Life is all about perspective. Every decision you make, every plan you follow, every belief you hold, everything about you is filtered through the lens of your perspective. There is nothing groundbreaking in this statement. I doubt there’s anyone who would argue with me in earnest about it.

Though everyone would agree with me, very few people actually apply this concept. How do I know this? Just scroll through your Facebook feed during election season and watch the insanity.

Republicans cannot understand why Democrats believe things they way they do, even though Republicans are only Republicans because someone very early on influenced their perspective on how government should work. If they were born in another state or with different parents, they would just as easily be as entrenched on the other side of the voting aisle. The same works both ways, but you knew that, right?

The same goes for brands. Apple users can’t understand why Samsung users are so blind to how great Apple is. Same for Xbox and PlayStation. Don’t even get the Marvel folks started on the DC folks.

I hate to break it to you: you like the things you like not necessarily because what you like is actually better than the other option, but because of your perspective. So, here’s some free advice not related to the rest of this post: if you want to convince someone of something, don’t present information, regardless of how true your information is or not. Seek to understand and make understood the difference in perspectives. If you don’t change a person’s perspective, you will never change their mind about something. This will change your life; please don’t use it for evil.

All this lead in is to make this point: your perspective will make or break you. So, when it comes to the weighty issues of life, you need a reference point to make sure your perspective is planted with a firm foundation. This applies to all areas of life, but I want to focus on Christianity for the rest of today.

For a Christian, what is our reference point? Most Christians would say the Bible, however, this is only a partial truth. While the Bible is our final authority, it is not our final foundation. This seems like a semantics issue, but let me explain.

There are two sections to the Bible. The first part, the Old Testament, is the story of God’s covenant between Himself and Abraham, which would then become the covenant with the Nation of Israel. The second part, the New Testament, is the fulfillment of the old covenant in the person of Jesus, who established a New Covenant with all who would believe.

The Old Testament does not directly apply to Christians other than being a divinely inspired backdrop and lead in for the Messiah. It teaches us spiritual principles and reveals information about God, but there is not a single Christian who is bound by it. Saying the Bible is the foundation of Christianity doesn’t take into account that the majority of the Bible doesn’t directly apply to Christians who are no longer under the law.

Further, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, but Christianity was born without a Bible. When Paul wrote that all Scripture is God-breathed, he was actually talking about the Old Testament, because the New Testament wasn’t compiled yet. We can apply it to the New Testament now, because we are on the other side of these books being written, but that wasn’t the case during the early days of the Church.

First-Century Jews and Gentiles were converted to Christianity without a Romans Road (points if you know what that is), the Four Spiritual Laws (more points), or whatever other gimmick you learned when you were young to teach you how to evangelize. They built their foundation on something else. Besides, saying the Bible is the foundation of Christianity contradicts what the Bible itself says is the foundation of Christianity, which I’ll show you in a moment.

So if the Bible isn’t our foundation (I know that’s either a scary or offensive introductory clause for some of you), what is?

Christianity was not meant to be built on Scriptures and theology, but a person, and, more specifically, an event in this person’s life. Every time in Acts that Peter preaches to potential converts, he always says that he was a witness to this event. If you grew up in church, or know even the slightest information about Christianity, you know where I’m going with this.

In order to know what Christianity’s foundation is, we have to go to our final authority, the Bible! See, it feels like semantics, but it’ll make sense in a little bit. Stay with me. Here’s what it says:

10 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. 11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 3:10-11 | NIV

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2:19-22 | NIV

14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 1 Corinthians 15:14 | NIV

The foundation of Christianity is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Why is this such an important distinction to make? I mean, we only know that the Bible isn’t our foundation because of what is in the Bible? It’s pretty much the same thing, right? No. Not even by a long shot. There are two big problems that pop up if you make the Bible your foundation.

The first is a practical issue. It becomes very easy to poke holes in your faith if your faith is built on something that is supposed to be an authority. Anyone who has been through 7th grade Physical Sciences can attest to that. If your foundation is the Bible, all someone has to do is raise questions about a scripture’s validity, say, the creation story, or the flood, or any other single passage in the Bible, and the seed of doubt has been planted and may grow.

