The Christian Faith
Relating to God
Human beings are spiritual people.
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Since the dawn of time mankind has searched for meaning to life, built temples and looked for something greater than and outside himself. We are created in the image and likeness of God, a God who loved his creation so much that he came into the world in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ.
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We are all individuals and in our uniqueness we are able to experience a personal relationship with God. God loves us unconditionally, and nothing we do, or don’t do, can affect this. Although we can abandon him, he will never abandon us.
We can meet and experience God in the power and majesty of nature, in the wonder and complexity of life, through prayer and in our own human relationships – all of us have the spark of God inside us. Most especially, we can know God through his Son, Jesus Christ: "the human face of God", for we are all children of God.
Who Was Jesus Of Nazareth?
Jesus is no myth. He was a real person who lived in the first century. Historians agree that the existence of Jesus is not in doubt. His life is recorded by both Jewish and Roman writers, as well as in the narrative we have in the four Gospel accounts.
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Jesus was born in an insignificant village and grew up in another, working as a carpenter. At the age of 30, He became a wandering preacher and teacher. He never strove for power.
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After three years of ministry, when people flocked to listen to Him and be with Him, His friends deserted Him and He was killed as a common criminal, nailed to a cross. This one short life, of a man who travelled no more than a few days' walk from the place where He grew up, has affected more people than any other in the history of the human race.
Uncountable millions believe that Jesus, the Son of God, rose from the dead and is with us always. His defeat of the power of death changed the world forever.
The Christian Faith
From the third day after his death, the followers of Jesus began to experience Him with them once more in a transformed and risen way. They became utterly convinced of His resurrection and that He was alive. Jesus ascended back to his Father in Heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to be in the world as a source of divine power and life for human beings.
In the thirty years that followed Jesus' death and resurrection, the world had been transformed. What initially consisted of those closest to Jesus during his short ministry was changed by the action of the Holy Spirit.
This small, frightened group grew into a people of faith numbering many thousands, in places far away from first century Palestine, including Rome, the centre of temporal power at that time.
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Over the next nineteen centuries the Christian community has grown into billions worldwide. Belief in the saving power of Jesus Christ, made possible by the sacrifice of His life to save us and by His resurrection, changed the world forever – that is the Christian faith.