wtsbooks.com · title: basic christianity author: john stott created date: 10/20/2006 9:52:06 am

ivp classics

Basic Christianity

s

Foreword by rick war ren

John Stott

O v e r 2 . 5 M i l l i O n C O p i e S S O l d

i v pc l a s s i c s

BasicChristianity.book Friday, October 20, 2006 9:50 AM

Basic Christianity

s

J

OHN

S

TOTT

F

OREWORD

BY

R

ICK

W

ARREN

Front Matter.fm Friday, May 13, 2011 11:04 AM

InterVarsity Press

P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426

World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com

E-mail: [email protected]

©lnter-Varsity Press, London

©First Edition, March 1958

©Second Edition, May 1971

Retypeset and Americanized with a new foreword ©2006 by Inter-Varsity Press, London

Published in the United States of America by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, with kind

permission of Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission

from Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

InterVarsity Press

®

is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA

®

, a

movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools

of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship

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Dept., InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI

53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at <www.intervarsity.org>.

The Scripture quotations quoted herein are from the

Revised Standard Version of the Bible,

copyright 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the

Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Design: Cindy Kiple

Images: Abel Leão/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-6379-2 (digital)

ISBN 978-0-8308-3403-7 (print)

Front Matter.fm Monday, January 4, 1904 10:21 PM

Contents

Foreword by Rick Warren . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1 The Right Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

P

ART

O

NE

: C

HRIST

’

S

P

ERSON

2 The Claims of Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

3 The Character of Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4 The Resurrection of Christ . . . . . . . . . . 57

P

ART

T

WO

: M

AN

’

S

N

EED

5 The Fact and Nature of Sin . . . . . . . . . . 77

6 The Consequences of Sin . . . . . . . . . . . 89

P

ART

T

HREE

: C

HRIST

’

S

W

ORK

7 The Death of Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

8 The Salvation of Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

P

ART

F

OUR

: M

AN

’

S

R

ESPONSE

9 Counting the Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

10 Reaching a Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

11 Being a Christian. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164


Foreword

T

here are a few landmark

books that everyone in the world should read. This is one of the

rare few.

In the twenty-first century, you cannot afford to ignore this

book! Whether you are a skeptic, raised in another faith, spiri-

tual seeker or Christian believer, you need to know why 2.3 bil-

lion people call themselves “Christians.” You need to know what

they believe and why they believe it.

This book is especially essential for leaders in business, gov-

ernment, academics, media, entertainment, journalism and

other fields that work directly with people. To be able to have

an intelligent conversation with one-third of our world's popu-

lation, you need to understand their worldview.

John Stott’s

Basic Christianity

is a classic introduction to the

faith that has transformed billions of lives.

Rick Warren

Pastor, Saddleback Church

s


Preface

H

ostile to the church, friendly

to Jesus Christ.” These words describe large numbers of people,

especially young people, today.

They are opposed to anything which savors of institution-

alism. They detest the establishment and its entrenched priv-

ileges. And they reject the church—not without some justifi-

cation—because they regard it as impossibly corrupted by

such evils.

Yet what they have rejected is the contemporary church, not

Jesus Christ himself. It is precisely because they see a contradic-

tion between the founder of Christianity and the current state of

the church he founded that they are so critical and aloof. The

person and teaching of Jesus have not lost their appeal, how-

ever. For one thing, he was himself an antiestablishment figure,

and some of his words had revolutionary overtones. His ideals

appear to have been incorruptible. He breathed love and peace

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wherever he went. And, for another thing, he invariably prac-

ticed what he preached.

But was he true?

An appreciable number of people throughout the world are

still brought up in Christian homes in which the truth of Christ

and of Christianity is assumed. But when their critical faculties

develop and they begin to think for themselves, they find it eas-

ier to discard the religion of their childhood than make the ef-

fort to investigate its credentials.

Very many others do not grow up in a Christian environ-

ment. Instead they absorb the teaching of Hinduism, Buddhism

or Islam, or the ethos of secular humanism, communism or ex-

istentialism.

Yet both groups, if and when they read about Jesus, find that

he holds for them a fascination they cannot easily escape.