If your faith is built on an event which is historically verifiable (that’s a discussion for another day), then it doesn’t matter if the creation story is mythology or parable or a historical account. It has no bearing on your faith that Christ died and rose again. You don’t have to pick between science or faith (which you don’t, but that, again, is another discussion). You have history. It is much harder to uproot a foundation of an event than a belief. If our parents had gotten this right, you probably wouldn’t have seen the widespread explosion of New Atheism.

The second is a spiritual issue. Building our foundation on the Bible give us the wrong view of ourselves. What does that mean?

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. James 1:22-25 | NIV

Now let’s break that down. James tells us that the word is a mirror, not a foundation. Mirrors are great at exposing flaws, but they’re not so great at supporting buildings. If we build on the mirror of the word instead of the foundation of the resurrection, when we look into the mirror in the floor, we’re going to be looking in a mirror distorted under a weight that it was never meant to carry.

When we look in a distorted mirror, a strange phenomenon happens with which you’re probably familiar with: your reflection appears hilariously out of proportion. You look nothing like you’re supposed to appear.

When we look at the word through this distortion, you become in danger of reacting to your disproportionate image typically by becoming one of two groups people.

The first group of people look at themselves and see condemnation, because they don’t measure up to this distorted image.

You would love to enter into worship, grow closer to God, do all the things a Christian does, but you just can’t. You remember what you watched this morning after your wife left for work. You remember that abortion you got in college that your husband still doesn’t know about. You remember that thing that happened when you were on the business trip and you had one too many drinks.

Every time you feel like you are about to make strides in your relationship with Jesus, the guilt and condemnation are right there to pull you back. So we try harder and harder, but we’re never good enough (spoiler alert: you can never be good enough. That’s kind of the point of needing a savior)

When we look in the distorted mirror instead of aligning our perspective with the cross, it’s easy to see that we don’t measure up. We pretend like its not by grace we’ve been saved, through faith, not from ourselves, but the free gift of god. We continually measure ourselves because we have the wrong perspective. When we don’t keep the cross in our view, our salvation is distorted into something we do, not something that is finished.

The second group swings the pendulum the other way, and this is the larger group. This group looks at themselves in this distorted mirror and they don’t see the mercy extended to them from the cross: they see the accomplishment in their adherence to the scriptures. Though they started out grateful for the work of the cross, they soon forget the mercy they have been shown, and begin to take pride in what they have accomplished as christians, instead of what has already been accomplished. Their perspective turns inward, because they started looking at the wrong standard.

When we have the wrong perspective on the Bible, we look to the scriptures as a resume instead of a revelation. We don’t focus on using scripture to grow our relationship with Christ; we start looking at wearing how much scripture we read and how often we read it as a badge of honor or a mark of shame. We start looking at how “holy” we are. We start looking at how well we live up to the standard set in scripture, and we compare ourselves to how “holy” other people are. We focus on our self-sufficiency instead of our desperate need for reliance.

People in the accomplishment group are in danger of the same fall as another who started looking at his own accomplishment: he was once known as Lucifer, but now we call him Satan. Think about it for a minute: he was there in heaven right next to God. He was literally face to face with Him. But, as he worshiped, his perspective changed. He focused on his own accomplishment, his skills, and what he had done, and that led to pride overtaking him. He began to look at his own righteousness and his own works, and he forgot who God was. We know how that turned out.

This group is especially dangerous, because now that they are focused on themselves and not the work that was done on the cross, they begin to judge those around them. They become the pharisees, who Jesus told to go and learn what this means: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”. They become white washed tombs, clean on appearance, but a heart filthy with pride.

Listen, no one knows scripture better than a Pharisee from Jesus’ day. They had the first five books of the Torah memorized. They knew and kept every law in scripture. No one was holier at the time than a Pharisee, and yet, you see Jesus constantly rebuking them throughout scripture for the hardness of their hearts. They had the wrong perspective. They missed the relational aspect of God that’s woven all throughout the Torah. Jesus told them to go back and read it again. I will give them this excuse: Jesus hadn’t died and resurrected yet. What’s your excuse?

