Essential Tenets of an evangelical

After spending several decades working within evangelicalism, I would summarize its essential tenets in three statements:

This is our Father's world. Evangelicals believe that God created the world and lavished it with care. Any residue of goodness on the planet reflects God's "common grace": the sun shines and rain falls both on those who believe and on those who don't. All pleasure, including beauty, sexuality, art, and work, are God's gifts to us, and we look to God's revelation for the pattern in best ordering our desires so that in them we may find fulfillment and not bondage.

As an expression of love for the world, God entered its history (the Incarnation) and gave the Son's life as a sacrifice for its redemption (the Atonement). Its emphasis on Jesus and the Cross separates Christianity from all other religions, and evangelicals hold fast to that distinctive.

In the mystery of the Trinity, God was "in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (the apostle Paul's words). Evangelicals recognize that the world has been invaded by evil and believe that Christ began a process of reclamation. In that thrust the church plays a crucial role that will culminate in a final victory.

On one of Karl Barth's visits to Union Seminary in New York, someone asked him what he would say if he met Adolf Hitler. He replied, "Jesus Christ died for your sins."

Our emphasis on conversion stems from a profound belief that, as Paul put it, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Almost every message delivered by evangelist Billy Graham centered on that theme. And yet Graham himself insisted that a stress on getting right with God does not imply a faith "so heavenly minded that it does no earthly good." Quite the contrary.

Through the power of the Spirit, followers of Jesus advance God's kingdom in the world. Karl Barth also said, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." Yes, and in recent years evangelicals have increasingly recognized the corresponding need sometimes to unclasp those hands and lead the uprising against that disorder.

by Philip Yancey