The Christ.

To finish our month-long series, I wanted to spend some time talking about the simplest and most basic part of Christianity, and also the very most important part.

Who is Jesus Christ?

Well, Jesus is the Son of God.

That’s the easy answer. But since we talked about the Trinity on Wednesday, we also know that He’s the human person of the Almighty God. He is reason Christianity as we know it even exists at all. Before Jesus, Christianity wouldn’t have been possible. Jews did not share their faith, because they didn’t really have faith. In those days, you were either Jewish or you weren’t. Most people weren’t. But Jesus came to change that, and to give the rest of us the possibility of freedom.

See, Jesus is the person of the Trinity who came down to Earth. He was born of the virgin, Mary, a Jew. He was without sin, in the whole of his life. His ministry began when he was in his thirties, and lasted only about three years before he was beaten and hung upon the cross. But the cross was not the end. In fact, it was more like the beginning, for us.

When Jesus died on the cross, no one took His life from Him. He gave up His life for us. As a sinless man, death had not touched Him. It couldn’t touch Him. Death is part of the curse that came upon humanity when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, so that anyone who sins falls short and must therefore perish. But Jesus didn’t fall short. He wasn’t born of a man, he was born of God, and so he was not subject to the terms of that curse. He was subject only to humanness, by the fact of being born from the womb of a woman.

So when He died, He died a perfect and holy sacrifice unto God. He gave up His life, His perfect life, so that the rest of us could live.

But maybe that doesn’t make sense.

I’m not going to pretend to understand Jewish customs even in the slightest, but what I understand is that the priests would frequently sacrifice pure and spotless lambs to God, to cover the sins of the people. But they had to keep killing lambs, over and over, because a lamb could never take the place of a person.

Jesus, on the other hand, was human.

So when He died, He took our place. We no longer have to die. Not like He did. Because of what He did, we now have the ability to go to heaven when we leave this Earth. Before Jesus, that wasn’t possible.

He is the one who brought salvation.

Because He was lashed, we are healed.

Because He was bruised, He has taken our iniquities.

Because He is perfect, unblemished, without spot, He gave us the ability to be free.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).

That’s from the Bible. And you know what we’ve been saying? The Bible is the Word of God, and because God is God and cannot lie, the Bible must be true. Therefore, if you do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will not be saved. That’s what it says. The Bible is very black and white, despite those who try to make it grey.

That’s who Jesus is. He’s our namesake, our freedom, our salvation. We live because of Him. We live for Him. We live in Him and through Him. 

We live, because He lived. 

We love, because He loved.

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Three.

One of the questions I’ve gotten from a lot of people who don’t know much about Christianity is the question of the Trinity. It’s a tough one to tackle, but I’m willing to give it a go. You’ve asked, and now I’ll do my level best to give you an answer.

God is one, and God is three. He is the three in one, the trinity. (didn’t mean to rhyme there)

But in terms of humanity, that doesn’t make any sense. He would have to have multiple personality disorder for that to even work, right? Wrong.

All three persons of God are indeed God, but they all play their different roles. Think of it like a married person who has a child and a job. They’re a husband or wife, a mother or father, and a business person—but they’re still the same person, defined within one being. That’s not quite how it works, but that’s probably the simplest terms I can put the Trinity within.

See, God has three distinct roles played by the three different persons of the Trinity.

God the Father is who I’ve spent the most time talking about in this series. God the Father is just that, He’s our Father. He’s the one who makes plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11) the one who blesses us (Deuteronomy 29) and the one with whom we make a covenant.

God the Son is Jesus Christ. He is the human person of the Almighty, who came down to Earth and gave up His life unto the wicked one so that we may have salvation. Jesus Christ the one from whom we get the name “Christian.” In Him we have salvation (wherein He lives within our hearts), we have healing, and we have an intercessor. He is ever in heaven praying on our behalf unto God the Father.

God the Spirit is the Holy Spirit, the one left here on Earth by Jesus when he returned to the heavens to be seated on the right hand of God the Father. The Holy Spirit is our counselor, our comfort. He is always here for us. When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, we are able to better communicate with God the Father, through our own prayer language and through a deeper level of understanding of the Spirit.

Those are the three persons of God, and they are all contained within one: the Almighty God. Usually, Christians refer to the three by name. When we’re talking about Jesus, we’ll call him Jesus, and so on. But when we talk about God, singular God, we speak of all three. For all three are God, and all three are the basis of our faith.

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Planned.

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of those verses that Christians quote not infrequently, to themselves and to people around them. It’s one of our go-to scriptures, because it’s a promise from God. But today I want to delve just a little bit into what it really means and what we can believe in for ourselves, from the promise of our Lord.

Let’s start by reading the whole verse:

Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I’d like to begin now by reminding you that though the Bible is a huge book, though there seems to be a lot in it that has to be learned and understood in order to really get what Christianity is and what faith in God is, the faith is really very simple, and the message within the Bible is equally simple. When the Bible says something, it is true. No matter what. So when we look at this verse, we can know without doubt that what it says is true.

To break it down further…

1. I know the plans I have for you

Because we know that the Bible is true and that whatever it says must also be truth, in that it is the Word of God and God cannot lie, we know this means God has plans for each and every one of us. Whether you believe in Him or not right now, He has plans for you. His will is for you to carry out those plans with your life.

2. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you

To me, this section is another reminder that God doesn’t want us to suffer in any way. That means He would never wish for us to be ill. So to those of you who say that God made you sick to teach you a lesson, please stop lying to yourself. There is nowhere in the Bible that God made anyone ill for any reason (nope, not even Job — God didn't do that). He never caused any of His people to suffer. They did that themselves. Follow Him, follow the plans He has for you, and there will be prospering—not suffering.

3. Plans to give you hope and a future

The only hope there is, comes from God. That hope lies in Jesus Christ. God gave us hope. Without Christ, there would be no hope for us whatsoever. And without hope, we can have no future.

So because we know that God is truth, that what He says must also be truth, we can say this:

God has made plans for each and every one of us. We are His children, and like any good father, He makes plans for us. Those plans do not involve bringing us to any form of harm. Instead, like any good father, God’s plans for us are for prosperity. He has given us hope in Jesus Christ, and therefore a bright future as well, one where we are free from torment and shame.

Praise the Lord for that.

[love]

{Rani D.}