What do Christians believe?

One part of the clearing, crying out to be explored, is what do Christians in general believe and why? Being conscious of the fact that the branch of Christianity in which I was brought up is not typical of the Church as a whole, why do I believe in the version of Christianity which I do and not another? How different in what is important are they anyway?

Although there is considerable variation of beliefs held by those who identify as followers of Jesus and who acknowledge Him as Lord, it is possible to look at some core threads around which the detailed beliefs and interpretations are arranged, especially in the earlt days.

Jesus was a Jew and Christianity grew out of a Jewish root. So what did the early Church inherit from the Jews?

Although Jesus was a Rabbi who based His teaching on traditional Judaism, there were important differences which sowed the seeds of the newly born Church.

From the earliest of days, the Church has written down statements of belief, or Creeds. The earliest are in the letters of St. Paul and the latest are being written by individual local churches and denominations to this day.

Jesus on Earth

At the time of Jesus’ birth, Israel was under Roman occupation and, as they remembered their history and the times they had been rescued from trouble by God through a human Messiah figure, they people were on the look out for someone to do to the Romans what Judas Maccabeus had done to the Greeks.

Jesus had indeed come as Israel’s Messiah to bring rescue and redemption but not in the way they were expecting. He did not seek a military victory to “restore the Kingdom to Israel” from the Romans which would have been a temporary solution like those preceding. What Jesus did was on a much bigger scale and would be permanent. He had come to redeem Humanity and the whole of Creation from the slavery they had got themselves into by rebellion against God and disobedience to Him.

And He did so in a very unexpected and counter-intuitive way. Instead of fighting evil with evil, He fought evil with good. The result was that evil threw everything it could at Jesus, Jesus willingly took it upon Himself and was crucified and died. Though it looked like failure, the whole thing was turned around when, after 3 days, Jesus rose from the dead.

Jesus was victorious over evil and death and reclaimed His Kingdom which evil had taken from Him and anyone who wanted to be a part of His Kingdom was invited to do so.