So our starting point is the historical figure of Jesus of Naza-

reth. He certainly existed. There is no reasonable doubt about

that. His historicity is vouched for by pagan as well as Christian

writers.

He was also very much a human being, whatever else may be

said about him. He was born, he grew, he worked and sweated,

rested and slept, he ate and drank, suffered and died like other

men. He had a real human body and real human emotions.

But can we really believe that he was also in some sense

“God”? Is not the deity of Jesus a rather picturesque Christian su-

perstition? Is there any evidence for the amazing Christian asser-

tion that the carpenter of Nazareth was the unique Son of God?

This question is fundamental. We cannot dodge it. We must

be honest. If Jesus was not God in human flesh, Christianity is

exploded. We are left with just another religion with some beau-


Preface

11

tiful ideas and noble ethics; its unique distinction has gone.

But there is evidence for the deity of Jesus—good, strong,

historical, cumulative evidence; evidence to which an honest

person can subscribe without committing intellectual suicide.

There are the extravagant claims which Jesus made for himself,

so bold and yet so unassuming. Then there is his incomparable

character. His strength and gentleness, his uncompromising

righteousness and tender compassion, his care for children and

his love for outcasts, his self-mastery and self-sacrifice have won

the admiration of the world. What is more, his cruel death was

not the end of him. It is claimed that he rose again from death,

and the circumstantial evidence for his resurrection is most

compelling.

Supposing Jesus was the Son of God, is basic Christianity

merely an acceptance of this fact? No. Once persuaded of the

deity of his person, we must examine the nature of his work.

What did he come to do? The biblical answer is, he “came into

the world to save sinners.” Jesus of Nazareth is the heavensent

Savior we sinners need. We need to be forgiven and restored

to fellowship with the all-holy God, from whom our sins have

separated us. We need to be set free from our selfishness and

given strength to live up to our ideals. We need to learn to love

one another, friend and foe alike. This is the meaning of “sal-

vation.” This is what Christ came to win for us by his death

and resurrection.

Then is basic Christianity the belief that Jesus is the Son of

God who came to be the Savior of the world? No, it is not even

that. To assent to his divine person, to acknowledge man’s need

of salvation, and to believe in Christ’s saving work are not

enough. Christianity is not just a creed; it involves action. Our


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intellectual belief may be beyond criticism; but we have to

translate our beliefs into deeds.

What must we do, then? We must commit ourselves, heart

and mind, soul and will, home and life, personally and un-

reservedly to Jesus Christ. We must humble ourselves before

him. We must trust in him as

our

Savior and submit to him as

our

Lord; and then go on to take our place as loyal members of

the church and responsible citizens in the community.

Such is basic Christianity, and the theme of this book. But

before we come to the evidence for Jesus Christ’s deity, an intro-

ductory chapter on the right approach is necessary. The Chris-

tian claim is that we can find God in Jesus Christ. It should be

a help to us in examining this claim if we realize both that God

is himself seeking us and that we must ourselves seek God.


1

The Right Approach

I

n the beginning God.” The first

four words of the Bible are more than an introduction to the cre-

ation story or to the book of Genesis. They supply the key which

opens our understanding to the Bible as a whole. They tell us

that the religion of the Bible is a religion of the initiative of God.

You can never take God by surprise. You can never antici-

pate him. He always makes the first move. He is always there

“in the beginning.” Before man existed, God acted. Before

man stirs himself to seek God, God has sought man. In the Bi-

ble we do not see man groping after God; we see God reaching

after man.

Many people visualize a God who sits comfortably on a dis-

tant throne, remote, aloof, uninterested and indifferent to the

needs of mortals, until, it may be, they can badger him into tak-

ing action on their behalf. Such a view is wholly false. The Bible

reveals a God who, long before it even occurs to man to turn to

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him, while man is still lost in darkness and sunk in sin, takes the

initiative, rises from his throne, lays aside his glory, and stoops

to seek until he finds him.

