Who is Jesus?
At Hope Lutheran, our beliefs come from Jesus. Jesus But who is He? What is His story? Why do we make Him the center of our story?
Resurrection.
It all starts, quite literally, with this historical claim: Jesus rose from the dead. There’s so much that goes into studying that claim (let us know if you want to dig deeper!), but the fact is, we are persuaded that He did, in fact, rise from the dead, bodily.
This event is the core of everything. If He did rise from the dead (and we are certain that He did!), then we want to know everything about this guy. And so our entire heritage is filled to the brim with data, study, reading source documents, conversation, exploration, discovery, asking tough questions and much more. Ultimately, this whole process leads us to a special word: confession. This is a word you might not think of for this because we tend to only use this word when telling someone we’ve made a mistake. But throughout history, this word was more frequently used to “say the same things.” That is, we all say together: “Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Hallelujah!” We don’t say it because we want it to be true, but because it IS true and we want everyone else to know it too!
From our friends at The Bible Project: this video about the Gospel of Mark shows how key parts of the Bible answer the question: “Who is Jesus?”
“…these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
Redemption.
And this is where it just keeps getting better and better. Because Jesus rose from the dead (an utterly unique claim because no one else in history claimed to “resurrect,” that is to bodily arise after death), we then seek to discover what He was interested in, what He wanted, what He was doing here in the first place. And it is there when we listen to Him that we start discovering more of his utterly unique claims. He says things like if you believe in HIM you will live forever (see John 3:16-17), and that if you listen to HIS word already HAS eternal life (see John 5:24-26), and that He is the light of the world (see John 8:12), and that He IS the way, the truth, and the life (see John 14:6). And then He says this:
“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Restoration.
His whole purpose, His whole mission, was to save the world by redeeming the world. He literally “bought” us back with His own blood. But…why? Because His vision is for a world where there is no death. No suffering. No sickness. No injustice or inequity. No evil of any kind. Some will say: “OKAY, then why wait any longer? Go ahead, get rid of the evil already!” This is where His character and identity might create the most astonishment of all: He loves the whole world and did not come to condemn anyone. And yet, we can see much evil in the world. Just reflect for a moment: do you know of any people who have done evil things? If we are honest, we’ve all encountered evil, one way or the other. And evil is horrible, because it ruins things. It infects things. It spoils things. It distorts things. It corrupts things.
Jesus knows this even better than we do because He let the fullness of evil come upon Him when He died on the cross. And who was it that crucified Him? To be sure, Roman soldiers crucified Him. But He said, while they were nailing Him to the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” Luke 23:34. And what about the ones who were shouting, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him”? And what about those who looked away? And what about those who ignored the whole thing? And what about us? And what about me?
Honesty leads us to a very straightforward conclusion: if I follow the bread crumbs of evil, every human (except One) has participated in it to some degree. After His death on the cross and then His resurrection from the dead, Jesus spelled out His plan for restoration:
“Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.”
Hope.
Which brings us back to the business about “our beliefs”. We have Hope because of Jesus. We are Hope Lutheran Church because of Jesus. We do what we do because we want to share this Hope with everyone. There is so much which can and should be said. Check out the options below to dig a little deeper, but always know the option to contact us is the best one: we’d love to answer your specific questions and share with you the abounding love and kindness of Jesus!