Bible Study Is Sound Doctrine Essential for Salvation?

[reddogs]

We have people that think that all they have to do is be a part of Christian church or show up once a week to listen to the preacher and they are good, no matter what they teach. And its clear that without a proper understanding of doctrine and a knowledge of the Gospel in God’s Word, faith can be sidetracked or weakened. Just look at how the Jews thought that the Messiah was going to set up a kingdom to overthrow the Roman rule, and it was so ingrained that it took a while to clear it from even the disciples views. We see the most basic elements at the start of Christs ministry...

Matthew 3:2
And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 4:17
From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

So what is needed?

 

[Tenchi]

So what is needed?

Following are the "non-negotiables" of Christian living, the necessary components of walking with God, in the order in which they stand logically in the believer's life.

1.) Knowledge.

Romans 10:13-14
13 for "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved."
14 How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?...

2 Timothy 1:12
12 ...for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced...

2.) Faith.

Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

2 Corinthians 5:7
7 for we walk by faith, not by sight—

3.) Love.

Matthew 22:36-38
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38 This is the great and first commandment.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4.) Submission.

James 4:6-10
6 ...“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Romans 12:1
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

5.) Holiness.

Hebrews 12:14
14 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

1 Peter 1:15-16
15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,
16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

6.) Fellowship.

1 John 1:3
3 ...our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 13:14
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Luke 15:20-23
20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.
23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.

There is no walking with God apart from these things. If one or more of them is absent from one's daily living, one is not walking with God. But they build upon one another, knowledge giving rise to faith, which gives rise to love, which prompts submission, which results in holiness and, finally, daily fellowship with God, which is the ultimate point of all of these things.

 

[Who Me]

its clear that without a proper understanding of doctrine and a knowledge of the Gospel in God’s Word, faith can be sidetracked or weakened

A proper understanding or just an understanding?

Many people,e don't understand the gospel, possible because they don't listen!
Equally some people have a very simple understanding of the gospel, I've heard many testimonies of people who came to faith as a child.

Yes Christianity is far more than just attending church and dozing through a sermon or in doing ' good '.

The difference isn't in one's ability to study and learn, but in one's willingness to be challenged and to change.

 

[Tenchi]

Matthew 22:29
29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.

Often (though, not always), a "simple" faith is a way of describing someone who refuses to do the necessary work to know God's word, His truth, well, as He commands His children in His word to do. Certainly, no child of God who wants a deep, fulfilling, truly transformative experience of God can have such an experience while neglecting to thoroughly study and understand His word.

See:

Psalm 1
Psalm 119
Matthew 4:4
2 Timothy 3:16-17
1 Peter 2:2

 

[Carry_Your_Name]

Is sound doctrine essential to salvation? In theory, yes, sound doctrine leads to a sound mind, then spiritual fruit and good deeds; but in reality, it's usually the other way around - practice, actions and behaviors come first, we do what we do out of habits and traditions without thinking much about it, then when we DO think much about it, we develop doctrines to justify them. Some may be biblically sound, others are in question and up to debate.

 

[reddogs]

Following are the "non-negotiables" of Christian living, the necessary components of walking with God, in the order in which they stand logically in the believer's life.

1.) Knowledge.

Romans 10:13-14
13 for "Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved."
14 How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard?...

2 Timothy 1:12
12 ...for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced...

2.) Faith.

Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

2 Corinthians 5:7
7 for we walk by faith, not by sight—

3.) Love.

Matthew 22:36-38
36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
38 This is the great and first commandment.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

4.) Submission.

James 4:6-10
6 ...“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Romans 12:1
1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

5.) Holiness.

Hebrews 12:14
14 Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.

1 Peter 1:15-16
15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct,
16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

6.) Fellowship.

1 John 1:3
3 ...our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 13:14
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Luke 15:20-23
20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.
23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.

There is no walking with God apart from these things. If one or more of them is absent from one's daily living, one is not walking with God. But they build upon one another, knowledge giving rise to faith, which gives rise to love, which prompts submission, which results in holiness and, finally, daily fellowship with God, which is the ultimate point of all of these things.

So would you say the Gospel is a combination of these things in a believers life?

 

[Tenchi]

So would you say the Gospel is a combination of these things in a believers life?

They are all touching the Gospel, some more immediately than others. If I don't know the Gospel, I can't believe in Christ. If I don't know and believe in Christ, how can I come to love God properly? If I don't love God, why would I submit to Him? But without submission to God, I can't be truly holy. Holiness, though, is the key to "seeing God," which seeing is necessary to fellowship with Him, the end goal of our salvation.

Did this answer your question? I hope so...

 

[Tenchi]

Biblical doctrine arises from the objective and authoritative word of God, the Bible. Without such doctrine, the Christian is at sea in a tossing, tumultuous ocean of competing notions about God and one's relationship to Him. Biblical doctrine confines and orders what we know about God, His nature and purposes, and who and what we are in relation to Him. Biblical doctrine provides to the Christian the "bones" of divine truth on which hangs the "flesh" of Christian living, excluding most of what people on their own imagine is the shape and life of God's truth.

In this day and age, the constraints of Scripture, of objective, authoritative, divine Truth, is...uncomfortable for many people in the West who have grown up in a secular culture that is highly relativistic, subjective, and thus profoundly confused about reality and truth. There is no The Truth, these secular-minded folks believe, only "Your truth and my truth." Of course, they only believe this in the moral and spiritual realms and only so long as doing so gives them room to maneuver. Though they don't mind stealing time, and materials from, say, their employer, they protest loudly and long if someone steals their wallet, or bike, or car; they don't mind cheating on their spouse, but are devastated when their spouse cheats on them; they will cheer for terrorists "decolonizing" a region through torture and murder of civilians but express deep horror and moral outrage should criminal violence descend upon them. In this way, the subjectivity of "truth" for such people is just a cloak for deep hypocrisy and sin which the biblical doctrines revealed in God's word expose and condemn.

In the absence of biblical doctrine, the Christian has no way to know what they ought to think or how to act. They will just form up their own subjective arrangement of beliefs and values, which always borrows heavily from secular culture, personal experience and preferences born of personality. More often than not, though, such sources contradict God's Truth and Way, leading a person away from, rather than toward, Him. And so, we read in Scripture things like:

Ephesians 4:11-16
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers,
12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,
13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.
15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,
16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Matthew 28:19-20
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

2 Timothy 2:2
2 The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Titus 3:8
8 The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people.

Christian living, then, must begin with sound doctrine, which defines and prescribes right thought and deed.

 

[Josef]

Hey All,
Sound doctrine is essential to understanding and ministering the gospel. If you stick to The Apostles Creed you cannot get too far out there.

The Apostles Creed
I believe in God,
the Father almighty,
Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried;
he descended into hell;
on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty;
from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

Amen.

The only beliefs missing by name are the word Trinity, and the act of baptism. The belief of the Trinity is within the belief of conception. God times God equals God. If baptism was an absolute essential to salvation it should be in the creed. (Please don't turn this into Trinity or a baptism debate. I am just making a point concerning what The Apostles Creed left out.)

You know what though? As sound as the doctrine we follow is, it still needs to be simple to understand.

Luke 18:15-16 And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.
But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

I used to sit in "big church" with my grandparents. They had a Sunday School for the kids. But I liked "big church." The pastor made the sermons so understandable I was able to learn from his messages as well. As a result, I received Jesus at 4 years old, and completely understood what I had done.

Sound doctrine, simply put, with the Holy Spirit's calling, bring souls to Christ.

Keep walking everybody.
May God bless,
Taz