This sovereign, anticipating activity of God is seen in many

ways. He has taken the initiative in

creation,

bringing the uni-

verse and its contents into existence: “In the beginning God cre-

ated the heavens and the earth.” He has taken the initiative in

revelation,

making known to mankind both his nature and his

will: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers

by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a

Son.” He has taken the initiative in

salvation,

coming in Jesus

Christ to set men and women free from their sins: “God . . . has

visited and redeemed his people.”

1

God has created. God has spoken. God has acted. These

statements of God’s initiative in three different spheres form a

summary of the religion of the Bible. It is with the second and

third that we shall be concerned in this book, because basic

Christianity by definition begins with the historical figure of

Jesus Christ. If God has spoken, his last and greatest word to the

world is Jesus Christ. If God has acted, his noblest act is the re-

demption of the world through Jesus Christ.

God has spoken and acted in Jesus Christ. He has said

something. He has done something. This means that Christi-

anity is not just pious talk. It is neither a collection of religious

ideas nor a catalog of rules. It is a “gospel” (i.e., good news)—

in Paul’s words “the gospel of God . . . concerning his Son . . .

Jesus Christ our Lord.”

2

It is not primarily an invitation to man

1

Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 1:1-2; Luke 1:68.

2

Romans 1:1-4.


The Right Approach

15

to do anything; it is supremely a declaration of what God has

done in Christ for human beings like ourselves.

G

OD

H

AS

S

POKEN

Man is an insatiably inquisitive creature. His mind is so made

that it cannot rest. It is always prying into the unknown. He pur-

sues knowledge with restless energy. His life is a voyage of dis-

covery. He is always questing, exploring, investigating, research-

ing. He never grows out of the child’s interminable “Why?”

When man’s mind begins to concern itself with God, how-

ever, it is baffled. It gropes in the dark. It flounders helplessly

out of its depth. Nor is this surprising, because God, whatever

or whoever he may be, is infinite, while we are finite creatures.

He is altogether beyond our comprehension. Therefore our

minds, though wonderfully effective instruments in the empiri-

cal sciences, cannot immediately help us here. They cannot

climb up into the infinite mind of God. There is no ladder, only

a vast, unmeasured gulf. “Can you find out the deep things of

God?” Job was asked. It is impossible.

And so the situation would have remained if God had not

taken the initiative to remedy it. Man would have remained for

ever agnostic, asking indeed with Pontius Pilate, “What is

truth?” but never staying for an answer, because never daring to

hope that he would receive one. He would be a worshiper, for

such is his nature; but all his altars would be inscribed, like the

one in Athens, “To an unknown god.”

But God has spoken. He has taken the initiative to disclose

himself. The Christian doctrine of revelation is essentially rea-

sonable. God has “unveiled” to our minds what would otherwise


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have been hidden from them. Part of his revelation is in nature:

“The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”

“What can be known about God is plain to them [that is,

men], because God has shown it to them. Ever since the

creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his

eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the

things that have been made.”

3

This is commonly called God’s “general” revelation (because

it is made to all men everywhere) or “natural” revelation (because

it is in nature). But this is not enough. It certainly makes known

his existence, and something of his divine power, glory and faith-

fulness. But if man is to come to know God personally, to have

his sins forgiven and to enter into relationship with God, he

needs a more extensive and practical revelation still. God’s self-

disclosure must include his holiness, his love and his power to

save from sin. This too God has been pleased to give. It is a “spe-

cial” revelation, because it was made to a special people (Israel)

through special messengers (prophets in the Old Testament and

apostles in the New).

It is also “supernatural” because it was given through a pro-

cess commonly called “inspiration,” and it found its chief

expression in the person and work of Jesus.

The way in which the Bible explains and describes this reve-

lation is to say that God has “spoken.” We ourselves communi-

cate with one another most easily by speech. It is by our words

3

Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:19-20.


The Right Approach

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that we disclose what is in our minds. This is even more true of

God who has desired to reveal his infinite mind to our finite

minds. Since, as the prophet Isaiah put it, his thoughts are as

much higher than our thoughts as the heavens are higher than

the earth, we could never have come to know them unless he

had clothed them in words. So “the word of the Lord came” to

many prophets, until at last Jesus Christ came, and “the Word

became flesh and dwelt among us.”

