If someone asked you, “What do Christians actually believe?” could you answer clearly, without rambling, oversimplifying, or just hedging your bets? Most believers have heard the doctrines for years, piecing them together from church, but very few can see how they all fit together as one unified system. Today I want to give you a big-picture flyover of Christian doctrine: what it is, how it holds together, and why it matters more often than we realize. Hello, I am Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church. I just finished teaching a semester course in our church’s Bible institute through a Bible doctrines book called Doctrine: The Doctrine Which Ye Have Learned. This video is not a debate or a deep dive into any one of these issues. It is an overview of what Christians believe, why those beliefs work together and belong together, and what happens if we remove or change any of them. Here is the map for the video. First, where truth comes from. Second, who God is and how He has revealed Himself. Third, an overview of what went wrong with man and how God saves. Fourth, the unseen world and what it looks like. And then we will see where all of this is headed. If you stay with me through those five checkpoints, we will see doctrine as a comprehensive whole.
Doctrine Books
As I said, we just finished this Deeper in the Word Bible Institute, where we cover these topics in much more detail than we would in a typical Sunday school class, with tests, quizzes, assignments, and all of that. Last semester we went through this doctrines book. It was good. It is from a Baptist perspective, very no-nonsense, and a little less dry than some of the other books I have had. This was one of the theology books I had in Bible college, Bancroft’s. When we heard Bancroft’s name, it was like, “Oh, do I have to read that?” We read the entire thing, every word of it, and it was kind of dull and dry and boring, more systematic. I guess you have to have that for reference. Here are a few of the other doctrines books I pulled off my shelves, with varying levels of benefit. Here is, I think, one of four volumes, book four of the doctrines from Robert Sargent, with very, very Baptist perspectives on the doctrines as well. That was a little more in-depth; they provide multiple classes on each of those doctrines through their Bible institute programs. But this one was an all-in-one class, an overview of the doctrines of the Scriptures.
Where Truth Comes From
So I want to look at where truth comes from, the big picture of doctrine. Christian doctrine does not begin with our experience or tradition or whatever we want to piece together. Doctrine, as we are talking about it, begins with the Word of God. I can see somebody writing a snarky comment: “Well, you have all these books for doctrine. I have the Bible.” I get that. These are all systematic theologies of the doctrines of the Scriptures. The Scriptures were not written as a systematic theology. The Bible is God’s written Word, given through human authors under the direct superintendence of the Holy Spirit, and yet it does not lump all the teachings of God into one book, all the teachings about Jesus in another, and all the teachings about the Bible in another. No, we piece together the various doctrines from all the various portions of Scripture and put them together into these doctrines books. That comes from the idea that Scripture says exactly what God intended it to say. We start with the doctrine of the Word of God: we are not defining Christianity for ourselves; God is the One who defines it. Scripture is not negotiable. That is the doctrine of Scripture: it is God’s Word. If we could change Scripture, every other doctrine would become negotiable. So the inspiration of the Scriptures is one of the foundational doctrines. Biblical inspiration means the Bible is God-breathed. It originates from God. This Book is not from man, down to the very words. God breathed the very words, without error and with full authority for our lives. Once somebody weakens the doctrine of the Bible, everything downstream from it is weakened as well.
Who God Is
From the Scriptures we understand the rest of God’s revelation. The Bible is God’s Book, God’s Word, revealing Himself to us. The Bible reveals God as eternal, self-existent, and distinct from His creation. He did not just emerge from the universe. He is not just some force out there. The universe came from Him. He is the God who is infinite in power, knowledge, holiness, and righteousness. He governs all things according to His purpose. He is eternal. He stands outside of time and space and matter, and He is the great Creator. That doctrine of who God is leads to the doctrine of the Trinity. How does God describe Himself? God exists eternally as one God in three distinct Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We are not dealing with three gods. It is not one Person who puts on three different hats at three different times. No, we are talking about one God in three Persons, each equal in nature, glory, authority, and eternity. So the doctrine of the Trinity is core to our belief as Christians. If the Trinity collapses, the gospel collapses too. Our salvation depends on who Christ is, so if you have a faulty view of Christ, you will have a faulty view of the gospel. God’s sovereignty belongs here too; we dealt with it in our institute class. God rules over all His creation. He rules over all, yet He is not the author of sin, and nothing can stand against Him. Nations, rulers, circumstances, human rebellion: none of it is outside His authority. But somehow, within His sovereignty, He has also given us the free will to make decisions that we rationally and reasonably make based on our own desires, whatever they may be. They can be guided by God, but we are responsible for the decisions we make. So God is sovereign over all. We do not limit or control God in any way, but within that sovereignty He is big enough to allow us free will as well. We talked about the various doctrines from that, and the book covers quite a bit of it.
