divine truth and blessing for man, wrapped up in the person of the Man Christ Jesus, who came down and did a work upon the cross by which all my sins are put away, and who is gone up again into the glory, Himself to draw your heart and mind to Him up there; and now the Holy Ghost has come out, and says "You trust Him!" And oh, will you not trust Him? He is worthy of all your heart, shall He not have it!

Yet the Bible is not the object set before us in the gospel for our faith. No; Christ is that. Thank God, we have not to study the Book from beginning to end to see whether we can believe every sentence of it in order to have our sins forgiven. No, Christ is the object of the faith of the Christian. He believes Him to be the Creator (Heb. 1:10; John 1:3, 10; Col. 1:6); the Upholder of all things (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3); the Man who is set at the right hand of God, and under whose feet everything is placed (Eph. 1:20, 22); the Son of God, the Man Christ Jesus, the propitiation for our sins, the Judge of living and dead, to whom every knee must bow, and who must be confessed as Lord by every intelligence in heaven and in earth, and in the infernal regions (1 John 2:2; Acts 10:42; Phil. 2:9-11), into whose hand all power is committed (Matt. 28:18), and who knows all things (John 21:17). This is the One who is the object of the faith of the believer, the One whom He knows to be “the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).

Allow me, as we have touched this point, to draw your attention to another thing in the form in which the work and testimony of grace is put. You may remark that in the passage in Romans 4 it is said, not "believe on Christ," however true that remains, but "on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." So Peter, "who by him do believe in God who raised him up from the dead and gave him glory." So the Lord Himself as to His coming into the world, "He that heareth my words, and believeth on him that sent me." We know God Himself only really, by knowing Him through Christ. If I know Him thus, I know Him as God our Saviour; as one who has not spared His Son for me: as one who, when Christ was dead as having taken our sins, raised Him from the dead. In a word, I not only believe in Christ, but in Him who has given Christ and owned His work; who has given glory to man in Him; as a God who has come to save, not as one who is waiting to judge me. I believe in Him by Christ. When Israel had passed the Red Sea, they believed in a God who had delivered them and brought them to Himself; and so do I. I know no other God but that. If I believe in Him by Christ, I do wait for a promise, for the redemption of the body, for the full results of His work. Thus Christianity gives us present affections, in peace, in a known relationship, and the energizing power of hope; the two things that give blessing and energy to man as to his position; for love is the spring of all. Love, because He first loved us; and finding our joy in Him; love to others, as partaking of His nature, and Christ's dwelling in our hearts, so that love constrains us.

And this is the way by which we have got to know God. I believe in God by Christ: I do not believe in Him by nature, astronomy, or geology, but entirely by Christ. God not only sent His Son into this world that we might live through Him, but He raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory that our faith and hope might centre in Him. God has not only become the object of our hearts, but the all-controlling object. We delight to do His will. Our bodies are brought under His gracious control, and thus Christ is reproduced in us down here. We walk as He walked. You say, that is a very high standard. But would you not prefer a high standard before a low one? What name has been placed upon us? What superscription has been written upon our foreheads? Christ. That is the holy name that has been placed upon us. Even the world has thus designated us. They called the disciples of Jesus Christians, when at Antioch the Gospel was first preached. Christ is continued in His people down here.

Our title at the head of this paper is one such. Yet there is abundance of teaching in the Holy Scriptures that God reveals Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, not three Gods, but a Triune God, though Scripture teaches that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet one God indivisible.

We are speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ as “the Son,” and not of His distinctive glories as “the Son of David,” “the Son of Man” and “the Son of God,” nor even of Him as “the Son of the Father,” but rather of His deity as God the Son. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; yet there are not three Gods, but one God, “God is one” (Gal. 3:20; 1 Tim. 2:5, N.Tr.). Baptism is to the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” we are told in Matthew 28:19. This indicates for us the trinity of Persons in the Godhead, all of whom share in that supreme glory.

Never in all Scripture is there the slightest ground for saying that the Holy Spirit is an “element of material or physical existence,” but it uses language that can only apply to a Divine Person. We read in Hebrews 9:14 of “The ETERNAL Spirit.” The word, ETERNAL, in this connection, can only predicate Deity. God alone is eternal, a Being without beginning or end. Christians recognise the plain teaching of Scripture—God the Father; God the Son; God the Holy Ghost; not three Gods, for in the nature of things there can be only One supreme, uncreated, self-sustained Being. Christians believe, as taught in the Scriptures, not in a trinity of Gods, but in the triune God—One in Three and Three in One, a mystery beyond the creature’s comprehension, but not beyond the grasp of faith.

Baptism has a wider scope than Christianity, but no amount of reasoning can eliminate it from Christianity or from the epistles of Paul, which fully set forth the new order. The young Christian therefore should search the Scriptures on this as on all other doctrines and practices, and act before God according to what he finds written there. I do not propose here to enter into a discussion as to the subject or mode of baptism. But it is my present purpose to press upon the reader the distinctive instruction of Paul as to the lines of truth exemplified by, or connected with, baptism unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. For in the revelation of the Trinity we have Christianity in its essence. The Father so loved the world that He gave the Son, who became man, and in the power of the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God for our salvation. This is the grand fundamental truth each baptized one is called upon to defend, if need be, at the cost of his life. In baptism, Christ’s death is set forth in symbol. He, in amazing grace, because of our sins, bore on the cross the awful baptism of divine wrath, that we might enjoy forever the living favor of the God of all grace. This is pictured as the baptized one is immersed beneath the water. Every baptism is thus a fresh reminder of what we owe to the Lord Jesus. Like the communion supper, it sets forth His death (Romans 6:3).