4

Similarly, Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “since, in

the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through

wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach

to save those who believe.” Man comes to know God not

through his own wisdom but through God’s Word (“what we

preach”), not through human reason but through divine reve-

lation. It is because God has made himself known in Christ

that the Christian can boldly go to the agnostic and the super-

stitious and say to them, as Paul did to the Athenians on the

Areopagus, “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I

proclaim to you.”

Much of the controversy between science and religion has

arisen through a failure to appreciate this point. The empirical

method is largely inappropriate in the sphere of religion. Scien-

tific knowledge advances through observation and experiment.

It works on data supplied by the five physical senses. But when

we inquire into the metaphysical, no data are immediately avail-

able. God today is neither tangible, visible nor audible. Yet there

was a time when he chose to speak, and to clothe himself with

a body which could be seen and touched. So John began his first

4

John 1:1, 14.


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epistle with the claim, “That which was from the beginning,

which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which

we have looked upon and touched with our hands . . . we pro-

claim also to you.”

G

OD

H

AS

A

CTED

The Christian good news is not confined to a declaration that

God has spoken. It also affirms that God has acted.

God has taken the initiative in both these ways because of the

character of man’s need. For we are not only ignorant; we are

sinful. It is not sufficient therefore that God should have re-

vealed himself to us to dispel our ignorance. He must also take

action to save us from our sins. He began in Old Testament days.

He called Abraham from Ur, making of him and his descendants

a nation, delivering them from slavery in Egypt, entering into a

covenant with them at Mount Sinai, leading them across the

desert into the Promised Land, guiding and teaching them as his

special people.

But all this was a preparation for his greater deed of redemp-

tion in Christ. Men needed to be delivered, not from slavery in

Egypt or from exile in Babylon, but from the exile and the sla-

very of sin. It was for this principally that Jesus Christ came. He

came as a Savior.

“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people

from their sins.”

“The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

“For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost.”


The Right Approach

19

He was like the shepherd who missed the only sheep which

was lost from the flock and went out to search until he found it.

5

Christianity is a religion of salvation, and there is nothing

in the non-Christian religions to compare with this message of

a God who loved, and came after, and died for, a world of lost

sinners.

M

AN

’

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ESPONSE

God has spoken. God has acted. The record and interpreta-

tion of these divine words and deeds is to be found in the Bible.

And there for many people they remain. As far as they are con-

cerned, what God has said and done belongs to past history; it

has not yet come out of history into experience, out of the Bible

into life. God has spoken; but have we listened to his word? God

has acted; but have we benefited from what he has done?

What we must do will be explained in the rest of this book. At

this stage it is necessary to make only one point: we must seek.

God has sought us. He is still seeking us. We must seek him. In-

deed, God’s chief quarrel with man is that he does not seek.

“The Lord looks down from heaven

upon the children of men,

to see if there are any that act wisely,

that seek after God.

They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt;

there is none that does good,

no, not one.”

6

5

Matthew 1:21; 1 Timothy 1:15; Luke 19:10; 15:3-7.

6

Psalm 14:2-3.


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Yet Jesus promised: “Seek and you will find.” If we do not

seek, we shall never find. The shepherd searched until he found

the lost sheep. The woman searched until she found her lost

coin. Why should we expect to do less? God desires to be found,

but only by those who seek him.

We must seek

diligently.

“Man is as lazy as he dares to be,”

wrote Emerson. But this matter is so serious that we must over-

come our natural laziness and apathy and give our minds to the

quest. God has little patience with triflers; “he rewards those

who seek him.”

7

We must seek

humbly.

If apathy is a hindrance to some, pride

is an even greater and commoner hindrance to others. We must

acknowledge that our minds, being finite, are incapable of dis-

covering God by their own effort without his self-revelation. I

am not saying that we should suspend rational thinking. On the

contrary, we are told by the psalmist not to be like a horse or a

mule which have no understanding. We must use our mind; but

we must also admit its limitation. Jesus said,

“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou

hast hidden these things from the wise and understand-

ing and revealed them to babes.”

It is one of the reasons why Jesus loved children. They are

teachable. They

are not proud, self-important and critical. We

need the open, humble and receptive mind of a little child.

