Who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus?

This is probably the most important question that you will ever ask, because if the answer is God then that is going to make a radical change to your life.

So what is Jesus like? If you search “Jesus” on google images these are some of the pictures that you will find.

They all seem to portray a soft, gentle pretty-boy, with long glossy hair, cuddling a cute little lamb. To be honest he doesn’t look very impressive, he certainly doesn’t look like someone you would worship and give your life to. But the bible paints a very different picture. Revelation 19:11-16 describes him like this:

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron scepter. He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:
KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.”

And Revelation 1:12-18 describes him like this:

“I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.”

I think you’ll agree, that’s a very different picture. This is who Jesus is. This is the God that Christians worship.

Christians, Tough Questions & the Dead Man Walking

There are a lot of tough questions about Christianity. Like, why is the Bible’s view on sex so different to the world’s? Or, why does God allow suffering? There are so many, and they’re all really important to think about and discuss, but something Andrew said to me last week changed the way I think about them. I asked him a tough question, and his response was yes, it is difficult to understand, but does that mean Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead?

The answer of course was no. I know that Jesus was resurrected, because there is so much evidence to prove that he was! Take, for example, the fact that the tomb where his body was laid was empty, a dead body simply disappeared, even Jesus’ enemies acknowledged that this was true, although they accused the disciples of stealing it. But the majority of the disciples died horrific deaths in the name of the resurrected Jesus, people around the world die for their beliefs every day, but would the disciples have been willing to meet such terrible ends if they knew they were spreading a lie?

Okay, so on its own the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty might not be enough to prove he was resurrected, but thankfully that isn’t the only proof we’ve got. Because Jesus didn’t just disappear from his tomb, he came back and revealed himself to loads of people, at one point he even appeared to over 500 people at once! Now I can’t believe that many people could all have hallucinated or imagined it, in our court system if one or two people give a testimony it’s counted as good evidence, but 500! Maybe all of those people wanted everyone to believe that Jesus is alive, but we know he appeared to people who hated him too, take Paul for example, he was the last person anyone would’ve expected to say he’d seen the resurrected Jesus, because at the time he was so against the spread of Christianity that he was going around persecuting Christians, but after seeing Jesus risen from the dead he did a complete turn around and proclaiming the gospel became his main mission in life!

So for me, the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead proves he is God. Science shows us that it can’t happen naturally, it takes some pretty awesome power, and that’s what Jesus has. Yeah, sometimes I don’t understand everything the Bible says, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is God, or that he died and rose again for me. I’m still gonna worship him even if I don’t have all the answers, and with his help I’ll work my questions through.

If you’ve got any questions about this please come and talk to me or one of the other youth leaders at True, we’d love to chat with you about it!

New year, same focus

Sally shares what Jesus' birth means to her and why it's something to get excited about beyond the Christmas season...

Ok, so call me dim, but for ages and ages I was a Christian who couldn’t quite get my head around the fact that we are saved and rescued from all our sins solely by one man. I’d accepted that it was true, and I could give all the right answers when asked, but in my head, I can honestly say I really didn’t get it! Many of you are probably thinking that it’s obvious, in which case you probably don’t really need to read on, and maybe it was just me who struggled with this, but for anyone who just doesn’t quite get it, I’d really like to try and make it clearer for you because it’s an amazing revelation!

According to my Google search, there are approximately 6,888,888,888 people currently living in the world, and it’s estimated that about one third of those people consider themselves to belong to the Christian faith. That’s a heck of a lot of people! Multiply that by the amount of people that have been before us, and you get some extortionate figure that wouldn’t even make sense to you and I as your average person who doesn’t have a PhD maths! So. All that sin generated billions of times a second, by these billions and billions of people... and it takes one man to take it all away!? WHAT, surely not!?! This had me so confused and bothered me for literally years!

Jesus was the son of God, who came from heaven in human form. He had a human mother and was born just like you or I. He grew from being a baby into a man – again just like you and I. He never sinned and always did right by God and other people... woah, let’s rewind a bit! That’s not like you or I (sorry to break it to you!) I just want to repeat that sentence: he never sinned and always did right by God and other people. This is the key part that I knew, and could relay to others when asked, but had also completely overlooked and had learnt to say by parrot fashion!

To top that, not only was he sinless and always doing right by God and his ‘neighbour’, but he also offered to take ALL his ‘neighbours’ sin onto himself and take the punishment for it, instead of us having to endure an eternity in hell. We don’t deserve heaven. God is so amazingly good and right and holy that we aren’t even worthy so as to pick up the crumbs from under his table. But Jesus came, and because he was the only sinless one, he then took each and every one of our sins and made a way for us to go to heaven. This, is what makes it possible for this one man, and one man only to have saved us: he was SINLESS which meant he could, and did choose to TAKE ALL OUR SIN UPON HIMSELF!

So anyway, the birth of Jesus... What does it mean to me? Well flip me, if he hadn’t have been born what kind of a mess would we be in!? Christmas is such an amazing time to celebrate the fact that Jesus was born into the world and that little tiny baby is saviour of billions of people. Oh come let us adore him indeed!

What's the big deal?

Our youth leaders share about what Jesus' birth means to them.

First up: Bethan

Christmas to me is when my saviour was born, not only my saviour but my best friend. It never used to mean a lot to me really, just an excuse for decorations, presents and getting excited but i never really knew why it was so special and why i was getting excited.

It's not until I became a christian that I understood what Christmas was and meant, and how it affected my life. God loved me so much that he gave his only son who became flesh. He walked on the same earth, suffered temptation but stayed fully perfect.

God had a solution to sin all along before i was even born he planned it and christmas is the start of it!

Chilli Con Carne & Christmas...

What have they got in common?

It's something I've often thought about, I doubt you have, I doubt you're as strange as I am - although maybe you are.

I eat chilli all the time but rarely at Christmas, it's not appropriate. Chilli makes your mouth hot but keeps the rest of your body cold but at Christmas what you want is food that warms you through and through. I love Christmas dinners and I wouldn't want to change what we eat, mountains of food, plenty of helpings of seconds and thirds... and fourths. I don't suggest for a minute that you substitute Christmas dinner for chilli con carne, that would be strange and I'm sure that if you suggested it you'd be laughed out of the kitchen (and quite right too!). No, that's not what this is about.

Instead it's about the point of Christmas the reason for the season (sorry). Christmas is the time when God gave as an answer to the problem of pain and the issue of suffering in our world. He didn't write a thesis about it, he didn't give us a mathematical equation that explained why certain people seem to struggle and suffer more than others, but he did give us a glimpse of how committed he is to us even in the midst of the messes we find ourselves in. God became a man.

Christmas has become a time when we remember what theologians (who insist on using strange latin words) call the incarnation. The incarnation has nothing to do with the Queen's crowning ceremony (that's the coronation), or a carnival and I'm afraid nothing to do with pretty flowers but instead it has everything to do with chilli con carne.

Think about it, what is chilli con carne? It's chilli in mince meat with a tomatoey sauce.
'Con carne', simply means 'in meat' and that's what Christmas is all about. It's about the time that God put meat on and entered onto the world's stage.

God didn't stand back and judge the world, and he didn't wash his hands of us and leave us to destroy ourselves. Instead he became one of us, he joined us. People often say 'how can you believe in God when you've never seen him?' to which I reply that if I lived 2000 years ago I would have done. That's the startling and shocking claim that Christians make and that we remember at this time of year. God became a man.

Don't ever lose the wonder and bafflement that comes from considering how incredible the incarnation is. If it doesn't cause you scratch your head in confusion and bend your knee in worship then I don't think you've understood how world-changing Christmas is.