Your perspective on this issue can make all the difference. If you focus on the cross, you do not see your accomplishment, nor do you see your condemnation. You see something else entirely.

You see that we all are the woman at the well, which I encourage you to read her story in John chapter 4. We were like a samaritan, not qualified to be in the presence of Jesus, living in our sin. And yet, even though we’ve had five husbands and a side piece, or whatever your particular sin may be, Jesus says, I know all that. I’m still offering you the water of eternal life, because I am the Messiah, the lamb who has come to take the sin of the world

You see that we are all Peter in Luke chapter 5. We were just minding our business, cleaning our nets after a long night of fishing, going about our normal sinful lives, and we heard the message of Jesus. We decided to do one small act of faith, and then, in that small step of faith, Jesus reveals to us that he is who he claims he is. We fell at his feet and said, get away from me, Lord, because I am a sinful man. But, he looked at us and smiled, and said, :Don’t be afraid! From now on, if you follow me, I’ll make you a fisher of men.”

You see that we are all Saul of Tarsus in Acts 9. We were all going our way, doing what we thought was best. But, when we were not just far from god, but an ENEMY of god, Christ demonstrated his love for us. He brought us in, and showed us who we could be, regardless of who we were.

You see that we are all the woman caught in the act of adultery in John chapter 8. We were living a life of sin, but, when Jesus came face to face with that sin, he didn’t condemn us. Instead, he stooped down to us, looked up to our accuser, then stood between us and the penalty of our sin until all our accusers left us. Then, he gave us the courage to leave our life of sin.

We in the first group tried to leave our life of sin, but we never understood this law of liberty or the freedom we have in christ. We heard the words when Jesus said we’re not condemned, but they stayed just that: words. We never let it turn into the revelation of love that Paul kept telling us about.

We in the second group did leave our life of sin for the most part. We got into a church, and we learned the songs, and the scriptures. We learned all the motions, and we got more and more knowledge. As we became better and better at doing all the things a Christian does, we focused more and more on our faithfulness to God, instead of focusing on His faithfulness to us.

Both groups get caught up in our DO, when we should be focusing on his DONE.

What would the woman at the well tell us about the love of God and what Jesus did for her? Or the woman caught in adultery? Or Peter? Would they talk about how good they are? Or what they’ve done? Or how they’re glad they’re not like those sinners? Or how they just wish that they could live up to the standard of the Scriptures?

I know what Peter and Paul would tell us, since they wrote us about it almost 2,000 years ago. They would ask us if we’ve forgotten what Christ has done. Peter would ask us if we’ve bothered to read his letters. Paul would remind us that he wrote about it over and over and over again.

So let’s read from their letters, starting with Peter to address the people that look at their own accomplishments.

23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.” 25 For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 1 Peter 2:23-25 | NIV

I think Peter would ask us who are living on this side of the resurrection, “Have you read my letter? Have you forgotten what I wrote you? How could you focus on what you have done, when Jesus has already finished it on the cross? What part did you play in this event? How could you ever take any credit for anything to do with your salvation? He is the Shepherd and Overseer of your soul, not you.”

Then I think Paul would read to us from the letter he wrote to the church in Rome to help those who struggle with condemnation:

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:31-39 | NIV

He would say, “How could you earn what has been given? It is Christ who justifies. Yes, you were dead in your trespasses, but God made a way for you to receive a free gift! Nothing you do could make God love you any more or any less! Walk in this Law of Liberty!” (I imagine he would use lots of exclamation points, because I feel like he yells a lot in his letters)

Now, to the few of you that have made it through this whole thing, I do believe the scriptures are extremely important to Christianity. They contain the eye-witness testimony of Jesus, they contain our standard for faith and conduct, and they contain a divinely inspired revelation of God, among other things. The Bible is our final authority. However, you do not need to know a single scripture for salvation. You just need to confess Christ’s lordship and believe in his resurrection. If you don’t even need a Bible to become a Christian, why are we making it the foundation?

With the right perspective, your faith will be made complete. Your faith will be built on the foundation of Christ, and you will be able to use the authority of the scriptures to build on that foundation. Again, I know it can seem like semantics, but sometimes, semantics make all the difference.