It is all about Jesus!

First of all I am sorry that this article is a day later than it was supposed to be, I will be aiming to ensure all articles go up on or by saturday each week!

Topic: It is all about Jesus!

I was discussing with someone what I should do for the first real article on here and they gave me the advice of saying what I thought the one most important part of Christianity was. This is what I aim to cover here.

Prayer: Father God, I pray that the words here would be used for your glory, that all who read this would be touched by the Holy Spirit according to your will.

Bible passages:

First of all for this topic there are lots and lots of different Bible passages that can be selected. I am only going to look at one and that one is probably the most famous Bible passage of all and contains the most famous verse of all, at the bottom of this article is one other passage you can look at (actually my favourite) and can of course ask me about if you want me to explain any.

Bible Passage: John 3:16-18

16"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Note: The link on this site to Bible Gateway allows you to read the Bible online if you do not have one yourself.

Bible Passage Explanation:

This passage comes during Jesus talking to a man called Nicodemus, who was a ruler of the Jews at the time. In other words he was a powerful man. After a talk about something called being 'born again' (which we will look at next week). Jesus makes the above statement.

This is an example of what Christians call the Gospel, that is, the good news of Christianity, it is the explanation of how someone is saved. It is how someone gets to live forever with God after they die on Earth. Lets take a look at each verse:

16"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

This is the most famous Bible verse it tells us three things:

1) God loves the world, that is, God loves everybody in the world!
2) God gave his only Son, that is, God gave Jesus to the world, later to die in our place for our sins.
3) If we believe in Jesus we will have eternal life!

This is really, really exciting news and is what Christianity is all about! It says that God has done everything for us to rescue us from the bad things that we do.

God is perfect and so he cannot let bad things go unpunished. When we do bad we sin against God and the punishment that we deserve is to die BUT.... God did the amazing thing above, he sent Jesus so that all of our badness is taken away and paid for by his death on the cross!

So when Jesus died on the cross all the bad things we do, He was punished for and because of this our sins have been paid for!

Lets take a look at the two verses, which expand on verse 16:

17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Jesus tells us a little bit more of the Gospel here, he tells us that he was sent not to condemn (that is to judge the world bad and send everyone to hell) but that the world might be saved through him. Jesus here is telling us what his purpose is, namely to later die for us so that we can be with God thanks to him.

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Here we see Jesus gives us a little bit more information as to who He is, he tells us that believing in Him is absolutely necessary to be saved. If somebody does not believe in Jesus as the Son of God, they cannot be saved. We will look at why this more in later weeks.

Application:

The most important thing to take from this is that our focus should always be Jesus, Christianity, starts and ends with Jesus, all that we do should be focused on him. When we make a mistake it is due to him that we are forgiven, it is thanks to him that we can be with God the Father (God has three parts, God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), God the Holy Spirit, more on this in two weeks time!), it is thanks to Him that God can live in us. There is nothing at all more important than Jesus and our eyes should always be on him.

Closing:

I hope that you have found the first article interesting and useful, feel free to leave comments (questions, good points, what I can do better, what you'd like to be covered). May God bless you and I hope you will read the article next week!

Extra Bible Passages:

Romans 5