W H AT Y O U N E E D T O K N O W A B O U T J E S U S
the one that I thought had the fewest problems. Easily, that was Christianity. True Christianity is simply Jesus Christ and a personal relationship with Him. Lord, I still don’t understand why You created hell, I thought. But there are no answers outside of You. If I want something else, to whom shall I go? You have the words of eternal life. Yes, there are hard things about Jesus and His teachings, just as the multitude in John 6 found Jesus’ teachings difficult. The hardness, I believe, however, comes not from His teaching but from our own limitations. Notice that Peter did not say He understood all of Jesus’ teachings. He affirmed that he had heard enough to know that, even when he came up against something that was hard to understand, he would not let that destroy what he did understand. When I reasoned through all that, in the proverbial “twinkling of an eye,” I was once again secure in Christ, and I have never wavered since. Jesus, I believe, is the answer to whatever the question is about life and the afterlife.
What Do You Mean When You Say “Jesus”? Jesus of Nazareth is the divine Son of God, the second member of the Trinity, and the Savior of humanity.
If you were to ask ten people at random who Jesus is, you would probably get ten different answers. To some, He is merely a man, like any other human being. To others, he is a great moral teacher, the founder of one of the world’s great religions. To others, He is a madman, instigator of much of the evil in the world (consider the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the religious wars, the “colonialistic evangelism and corruption” of Third World cultures). Others have no idea who He is, and still others believe He never existed. To many, He is nothing but a name to curse and swear by. Therefore, as the starting point for our study of Him, we must agree on who and what we mean when we say “Jesus.” When I say “Jesus,” I mean that He is the Son of God, the second member of the Trinity who existed before the creation of the world, who participated with the Father and the Holy Spirit in creation, and who became human. This Jesus of Nazareth, being born of a virgin, came to earth to do the will of God the Father. He died for our sins, came to life again, was bodily resurrected, ascended into heaven, and will come again someday to judge sin and establish permanent righteousness on earth.
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