Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

What's It All About?

What’s It All About?

If you ask the average American – for that matter, ask the average human being anywhere in the world – what religion is about and he or she would be very likely to say something like this: There is a God. He cares about how we live. He wants us to be kind to others, honest in our dealings, and faithful in our relationships. He wants us to worship and love him too, of course.  But mostly it’s how we treat others.  That is the main thing. Religions are all about that. They teach their adherents to live a good life.

This pretty much sums up the teachings of all the religions of the world except one. And that one exception is biblical Christianity. There is nothing commonplace, nothing predictable, nothing ordinary about the Bible’s message. It is a message that is alternately terrifying, electrifying, devastating, exhilarating, confusing, and consoling. No one can read the Bible and think that its message is little more than “be nice to people.”

If our message is simply, “be nice to people,” no one would have thought to say, “The people sitting in darkness have seen a great light,” which is what the prophet Isaiah said to describe the appearance of the Son of God in the world 700 years before Christ was born to Mary. If that had been Christ’s message no one would have fallen at his feet for the joy of it or have run to tell others that they had found the secret of life.

Can you imagine someone running breathlessly to his friend and grabbing hold of his arm and saying while he gasps for air, “I have found the truth, indeed, I have met the truth. And it is this: we ought to be nice to people” or “if we do good things, God will approve of us.” You don’t need a teacher, or a rabbi, or a prophet to tell you that.  

But the Son of God come into the world on your behalf to do for you what you could not do for yourself.  He came to satisfy God’s justice on your behalf, to invite you to new and better life lived in relationship with him, to find that you can live again and forever after you die.  This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And there is nothing ordinary, nothing irrelevant, nothing boring about that!