What do Christians believe?

   

Someone asked me this question one day, and I think it’s an important question. Recently, it’s been weighing on my heart that there are increasing numbers of people in the world today who claim they are “Christians”, but whose beliefs and behaviours fall far outside what is taught in the Bible. (I think people have the freedom to hold whatever religious beliefs that they want – God made us with free will after all – but at the same time, it’s necessary to emphasise that one can’t deviate from the key, central beliefs taught in the Bible and still claim to be a “Christian”. Jesus Christ calls for an uncompromising belief and adherence to His truth – the Bible is very clear about this. And it’s worth keeping in mind that not everyone who purports to be a “Christian” really is.) So, here it is, in  nutshell … what Christians believe:

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We believe that God created this world and that He created us.

We believe that God loves us and wants us to spend eternity with Him. However, God is perfect, completely pure and holy, and we are not. However “good” we may try to be, and however “good” we may appear to be in comparison with someone else, we still fall very far short of God’s perfect standard. In the book of Romans (in the New Testament of the Bible), it is said,

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

Because God is holy and we are not, there is a separation between us and God, and we cannot by our own efforts join Him in heaven.

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Some people might try to argue based on their own logic that if God is good, then surely He would be merciful to those people on this earth who spend their lives trying to be good and trying to do no harm to others. Surely if one tries to be a “good person” and tries to lead a “good life”, that would be enough to get them to heaven? But this is not what the Bible teaches. It is precisely because God is perfectly good and just that He cannot overlook the sins of people. What is wrong (whether it is a “little” wrong or a “big” wrong) requires a punishment. And according to the Bible,  

“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)

In other words, the punishment for our sin is, rightfully, death (i.e. eternal separation from God). Since no human being is capable of being completely sinless, we cannot by our own efforts escape this sentence of death.

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However, “what is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18: 27). God loves us so much that He provided a way for us to be saved. In the book of John (the fourth book of the New Testament), it is said,

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

This “Son” is Jesus. He is God’s only son and God loves US so much that He was willing to sacrifice His beloved only Son to save us.

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Jesus was born into this earth in human form through a virgin, Mary. (Jesus’s birth is the reason Christians celebrate Christmas.) The Bible tells us that Jesus was “in very nature, God” (Philippians 2: 6), and hence, Jesus was sinless and lived a perfect life.

Now, in the old days (before Jesus came to earth), priests used to have to sacrifice animals to God in order to atone for (i.e. make amends for) the sins of the people. But the people understood that the shedding of the animals’ blood was only an interim measure until the time when God would send His true “Messiah”. (“Messiah” means someone who comes to “redeem” the people, to “buy back” for God the human race who had no way of making their own way back into God’s Kingdom.) The animals, being from this world which was in essence already fallen and sinful, could never be the total substitute for human lives.

Jesus, however, was not from this world. He is referred to in the New Testament of the Bible as “the Lamb of God”, and He was our perfect substitute. When the right time came, He allowed himself to be crucified (i.e. killed by being nailed to a cross). He died. But three days later, He rose from the dead. After this resurrection, Jesus stayed on earth for forty days before He was taken up to heaven, and He now sits with God in heaven. (This is why three days after Good Friday, we have Easter Sunday.) 

When Jesus died on the cross, He was our “substitutive sacrifice”. In other words, He took the punishment for sin that should have been ours. And because Jesus was perfect, pure, and holy, this one-time sacrifice was enough to pay the price for our sin for all eternity. Because of this selfless act, Jesus made available a way for us to be reconciled to God. It does not matter who we are or what wrongs we have done. Jesus paid the price for our sin in full. 

“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

We believe that it is only by believing in Jesus that we are saved and will go to heaven. The Bible records Jesus as saying

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

In other words, Christians believe that trusting in Jesus as their Saviour is the only way to heaven. There is no other way. To use academic-speak, believing in Jesus and the saving power of his death on the cross is the “necessary and sufficient” condition of being saved. There are no special works that we can do to secure ourselves a place in heaven. If there was really something that we could do to earn a place in heaven, there would have been no need for God to sacrifice His son and there would have been no need for Jesus to suffer such a painful death. But there was no other way for a perfect, holy God to be united with sinful people. Jesus was and is the only way.

We believe that each and every person who chooses to accept that Jesus died for their sins and who asks Jesus to come into their lives as their Saviour is saved. Although Jesus died for everyone in the whole world, WE must make the decision to accept Him before we can benefit from His sacrifice. This is like someone holding out a gift to us. It’s there. It’s on the table. But we don’t “have” the gift, unless we choose to accept it. John 3:17-18 says:

“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:17-18)

Elsewhere, the Bible also says,

“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

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Accepting Jesus involves (a) agreeing with God that we are sinful, (b) believing that Jesus died for our sins, and that through Him, we have God’s forgiveness, and (c) a genuine repentence (i.e. making a decision to turn from our sins and to start living in a way that pleases God). 

The Christian faith is unique in that the one who believes is saved and will go to heaven entirely through God’s grace. There is no person on earth who “deserves” salvation more than someone else, because there are no works that we can do to “earn” our salvation. Salvation is freely given to those who choose to trust in Jesus as their Saviour.

However, it should not therefore be mistaken that Christianity is cheap. Our lives were ransomed at a very high price – the life of Jesus, God’s son. And although Christians are not saved by what we do, genuine repentence (which is part of “accepting Jesus” or “becoming a Christian”) will result in a changed life, as the Holy Spirit, whom God places in our hearts when we believe in Him, gradually reveals to us (through our prayer and bible study) how to grow into the person God wants us to be. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5: 15, 17

“And [Jesus] died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. … if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

We believe that Jesus is just waiting for everyone to accept Him. The hand is out-stretched with the gift of salvation. It is up to us to step forward to take it.

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Photograph by R Tang: Columbine, Winterbourne Botanical Gardens, Birmingham (2010)