Here’s the video that we produced to explain the Christian faith. The What Christians Believe page is here. If you haven’t seen the video, here it is. The script is written out below.
Firstly, God Loves you and He has a plan for your life:
God created mankind in his image. He made you and He knows all about you, even tiny details like the number of hairs on your head. Just pause and take that in. God who is all powerful and created all things also created you, and He cares deeply for you.
Psalm 139:13-14:
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
You are not a mistake. God wants you to know this and Him. Jesus said, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) He wants you to have a life full of purpose. You might be thinking, “why don’t I have this abundant life? Or why does God seem so distant?”
Well, mankind is sinful and is now separated from God:
Sin is a word used in the bible and it just means doing something that is morally wrong or against God’s plan. God knows what is best and has created an absolute moral law. We sin when we live for ourselves, and not for God, and we can’t help it. Just read the 10 commandments (Exodus 20:2-17). How many of them have you kept? Be honest. Have you ever told a lie? Then according to God’s law, you’re a liar!
Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Don’t compare yourself to others and think you’re good. We fall short of the glory of God- of God’s standard. Yes, He is loving, but he’s also fair and just. We can do good things, but that’s not enough. If you stood before God “The Judge”, you would be guilty.
Sin has consequences. What we do, think, say and prioritise matters. Sin destroys relationships with people and God. Isaiah 59:2 says “but your iniquities have made a separation between you and God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” With sin, there’s no peace with God. The relationship has been destroyed. There’s another consequence too. We don’t like to think of hell. But the bible does say in Hebrews 10:31 “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
God sent His son to die for your sins.
Does this make you feel uncomfortable? In a way, I hope it does. The thing is, there’s this misunderstanding that good people go to heaven, and bad people go to hell… and we’re generally good, although admittedly, not perfect. That’s not the Christian message. We are all sinful and need help, desperately. We won’t reach out for a saviour, if we don’t realise we need saving. And we won’t truly love God if we don’t begin to understand what He has done for us. God loves us, and that love is unconditional. Romans 5:8 says “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The good news is that God didn’t wait until we cleaned up our act before sending Jesus, he sent him while we were still sinners. But why, what did this achieve?
Why Jesus came…
Imagine God is a judge in a courtroom. You are guilty. You can say you’re sorry, but a fair judge can’t just accept an apology. A debt needs to be paid so you can go go free. Romans 6:23 reads “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
‘Wages’ describe a payment for any work that you’ve done- for what you deserve. Our sin makes us guilty and we deserve death, but there’s a “Free Gift”. Jesus led a perfect, sinless life. He didn’t deserve to die on the cross, he chose to. He died in our place. It was sacrificial. Therefore His death paid your ‘wage’ and you can go free. You can have eternal life in Christ. A gift isn’t something that you earn or have to work towards. But it is something that you have to receive in order to enjoy and appreciate.
Having eternal life in Christ is not just about going to heaven. John 1:12: “But to all who did receive him (That is Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,”. In other words, we become adopted into God’s family. Your broken relationship is now fixed. When we become a Christian, we invite the Holy Spirit to live inside us. We become a new person, a new creation. We become “born again”.
So, what will you do?
In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He provides the only way. So, what do you need to do?
Romans 10:9 makes this clear: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
It sounds simple, and it is, but it has to be genuine. Saying, “Jesus is Lord”, then doing everything your own way is paying lip service to God. We are now declaring Him in charge. There should be repentance. This is more than just saying sorry. We have to turn from our old ways and follow Him. This doesn’t mean that you’ll never sin again. We are being transformed, but someone who has genuinely given their life to Christ will change. God’s gift is that our old sinful nature can be exchanged for a new life. When Jesus said he would come that we may have life and have it abundantly, this is what he meant. That we would be reconciled with God, understand our identity in Him so we could be the person He created us to be.
This doesn’t mean that things will be easy. In fact in John 15:18 Jesus warns us that “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.”
Believing in your heart…
The second part of Romans 10:9 is about belief. You have to “believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead”. Jesus was no ordinary man. He was ‘Emmanuel’, God with us. God came to us when it was impossible for us to come to Him. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation (Col 1:15), He is one with the father (John 10:30). He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature. (Hebrews 1:3)
This whole message is summed up in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
If we do nothing, we are still at war with God. And believing is not enough. We have to accept Jesus as our Lord and saviour, then we can have peace with God. Think for a moment about the difference between a ceasefire, (a temporary suspension of fighting; a truce) and peace, (a state or period in which there is no war or a war has ended). If you’re a Christian, you have peace with God. Peace, not a temporary patch-up, but a permanent restoration of a shattered relationship.
And that is the good news, that’s The Gospel.
So, if you haven’t done it already, accept Jesus. Repent, acknowledge who Jesus is, and trust Him. Ask the Holy Spirit to come and fill you. You will become a new person. God will never let you down.
Return to the What Christians Believe page.