After discussing Islam last week, it’s probably a good idea to pause before venturing into other religions to discuss our own. It’s beneficial to know what others believe, but we need to be able to hold other beliefs against our own to see where, and why, we differ. So let’s take a brief look at what we, as Protestants, believe about life’s big questions.
The basics of Protestantism
Odds are good that if you call yourself a Christian and aren’t Catholic, you’re a Protestant. Protestantism isn’t necessarily a newer religion or belief system, but a reaction against the historical Roman Catholic Church’s drift from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We got our start in the 16th century when a monk named Martin Luther began noticing differences between what the Catholic Church was teaching and what he saw in the Bible. What happened next is beyond the scope of this article, but God used Martin Luther to begin the Reformation, causing many Christians to break away from the Catholic church.
These Christians, whose primary focus was bringing Christ and His true gospel back to Christianity, would later be known as Protestants because they protested the Roman Catholic Church and its misunderstanding of the Bible. Thus if you don’t follow Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, you would be a Protestant by default.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
It may be a Sunday school answer, but the first words of the Bible sum up a marvelous act on the part of God. God, for reasons we can’t truly understand, chose to create. Such is His glorious power that He merely spoke, and things existed. Everything we see around us is a result of God setting things in motion.
What’s most amazing about this verse is its deeper implications of what God created. In order for anything to exist, 3 things are required:
- Matter, the stuff an object is made from
- Space, the area that the matter must exist in
- Time, because existence isn’t possible unless it persists from one moment to the next
Although this verse doesn’t set out to teach science, it does tell us that God made everything from nothing, including the basic requirements of existence. He made time (in the beginning), space (heavens), and matter (earth). Thus we call God the “uncaused cause” because He is the one who exists outside of time, space, and matter, making Him able to create without needing to be created by something else.
How can we know what’s true?
Every scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work.(2 Timothy 3:16-17)
Protestants believe that the Bible is the inspired (translated “God breathed”) word of God given to men throughout history. It is a collection of 66 books that is complete and without error in its original writing. The Bible gives us everything we need to know for salvation and knowing God’s will and purpose for the world.
There are two main schools of thought regarding God speaking to people. One group, called “Cessationists,” believe that God has completely stopped giving messages through people. He no longer has prophets that He speaks to directly because He has fully revealed Himself in a permanent place, and thus has ceased communicating directly through others.
Those who believe God continues to speak directly through people are called “Continuationists.” They believe that God’s word is all we need to know Him, but that He will has more personalized messages for people today. In other words, God will give someone a “prophecy” to tell others. This can take the form of what God wants a church to do, an encouraging word to someone suffering, or even a message the messenger doesn’t fully understand, but feels compelled to tell someone anyway (i.e. “I feel that God wants me to tell you that He knows and forgives you, but wants you to fix it”).
Regardless of a person’s belief on modern-day prophecy, both sides agree that our primary means of knowing God is through His word. God is our source of truth, and our means of knowing God’s character and desires is given to us through the Bible.
We also use things like reason, tradition, general revelation (what we see in the natural world), and even emotion to understand truth, but all of those things must be understood and interpreted through a biblical worldview, rather than filtering the Bible through those secondary sources of truth.
Why are we here? What’s our purpose?
I will say to the north, ‘Hand them over!’ and to the south, ‘Don’t hold any back!’ Bring my sons from distant lands, and my daughters from the remote regions of the earth, everyone who belongs to me, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed—yes, whom I made! (Isaiah 43:6-7)
God created us on purpose, with purpose. God didn’t create us because He needs us. He didn’t make us so that we could spend our lives in pursuit of prosperity. He created us for His own glory. The purpose of our lives center around bringing glory to God, not pleasing ourselves.
Having heard everything, I have reached this conclusion: Fear God and keep his commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13)
Our purpose in life is quite simple, yet infinitely impossible on our own. We are to live our lives in awe and reverence to God, and through that we are given a burning desire to obey Him. Not out fear of an abusive parent, but a love and respect for His holiness that leads to a hatred of what He hates.
What is right and wrong?
Just as God is the giver of truth through His word, He is also the source of defining right and wrong, good and evil. The Bible is often seen as a list of ways to live a moral life, with God being painted as a taskmaster waiting to punish those who step out of line. Yet Protestantism is unique in its view of right and wrong – actions themselves aren’t actually right or wrong. It’s the motivations behind them that is the true issue.
All a person’s ways seem right in his own opinion,
but the Lord evaluates the motives.
Commit your works to the Lord
and your plans will be established. (Proverbs 16:2-3)
This is an important concept when we consider self-righteousness. How many people think they’re going to Heaven because they’re a good person? How many “good people” will realize their good works counted for nothing?
We are all like one who is unclean, all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight. We all wither like a leaf; our sins carry us away like the wind. (Isaiah 64:6)
Deeds that seem good are often very worthless. Why? Because the deeds are done in the pursuit of someone’s own desires. There are certainly obvious ones like giving money to charity so we can be seen (Matthew 23:5). Yet even deeds done because it makes a person happy to do them are of no worth before God.
It all comes back to Ecclesiastes. Good deeds done without a reverence for God are done selfishly. God simply doesn’t care about us being good people. He cares about us being His people. We understand good when we undersatnd God, and we can only do good by loving God and walking in obedience to what He’s revealed in the Bible.
By understanding good, it’s so much simpler to understand evil. Evil isn’t some spiritual presence or a thing we fight. Evil is simply any action done apart from a humble pursuit of God. We can see these highlighted in the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20), in the list of things God hates (Proverbs 6:16-19), and the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21). Yet these are all mere glimpses of ways we elevate ourselves and our desires above God, and are far from exhaustive.
