Welcome

Why Jesus?

In 1966 John Lennon famously said:

We probably all know at least one Beatles song, but equally, we have probably all heard of Jesus. We celebrate his birth at Christmas and swap chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday when we celebrate him coming back from the dead. Theories about him led to best-selling novels like the Da Vinci code, and pieces of toast with burnt patches that look a bit like him make it into the tabloid press.
There is something about Jesus which still influences us and our culture 2,000 years after he lived and died in a relatively unimportant part of the Roman empire. Opinions about him and who he was vary. Some people see him as a prophet, others see him as a fraud or even doubt he existed. Many people think (like John Lennon) that he was “all right” maybe even a nice and wise man but nothing more.
For Christians he is much more than just “All right”. At the heart of Christianity is the belief that Jesus is God and that he came to Earth to enable us to relate to God. Christians read the accounts of Jesus’ life in the Bible and see a man who was also God.
He performed many miracles, such as calming storms, turning water into wine, healing the sick and (most importantly) rising from the dead. These miracles displayed his authority and power over, not only nature, but life itself.
His teaching was wiser and had more authority than anyone else’s in the history of the world. We still use phrases he used such as ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘going the extra mile’ 2,000 years after he first used them. ‘Do unto others as you would have them do to you’ is still the mantra for so many of us today, not just Christians.
He fulfilled Prophecies written hundreds of years before his birth, which predicted the coming of God to Earth in human form, were fulfilled by Jesus.
One of the many great things about Christianity is that it tells of a God who desires to be known by the people he created. Christians believe that God is knowable, that you can have a relationship with him and this is all possible because God became human, came to earth, died and rose again. That is why for Christians Jesus is the central figure, not only in Christianity, but world history. This is central to our Christian belief.