The whole Bible, beginning with the account of creation, teaches us who God is and what His character is like. We learn about the world God created to enjoy with us, ruined by death, disease and wrong-doing, and how a savior, Jesus was prophesied centuries before He was born. It's a pretty crazy narrative and this Jesus sounds pretty cool right?

Well, He was! In the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which are supported by hundreds of other historical documents, such as Josephus, we learn about Jesus' life and teaching. He concreted the idea of God's triune nature, God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit. As you can imagine He lived an incredible life. He asked God for the ability to heal the sick and feed the hungry and to change people’s lives. But He didn’t do that just because he wanted to do amazing things. Instead, He did these things to show us that God loves us and to be with us wherever we go no matter how broken or messed up we are.

So Jesus, working as God on earth obviously established His ultimate rule and authority, right?

No.

Jesus broke our understanding of what it meant to have power and authority. Jesus came to serve us. God saw how broken His creation was and His response was to humiliate Himself. Not just by doing something simple, like healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out demons, or even washing feet of those He created but He came to pay the ultimate price. He came to pay the debt of sin by dying.

Jesus Christ, at the peak of His life, when He had thousands of followers and made the religious leaders jealous, submitted to the plan and was beaten and hung on a cross. He wanted to tell you so badly that He loves you that he died so you could understand and accept the love that God wants to give you.

This would be a pretty sad ending if that was the end. Fortunately it's not. Three days later, after being confirmed dead by the Roman soldiers who had executed Him and placed in Him a guarded and sealed tomb, Jesus rose from the dead! Jesus appeared to His disciples, even though they had abandoned Him in fear, and hundreds of others, not in a vision but in the physical, he ate and drank with them!

Jesus had conquered sin and death and was now preparing to leave the world in the hands of his disciples. Before Jesus ascended to heaven he promised the Holy Spirit to his disciples, the same spirit that filled Jesus when He was baptized by John. This spirit, sent by God, would equip the the disciples, the Body of Christ, for the mission that Jesus had prepared them for. He would be a comforter and helper, binding all believers together as a family.

Jesus commissioned his disciples telling them to go to all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that he had commanded His disciples, promising that He would be with them until the end of the age. This is the time that we live in. Jesus, God the Son, is seated in heaven, interceding on our behalf, and God the Father has sent God the Spirit, to work in and through us, those who decide to lay down their broken lives and receive the gift of God.

This gift of God, the salvation of our souls, is a free gift and is simply accepted by faith alone, there is nothing we can do to earn our salvation. Jesus asks that we place Him as the Lord of our lives, essentially making Him and His commands more important than ourselves and our desires. This is what it means to be a Christian and this is who we are.