What happens when we die?
And just as people are appointed to die once, and then to face judgment (Hebrews 9:27)
When a person dies, their destination is based on whether their sin was paid for by Christ:
For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. (Romans 10:13)
God is merciful, and He holds no wrath for those whose sin He already punished on the cross. Those who have acknowledged that they’ve broken God’s law by doing evil, confessed their sin, and asked Christ to save them through His death on the cross are granted entrance into Heaven. No amount of evil they’ve done can outdo the power of Christ’s sacrifice.
For I tell you, unless your righteousness goes beyond that of the experts in the law and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:20)
Because God is just, He must punish evil. Those whose sins weren’t paid for by Christ still stand guilty before God. They are sent to Hell, a place of eternal fire, because no amount of good deeds can save someone.
However, Heaven and Hell aren’t eternal destinations – rather, they are like waiting rooms. Revelation 20 describes the “Final Judgement,” a time where every individual throughout history will stand before God like defendants standing before an almighty judge. We will have to answer for every wicked deed committed in this life, and God will deliver His sentence based on our guilt. Those who are found guilty for even a single crime are thrown into the Lake of Fire along with death and a now-empty Hell (Revelation 20:14).
Yet for those who’s debt has been paid by Christ, our sentence simply reads “Paid in full.” God, a good and perfect judge, has already punished our sins at the cross. We have no more crimes left unpunished.
That’s the beauty of the gospel. It’s not about whatever meaningless power, health, or wealth we get in this life. It’s not even about escaping God’s wrath. It’s about what comes next.
In short, God creates a new Heaven and a new Earth, where all of His people are given new, eternal bodies so we can spend forever with Him. What we get through Christ is an eternity spent with our God, free from wrath and the temptation of sin. We are finally free to enjoy Him as we were always meant to – as humble people absolutely devoted to our great God.
Other important things to know
30,000+ denominations
When other religions look at Protestants, they think we’re completely fractured. There are an estimated 33,000 different denominations of Christianity – how on earth can we claim to be united? Yet this figure is a bit misleading. All these denominations fall into two basic camps:
- False teachers and cults who don’t believe in the basic fundamentals of Christianity (we won’t count these for the rest of this discussion)
- Those who agree with the important aspects of Christianity, yet have different beliefs and/or practices with things that aren’t critical to salvation.
So while that number is shocking, it doesn’t adequately reflect that we have millions of people from time and history who have been saved by Christ, yet have understood secondary and tertiary things differently.
Creation
There are those who believe the story in Genesis is a literal account of how God created the universe in 6 days, resting on the 7th. There are others who look at modern science, as well as the Hebrew word used for “day” (yohm) and argue that the story is a metaphor, with “day” meaning a long period of time. Thus, the universe is indeed billions of years old, rather than 10,000.
What’s important here is that both sides acknowledge God as the “uncaused cause,” and both assume that He has the power to guide creation in the way He decided to.
The End Times
Will the world go through a literal 7 years of tribulations? Will Christ literally reign on Earth 1,000 years before the Final Judgement? Are we currently in that kingdom now? Who is the Antichrist?
Revelation is a hotly-debated book, and many good and humble Christians have had all manner of different understandings about the specifics in it. What we discussed tried to distill everything down to the parts most Christians would agree on, but Amazon is filled with different interpretations and understandings of Revelation.
The punishment of sinners
Those in agreement with historical Protestantism will agree that an eternal life with God is only for those who are sealed by the Holy Spirit through salvation (Ephesians 1:13-14). However, the fate of the rest of humanity isn’t as agreed upon.
There is a growing belief in Annihilationism, the idea that a good and loving God wouldn’t send people to an eternal, conscious punishment. Instead, their souls are annihilated, either immediately upon death or when thrown into the Lake of Fire after the Final Judgment.
Sharing the gospel
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. (Romans 6:15-18)
Those truly saved by Christ don’t need to be saved again, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need the gospel! There is an unfortunate trend in America where people are told to pray a prayer… and then that’s about it. Yet the gospel isn’t just good news for those who are under God’s wrath – it’s good news for our entire lives!
We need to proclaim the gospel to ourselves every day. We must live like we are no longer slaves to sin. We’ve been set free so that we can pursue God, something we are utterly incapable of doing apart from God’s intervention.
He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15)
Yet if we believe everything we’ve discussed, the gospel can’t stop with us. If the Bible is our source of truth, it tells us that our purpose is to obey God out of love and reverence. Part of our purpose is to tell others about the wrath of God and salvation through Christ.
The one who believes and is baptized will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16:16)
We know what awaits those who die without forgiveness. There’s a great temptation to be polite – to not offend or upset people by “shoving Jesus down their throat.” We want people to just see our lives and want to know Jesus for themselves.
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
Yet the life of a Christian isn’t glorious, nor is it something an enemy of God could possibly desire. We aren’t promised riches and easy living. Those who directly followed Christ during His life faced nothing but mockery, beatings, torture, and execution. Many of us are fortunate to live in a time of peace, yet those who are still under God’s wrath often live lives even better than us if we are judging a “good life” through materialistic eyes.
Our lives are certainly part of our testimony, but they aren’t our primary tool for proclaiming the gospel. Our lives are meant to reinforce what we say, or at the very least not stand in contradiction to our words. Yet those on the way to an eternity without God need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ now just as much as we still do.
How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)