Man, Sin, the Law, and the Gospel
That moves into man. This third section covers the doctrines of man, sin, the law, and the gospel. We know from the Scriptures that man was created in the image of God. We have a body, a soul, and a spirit, and we are designed for worship of God. But through sin, man fell. The doctrine of sin is not just bad behavior. Sin is the transgression of God’s law, crossing God’s boundaries. It is the evil intentions of the heart, the condition of man’s heart. Every part of us is affected by sin, and no amount of repair or fixing or good works can repair our sin nature from within. The law was not given to bring us to a place of holiness. The law was given to show us God’s holiness and, in contrast, our own sin and guilt. It was not some ladder to climb to heaven. The Bible says, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” That is Galatians 3:24. So the law brings us to the gospel. The gospel is the good news that God has provided salvation through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not through the law. Salvation is not earned by doing good works; the works flow out of our reception of the gospel. We have received this free gift of salvation, the forgiveness of sins. We receive the gospel through repentance and faith, not works. Repentance is a God-enabled turning of the heart from sin to Christ, a change of mind about our sin. I see my sin the way God sees it, and when I see my sin the way God sees it, it makes perfect sense that I am not going to love it and not going to live in it. So repentance and faith work hand in hand. Faith is personal trust in Jesus Christ alone, and together they are our human response to divine grace. “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men.” He has given us this opportunity. He has made a way, provided a way, for us to be forgiven of our sins, for that sin to be removed from us, and the free gift of salvation is offered. That is all despite who we are. It is all about the goodness of God, of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and all those doctrines of who He is.
The Unseen World
The fourth movement of the book is the unseen world, which goes into Christ, the Spirit, angels, and Satan. We know from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God. He became fully man without ceasing to be God. He was born of a virgin, lived without sin, and fulfilled all the prophecies of the Old Testament, so He alone is qualified to save. The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity. He is not just a force or an influence of God, but a divine Person, and the Bible refers to Him as “He,” as a Person. He convicts the world of sin. He regenerates believers. He indwells believers permanently, and He guides them through the Word of God. And there is a created order we live in, the spiritual realm: the angels of God, the messengers of God, the spirit beings of God, and the spirit beings of the devil. Angels are real created beings who serve God and carry out His purposes, and there are various kinds of what we would call angels or spirit beings. They are not divine and are not to be worshiped, but they are ministers. Satan is also a real being, a fallen angel who opposed God, deceived mankind, and took with him demonic forces that rebelled against God. He is active and very, very dangerous, and we are to be on high alert against him, but God is the One who fights him. He is not eternal, and he does not have unlimited power; only God has unlimited power. Satan is a very powerful being, but we have Jesus on our side: “Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” So Satan’s defeat is absolutely certain; it is coming in the future.
Where It Is All Headed
That brings us to the end, the fifth movement: death and resurrection, heaven and hell. Death is the separation of the soul and spirit from the body, and it came because sin was introduced, as we talked about in the doctrine of sin. Death does not end conscious existence. There is a future resurrection for all men, saved and unsaved, that will result in eternal destinies, and only one of them is called eternal life: life with God, life with Jesus Christ, for those in heaven. Heaven is a real, eternal dwelling place prepared by God for the redeemed. He will bring us to Himself. Hell is a real place of conscious punishment. It was prepared for Satan and his demons, but those who reject God’s salvation make a conscious choice to reject God, to choose sin, and to be responsible for the decision to reject the free gift of salvation. It is not a scare tactic. It is the necessary outworking of God’s justice, where He has provided His mercy through Jesus Christ. We can accept that free gift, but justice must be served: His eternal nature has been offended through sin, and that must be paid for eternally. Scripture also warns of apostasy and calls believers to separation from all doctrines contrary to the Scriptures. We are called to judge righteous judgment, to use discernment about the various doctrines out there, and to hold to the truth: abstain from all appearance of evil, and reject anything that is not part of the faith, not orthodox Christianity. If there is error, we resist it, purge it, get it out.
So studying doctrine is not just academics. True doctrine gets you to the questions that matter for eternity: Who is God? Who am I? What is wrong with mankind? How can these wrong things be made right? And ultimately, where is all this headed? Doctrine is not somehow causing all this disunity, as some people say: “Oh, we just need to show love and not focus so much on doctrine.” No, doctrine is what defines what love is, and who Love is. If you remove doctrine, you are not getting to a freer place. You are just removing the foundation that defines the unity we are trying to have. We cannot weaken doctrine to get to unity; we have to have unity around doctrine. I do not believe the same as the Catholics, the Pentecostals, the Muslims, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Mormons. I cannot be unified with them if our doctrine is not unified, and that is not a “me” problem; it is how we interpret the Scriptures. If you weaken doctrine, you do not get to unity; you get to instability. That is why Scripture speaks of “the doctrine which ye have learned.” It is the truth from the Scriptures that we have received and believed and tried to live out. So I hope that through this video you can see the big picture of our perspective on doctrine more clearly. I would encourage you to share the video with somebody who wants this overview of what Christians actually believe. If you want more teaching like this, rooted in Scripture and trying to be as clear as possible, we will keep producing videos like this on our YouTube channel. And I encourage you to join us for church some weekend; you can look up our website and see the details of our church, and if you are local, I invite you to come visit Calvary Baptist Church. Until the next video, God bless you, and continue to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. God bless you. We will see you in the next video.