We must seek honestly. We must come to what claims to be

God’s self-revelation not only without pride, but without preju-

dice; not only with a humble mind, but with an open mind.

7Hebrews 11:6.


The Right Approach 21

Every student knows the dangers of approaching his subject

with preconceived ideas. Yet many inquirers come to the Bible

with their minds already made up. But God’s promise is ad-

dressed only to the earnest seeker: “You will seek me and find

me; when you seek me with all your heart.”8 So we must lay

aside our prejudice and open our minds to the possibility that

Christianity may after all be true.

We must seek obediently. This is the hardest condition of all

to fulfill. In seeking God we have to be prepared not only to re-

vise our ideas but to reform our lives. The Christian message has

a moral challenge. If the message is true, the moral challenge has

to be accepted. So God is not a fit object for man’s detached

scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a mi-

croscope and say “How interesting!” God is not interesting. He

is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ.

We had thought intellectually to examine him; we find he

is spiritually examining us. The roles are reversed between

us. . . . We study Aristotle and are intellectually edified

thereby; we study Jesus and are, in the profoundest way,

spiritually disturbed. . . . We are constrained to take up

some inward moral attitude of heart and will in relation to

this Jesus. . . . A man may study Jesus with intellectual im-

partiality, he cannot do it with moral neutrality. . . . We

must declare our colours. To this has our unevasive contact

with Jesus brought us. We began it in the calm of the study;

we are called out to the field of moral decision.9

8Jeremiah 29:13.9P. Carnegie Simpson, The Fact of Christ, 1930; James Clarke edition, 1952,pp. 23, 24.


22 BASIC CHRISTIANIT Y

This is what Jesus meant when, addressing some unbelieving

Jews, he said, “If any man’s will is to do his [that is, God’s] will,

he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I

am speaking on my own authority.” The promise is clear: we can

know whether Jesus Christ was true or false, whether his teach-

ing was human or divine. But the promise rests on a moral con-

dition. We have to be ready not just to believe, but to obey. We

must be prepared to do God’s will when he makes it known.

I remember a young man coming to see me when he had just

left school and begun work in London. He had given up going

to church, he said, because he could not say the Creed without

being a hypocrite. He no longer believed it. When he had fin-

ished his explanations, I said to him, “If I were to answer your

problems to your complete intellectual satisfaction, would you

be willing to alter your manner of life?” He smiled slightly and

blushed. His real problem was not intellectual but moral.

This, then, is the spirit in which our search must be con-

ducted. We must cast aside apathy, pride, prejudice and sin, and

seek God in scorn of the consequences. Of all these hindrances

to effective search the last two are the hardest to overcome, in-

tellectual prejudice and moral self-will. Both are expressions of

fear, and fear is the greatest enemy of the truth. Fear paralyzes

our search. We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ

would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the

rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of

our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual

and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find

because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want

to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is

not to seek.


The Right Approach 23

So be open to the possibility that you may be wrong. Christ

may in fact be true. And if you want to be a humble, honest,

obedient seeker after God, come to the book which claims to be

his revelation. Come particularly to the Gospels which tell the

story of Jesus Christ. Give him a chance to confront you with

himself and to authenticate himself to you. Come with the full

consent of your mind and will, ready to believe and obey if God

brings conviction to you. Why not read through the Gospel of

Mark, or John? You could read either one through at a sitting

(preferably in a modern translation), to let it make its total im-

pact on you. Then you could re-read it slowly, a chapter a day.

Before you read, pray—perhaps something like this:

“God, if you exist (and I don’t know if you do), and if you can

bear this prayer (and I don’t know if you can), I want to tell

you that I am an honest seeker after the truth. Show me if

Jesus is your Son and the Savior of the world. And if you bring

conviction to my mind, I will trust him as my Savior and fol-

low him as my Lord.”

No one can pray such a prayer and be disappointed. God is no

man’s debtor. He honors all earnest search. He rewards all honest

seekers. Christ’s promise is plain: “Seek and you will find.”


wtsbooks.com · title: basic christianity author: john stott created date: 10/20/2006 9:52:06 am

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