Do we need to believe in the historicity of Jesus’ life to be saved?

from the old testament

• Humanity was not created sinful (Genesis 1:31), but we rebelled against God (Genesis 3), placing us under His wrath (cf. Romans 6:23). From that point on we were born sinful (Psalm 51:5) and were all His enemies (cf.  Romans 5:10). Because God is holy (Isaiah 6:3), He must judge all sin (cf. Romans 6:23). That judgment is death (Genesis 3:19; cf. Romans 5:12). Left to ourselves, humanity only has judgment ahead of it.
• While Jesus’s life is detailed in the New Testament, long before, God promised to send His Servant to provide a way of escape from His wrath. Of Him, using language as if it had already happened, we learn that “he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). The Servant’s death was to be a sacrificial one, to die in the place of sinners. That was what salvation meant: having one’s sins paid by another. This was to be a literal event, not just a spiritual reality.

from the new testament

• Jesus is the eternal Son of God (cf. John 1:1) who humbled Himself to add human nature (Philippians 2:6–7). As fully human, He entered humanity as all humans do: through birth (Luke 2:7). He then grew up like any other child (Luke 2:52). Yet not once did He sin (Hebrews 2:17; 4:15). Jesus had to be fully human to save us and thus had to live a real human life.
• Being sinless meant that Jesus did not have to die as “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). However, Jesus said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17–18). While not needing to die for His sin, Jesus willingly died to pay for the sins of others. Without the real, historical Jesus doing this, we would not have salvation.
• Such a sacrificial death is known as a propitiation, a blood sacrifice that appeases God’s wrath. Paul said that salvation “is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:24b–25a). Salvation is available through Jesus’ death because it dealt with the penalty of sin. Elsewhere Paul said, For our sake [the Father] made [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Father counted Jesus as sinful and then punished Him in the place of repentant sinners.
• However, Jesus did not stay dead. He rose again three days later (1 Corinthians 15:3–4) and is living in heaven right now (Hebrews 1:3).
• In Paul’s day, some denied that people were resurrected, effectively denying the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. He corrected them, saying, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. … if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. … If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:14–19).
• Salvation without believing in the historicity of Jesus means faith has no anchor. There is no sacrifice for sin if Jesus was not really here; there is no righteousness credited to believers if Jesus was not truly righteous (Romans 4:5), and thus we are still in our sins…and fools because we believe without any hope of escaping God’s wrath because such forgiveness requires His actual death (Romans 5:8–9).

implications for today

Jesus is not merely an idea or a good moral example. Our problem is not simply that we need better behavior—we are sinners separated from a holy God. Because God is perfectly holy, He must judge sin. Yet because He is perfectly loving, He provided the only way for sinners to be forgiven without compromising His justice. The eternal Son of God willingly became fully human, lived the sinless life we could never live, and gave His life in our place so that all who trust in Him could be reconciled to God forever.

Jesus, therefore, could not be Savior in idea only. He had to truly become human, truly die, and truly rise again to deal with our sin. Christianity stands or falls on those historical events because they are the very basis of our salvation. If Jesus did not actually accomplish those things, there is no forgiveness, no victory over death, and no hope of eternal life.

Someone has to pay the penalty for your sin. Either you will bear God's judgment yourself for eternity (Revelation 20:11–15), or Jesus has already borne it on your behalf. He came as a true man (Philippians 2:6–7) to truly die, providing the only sacrifice that could satisfy God's justice and rescue sinners from His wrath (Romans 5:9). Because Jesus truly lived, truly died, and truly rose again, anyone who repents and trusts in Him can be completely forgiven and receive eternal life (Romans 10:9–10).