Post 1 – Introduction to Christ Basics – Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the first installment of a new VLOG called “Christ Basics”. These videos will be 5 minutes or less, just enough time to provoke some serious thinking about Jesus Christ, Christians and Christianity, so let’s get started.
Jesus said in the Gospel of John 14:7,” I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me”. This is a profound truth about Christianity, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. What I would like to examine is one aspect of this statement and that is, Jesus is the truth.
We now live in an age referred to by some as the Information Age. We are overloaded with information or data through the internet, social media, TV, radio and movies– lots of data or information, but is everything we hear or read true. Because we deal with so much information we don’t have time to analyze its truthfulness! Not all the information we get is accurate and we can’t count on the world systems to give us the truth. As a result, we may have accepted as true many ideas or opinions which are in fact not true at all!
As a result of misinformation many people outside of Christianity have ideas and concepts about Christianity that are not based upon truth. As a matter of fact, even many Christians have misconceptions about what Christianity is or what it is not. The purpose of this vlog is to reveal Bible-based insights as to who Christ is, what a Christian is and Christianity.
The most important consideration, the root if you will, of the Christian belief system is that it is all about Jesus Christ and Him alone. A Christian’s identity is not in a religion, denomination, local church, or group of people. A Christian’s identity must be in Jesus, because He was the one, God in the flesh, who came to earth, died for your sins, removed the wall between you and the Father, and promised eternal life to those who would follow Him.
The second important consideration is that being a Christian means that there has been an “encounter” with God and that encounter instilled a desire to “know” more about Jesus.
I emphasize the word “know” because so many rely on an intellectual knowing with the mind alone. What is more important- is to know Jesus on a spiritual level. John 4:23 jesus says “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him”.
This point is so important so let me repeat it, Christianity is not something you can understand with only the intellect or mind. Christianity in fact must be spiritually appraised. That is, we must use spiritual eyes, spiritual ears and spiritual openness to comprehend spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
That is not to say that some aspects of the Christianity cannot be intellectually understood, but we have to recognize that there are going to be areas that are too deep for the human mind to comprehend. In Isa 55:8-9 God speaks through the Prophet Isaiah, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts”.
When we encounter those areas that are too deep or too high for human understanding we are called to accept them by “Faith”. Faith is how we appropriate the spiritual things of God; after all, as I have said earlier, God is spirit. By Faith We Understand Him, Hebrews 11:1 defines faith in this way, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. The things not seen, of course, are spiritual in nature
Until we come to grips with the fact that being a Christian means a spiritual walk with God, we will always be frustrated by our misunderstanding of what Christ did, what a Christian is and the nature of Christianity.
