Essential Christianity - The Gospel

I offered Paul's response to the Philippian jailer's question, "What must I do to be saved?", as a bare-bones explanation of what you must believe in order to be saved. That's fine, perhaps, but probably not sufficiently clear. Perhaps we could go with Paul's formula for the Gospel:

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also (1 Cor 5:1-8).

This is Paul's "Gospel", his "good news". This is his minimalist version, the necessary items. But first it is absolutely essential to realize one fact of key importance. What makes it "good news"? Without that starting point, the rest makes no sense. And that starting point was in the Philippian jailer's question (whether or not he actually intended it). "What must I do to be saved?" requires the need to be saved. It first requires the recognition that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. And that problem is sin. Start there.

Having acknowledged our failure to measure up to God's demands and our inability to fix it, now we're ready for good news, the Gospel. And what is that good news?

1) Christ died for our sins.
2) That death was "according to the Scriptures".
3) He really died (not spiritually or figuratively or ...), evidenced by the fact that He was buried.
4) He rose again. That resurrection wasn't spiritual or mythological, but genuine, as evidenced by the many who actually saw Him.

Now, take any single component of that away, and you'll find that you no longer have a Gospel. His death had to be genuine. It had to be the specific one foretold in the Scripture. Or this was not the Messiah, not the Jesus in whom we need to trust. His death had to have the singular purpose of paying for our sins. Some have argued that He simply gave an example. That's not sufficient to retain the "good news". We are in a sin condition, remember? Without proper payment, that sin condition isn't remedied. He had to die for our sins. He had to be buried. That, of course, is key to the "according to the Scriptures" claim. And He had to rise again from the dead. Buy into a real Jesus who really died and even died for your sin, and you've got a decent thing going, but not ultimately good news because, as Paul points out later in the chapter, if He never rose again, there is no victory over death (which, by the way, is the singular result of the sin problem we are trying to remedy), and any faith in that Jesus is in vain. No, He had to rise again, genuinely, physically, with witnesses.

There you have it. "What must I do to be saved?" "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." That faith is premised on the need of a sinner incapable of saving him or herself. It is confidence placed in the historical Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, the Master. It is faith that He died for our sins, really died, really was buried, and actually, physically came back to life three days later according to a large number of genuine witnesses. These are the essential beliefs required for a person to cross over from "unbeliever" to "believer", to go from "non-Christian" to "Christian". Anything less is not saving faith.