Ephesians 2:19-20 “Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”

Do you know what drives me crazy? People who quote the Bible as though they know the Bible against the Bible. A New York Times editorialist said that Christians believe Jesus is buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Well, no, we believe that Jesus rose from the dead and his tomb is empty. It is sort of the point of our whole religion.

A CNN panelist and Washington Post editorialist criticized a political candidate for saying the time had come for the body of Christ to rise up and vote its values. They thought he meant that Jesus should come back from the dead and involve himself in the election. Well, no, you can like the candidate or dislike the candidate, but the “body of Christ” is a way of referring to the collective group known as “Christians” or “the Church.”

From sources like these that you get all kinds of nonsense. They claim the God of the Old Testament is mean and vengeful, but Jesus came to introduce us to love in the New Testament. Essentially, they claim the Bible presents these two fundamentally different religions. Or some spout the nonsense that the Bible is a disjointed collection of contradictory ideas and lacks a cohesive message. They say even in the New Testament, Paul, Peter, Jesus, and John had fundamentally different theologies.

That’s not the way Paul sees it in these words to the Ephesians, is it. He says that this family of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” That foundation would be in need of serious repairs if the apostles, prophets, and Jesus all taught something different. It makes sense for Paul to write this only if the apostles, prophets, and Jesus teach essentially the same thing.

That’s the beauty of our Christian faith. From Genesis to Revelation, from Old Testament to New Testament, for 1500 years God had everyone, prophets and apostles, writing about Christ. “You diligently study the Scriptures,” Jesus once said, referring to 1400 years of writing before his day, “because by them you think you have eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me.” They either tell the history preparing for his coming, or promises predicting his coming. And once he came, the apostles further explained the meaning of his coming. That’s why he is the chief cornerstone. It all revolves around Jesus.

That old, old foundation is a double assurance for our place among God’s people. We aren’t built on shaky human goodness and our own weak performance. We aren’t built on human philosophies and religious theories. We are built on Jesus Christ–his perfect life in place of our sinful one, his death on the cross to spare us the death our sins deserved, and his resurrection from the dead as the deposit guaranteeing that one day we will walk away from our graves as well.

And this is not just one religious fanatic’s isolated fantasy. God had men spread over 1500 years preaching about this and writing it down, from one generation to another, all beating the same drum. God is sending you a Savior because you can’t pay for sin on your own. He makes you his own by calling you to faith. Build your hope of salvation on this foundation.