So we recently finished up Ecclesiastes which was fun, but I began to notice while working through it that it's a 12 chapter long hyperbole, meaning that the author over exaggerated his points. We saw him go from one end of the spectrum saying everything that we do is absolutely pointless meaning life sucks to enjoy everything because it's all awesome. Only a few times does it make sure we understand that while everything is permissible, not everything is good.
So all that got me thinking, I should really do some stuff on the basics of Christianity. Now to start all of this off I want to say that, as usual, this is my take, what I've seen, experienced, and read all will come together for this. Some people disagree with me, some would agree, some will even say I'm going to Hell for my beliefs. They can deal with that in their own way, I don't care. I don't plan on getting too deep with these next few posts, but there will be some deepness. I will do my best to make it applicable, meaningful, and understandable for you.
All that being said: Let's get started.
I posted a few weeks ago probably about how Jesus is the foundation. This is what I want to start off with because you build on a foundation. Now this is found in Matthew 16, Mark 8, Luke 9, and 1 Corinthians 3 (along with some other scripture which you'll have to dig a bit to pull it out). Jesus is what all other things are build on. He calls himself the truth and the life. Not just a truth, or a life, but the truth and the life. A devo book I was going through a couple days ago tells of how can be seen as Jesus saying that he is reality. Everything else is not true, is not real if he is not a part of it. It is in him that we find meaning and purpose. It is in him that we find the reason for our lives. And if we don't build our lives on that truth, we're building on sand, a bad foundation. But if we build on the rock, build on Jesus as our foundation, we will begin to have some stability.
With Jesus being the foundation and providing stability to our lives we have to have a corner stone, or the first stone laid on the foundation. That stone is the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the promised Savior from God. We acknowledge this, understand it, believe it, and set it down first. then everything else that we believe about Jesus is placed in relation to this one truth. With that we begin to have a foundation, and the more we know Christ, the bigger the foundation, and the bigger the life we can have.
So what exactly is this corner stone? Yes I said the Christ, the Messiah, and the Savior, but what do those words really mean? This is a problem that has arisen thanks to lazy churches who allow Biblical illiteracy to run rampant through our congregations. I can be as much to blame as anyone having spent my time in church work, but this is a problem dating back decades now where we don't understand what the words Christ, righteous, justified, sanctified, redeemed, and many more mean. So hopefully I can begin to clean this up.
Christ/Messiah the same word, just a different language. They both mean anointed. Anointed means to be covered in oil, which is something that was done to kings in the past. There were prophecies in the Old Testament about a king that will come from the line of David (3rd king, 2nd human king of Israel) who would save the people of Israel. He would be the "Messiah" or "anointed one," or the true king of Israel. The word Christ is the Greek word for Messiah, which is the Hebrew word (more or less, don't want to bother you with too much language stuff). So Israel is waiting for this Messiah, this king, to come and save them from all the problems that have happened to them. If you take the time to look at Israel's history, you'll see there's a lot of problem they went through. It should also be noted, that while reading a book for class there was a person in there that wrote that all the problems Israel went through was just something that kind of happened to them, and they did nothing to deserve it. Yet scripture tells us something completely different, that Israel sinned in the eyes of God, and he removed his protection from the as a result of their sin, and they were taken over by a foreign nation. This is what they wanted to be saved from, and why they needed a new King to save them.
Skip forward a few centuries to the turn of the ages. Jesus comes along. Here's this carpenter from the wrong part of town walking around saying that he is this promised Messiah, doing all of these miracles, and at times even putting himself on even status with God, going as far as to call himself his son.
The audacity of this man.
Yet throughout his life he has never sinned. He has only loved and expressed it through all of his actions. He has gotten angry at times, but for perfectly legitimate reasons, having a righteous anger similar to God's own righteous anger. Throughout his life he does nothing to deserve any type of punishment, yet makes enough people mad with what he does and says that they finally plot to kill him. They turn one of his best friends against him, take him to trial illegally, bring false witnesses against him, the entire time not defending himself, then have him condemned to death. The beat him, humiliate him, make him unrecognizable as a human, torturing him. Finally they nail him to the cross to kill him. Yet we see in the story that he willing gives up his life, they never took it from him.
"This can't be the promised King that God was supposed to send us from the oppressive countries ruling over us. He died and we're still under these horrible powers. How is he the Messiah?"
Three days pass. A woman goes to where this man is buried to give him some last rites. She's thinking of how she's going to get this huge stone off the entrance for the tomb. As she walks up. the stone is gone, and the body is gone.
Upon inspection by her and the men following Jesus they see his body just disappeared. It wasn't taken, what he was wrapped up in was still there. He then begins to show up all over the region to different people, revealing himself.
He's alive. He rose from the dead.
He must be the Messiah. He did save us from an oppressive power. Not from one of this world, but one that was spiritual. He saved us from sin, taking on our sin as if it was his own for the love that he has for us. This is why Jesus is our savior. This is why he is the Messiah, he was sent by God, to be king of our lives, and to save us from the bondage of the oppressive nation that is sin, so that we might believe in him and be called children of God.
This is the Gospel. This is what us Christians profess to believe. This is the basis of all of Christianity.
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