What actually is Christianity?!

Slightly strangely, we'll start at the end of the story.

The Bible, which is God's way of speaking to people, tells us that one day God is going to recreate this world to be perfect. It'll be like it is at the moment, but without any suffering, or grieving, or pain, or frustration; and God will actually live in it.¹ In fact, it'll be like this world that God made was meant to be in the first place, before it went wrong.

Since one day this world is going to be made perfect, the big question of life becomes: How can I be part of it? And that's where we all face a big problem; the problem of what God in the Bible calls sin. Sin is taking all the good things God gives us (life, happiness, friendships, contentment, possessions) but then choosing to live without God; like taking a gift from someone and then ignoring them. It's sin that has messed our world up.

God gives us exactly what we choose; a life without him. But that means that we will have no place with him in his perfect world, and will find ourselves without anything good, shut out from his presence, in a place the Bible calls hell.²

Since we've chosen to live without God, he could have left us to it. But because he loves us, and because he wants us to have a place in that perfect world, he's done something to enable us to get there. He came to earth as a man, as the Son of God, a guy called Jesus. And this man Jesus never sinned; he lived a perfect life, life as it was meant to be in God's world. He deserved to live forever and to have a place in the perfect recreated world.³

But he didn't. Instead, he allowed himself to die and to experience separation from God, his Father, in heaven. Why? So that he could swap places with us. Jesus took the separation from God we deserve, and offers to give us his perfection so that we can have the place in the recreated world he deserves.⁴

And having died, he rose from the dead to prove that what he says is true; that, in his own words, 'I have come that they may have life, and have life to the full.'⁵

So that means that everyone in this world has a choice: either carry on living without God, and face an eternity without God and shut out from his perfect world; or recognise that Jesus is God's Son, ask him to switch places with us so we can live in God's recreation, and be given his Spirit to help us live life how we were created to in the first place.⁶

Being a Christian isn't all about looking forward to eternal life to come; it's also about living life to the full now. There's nothing we can put at the centre of our lives which will always satisfy us and never fail us; except knowing Jesus. It's Jesus who can give us the sense of value and purpose and love that everyone longs for.

So Christianity isn't about following a set of rules, or about going to church, or about how nice you are. It's simply about a relationship; a relationship with Jesus, who died to give us a place in the recreated perfect world of God's and to enable us to live life as it's meant to be lived.

And that's what Sunday@Seven is all about: encouraging people to accept Jesus' offer, and helping each other to live lives that reflect our thankfulness to him for dying to give us a perfect eternal life.