Why is Apologetics Needed? Part 3: Preserving the Faith

III. Apologetics is needed because Christians are to faithfully pass on the Good News they received from Christ.

From the very beginning, Christians have always given much attention to the faithful passing on of the Gospel to the next generation, and they warned against those who innovated and distorted the message. For example, when Judaizers in Galatia were distorting the Gospel, incorporating legalistic prescriptions into the message, and members of the church in Galatia were quick to embrace the doctrinal perversion. This prompted a sharp rebuke from Paul:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (Gal. 1:6-9).¹

When another group of Jewish Christians were gravitating to false teachers who pretty much gave their devotes license to sin, Jude was then compelled to write:

Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ (Jude 3-4).

The first Christians were convinced that Jesus Christ died upon the cross, that He rose again on the third day, and that He is the Lord of the universe (i.e. Jesus is incarnate deity). This core belief is expressed in passages like 1 Corinthians 15:3-11, Philippians 2:5-11, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-4, and 1 Peter 1:3-9. The same belief forms the centerpiece of the four Gospels. Moreover, it was Jesus Christ who first explained to His disciples that it was necessary for Him to die and rise again on the third day (Matt. 12:40;16:21; 17:23; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; Luke 9:22; 18:33; 24:7, 21, and 46; John 2:19). Jesus even made self-disclosures of His own divinity (Matt. 26:57-64; cf. Mark 14:53-65; Lk. 22:66-71; John 5:2-18; 8:39-59; 10:22-42).²

What has been happening throughout the centuries from the very beginning of the New Testament Church is rivals to Christianity emerge and they reject or distort elements to the core belief that Christ died, He rose again the third day, and He is Lord of the universe. The religious leaders who crucified the Lord upon hearing about His resurrection sought to promote the idea that the disciples stole the body when the guards posted at the tomb fell asleep and fabricated a story about seeing the Lord risen from the grave (Matt. 28:11-15). They were the first but not the last to challenge the core belief. Centuries later, Muhammad proclaimed that Jesus neither died upon the cross nor was divine in any sense but only another prophet of Allah. In more recent days, there have been liberal Jesus Seminar scholars, such as John Dominic Crossan, are ok with Jesus dying upon a cross, but suppose the corpse was buried in an shallow grave and possibly eaten by dogs, and what the disciples experienced was never really a bodily resurrection but some sort of visionary experience. The book Holy Blood Holy Grail suggests Jesus staged the crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene, had at least one child, and moved to France. The offspring of Jesus and Mary became the Merovingians. Numerous of these sorts of alternative portraits of Jesus have emerged through the centuries, but they are ultimately false Christs.

There is never any good reason to abandon the traditional view that Jesus Christ died, He rose again on the third day, and that He is the Lord of the universe. Moreover, there is far too much good evidence to show that this was a core element to the kerygma of the New Testament Church.

Every generation of Christians is met with the challenge to pass on the same Gospel to the next generation which Christ initially delivered to the first Christians. They are to resist being duped into embracing one of the many false Christ in the world. The ultimate goal is to say, “The message that Jesus Christ gave to Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Philp, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas (Didymus), James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Mathias who replaced the betrayer Judas Iscariot is the same message the Apostles passed on to the next generation. Even Paul received from Christ the same message given to the Apostles. This is the same message has been passed on uncorrupted through the millennia, this is the same message we are passing on to you, and you are to pass the same message on to the next generation, unadulterated, without spot or wrinkle.”

— WGN

Notes:

1. All Scripture cited from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), unless noted.
2. Note that flowing out of the belief that Christ died, He rose again, and He is Lord of the universe are other essential doctrines of historic Christianity, such as belief in Jesus’ full divinity and full humanity in one person, the Trinity (i.e. there is one God who is three in Person — The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit), the divinity of the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets and is worthy of worship, a universal community of redeemed saints from all places and epochs of time whom God has brought out of darkness into the light, i.e. the Church, original sin, salvation by grace, and the second appearance of Jesus Christ to judge the living and the dead, along with the resurrection of saints to eternal life and sinners to eternal condemnation.