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Whether you’ve been a Christian for years or this is your first time considering Christianity, you likely have questions about God. Although this is by no means an exhaustive list, we hope that the following Q&A section gives you additional insight into the essential truths of Christianity and the beliefs of our church.
The story of Christianity is one of good news. It can be broken up into one prologue and six scenes that together paint a picture of God’s work throughout all history—past, present, and future.
Before there was anything, there was God. We have only hints and fragments of stories about what was happening in the corridors of eternity past before God chose to reveal Himself in creation, so we begin there. God—who is one God, yet exists in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was living always in loving community with Himself before the creation of measurements of time.
In the first scene, God called into existence the natural world brimming with vibrant and innocent beauty, variety, wonder, power, majesty and life. God made the world well—a reflection of His greatness—and called it “good.”
At the apex of His creation project, God—the spiritual being—created human beings in His image. They bore the mark of their Creator in ways distinct from all other plants, animals, and created things. They were not just natural—but also spiritual—beings, like God. The first human beings initially enjoyed intimacy with God in His creation. They thrived in deep connection to God and each other. They also lived in inner wholeness, without fear, and in harmony with the earth that God had given them to enjoy, cultivate, and rule over with Him.
Unfortunately, evil quickly entered the story. This evil originated with a fallen angel who was created by God and at some point rebelled against Him because of pride and a desire to be worshipped. For this rebellion he was cast out of heaven. This fallen angel, commonly referred to as Satan, came to the first humans and tempted them to distrust God’s integrity and to disobey a command He had given them. The angel was successful in deceiving them and they acted against God’s instruction.
This human rebellion against God brought death into the world and tainted humanity from that point forward. Such disobedience caused separation from God, the source of all life, and the result was death to the first humans and all humans to follow. Although they continued to live physically, they died spiritually and lost their intimate connection to God. Their inner peace was flooded with insecurity and fear, leading to broken relationships with each other. Lying, blame-shifting, envy, and murder soon followed. There also entered discord between humanity and creation, as the ground was cursed. On every level of relationship, God’s original design was broken.
In His mercy, God immediately began a work of redemption that would carry history forward. He would not abandon His creation to the permeating effects of death and decay. In the initial stages of working for the redemption of this broken world, God chose a people for Himself with whom He would form a nation and through whom He would bring a restorative blessing to the entire world. The nation began with a husband and a wife, Abraham and Sarah, and continued to their son Isaac, his son Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons. These twelve sons then became the nation of Israel. God promised Israel that they would be deeply used to represent and express God’s heart and character in the world.
For a time, the nation of Israel became enslaved in Egypt. In their oppression, however, they cried out to God and He was moved by their cry. God sent them Moses, a man to be used to rescue them. Moses, given power by God, led the people of Israel in an exodus out of Egypt and towards the Promise Land. In the Promised Land, they would finally be a nation with a home. On the way to their new home, God gave His people a law which represented His commands for their lives with Him, with each other, with themselves, and with creation. This law shaped the culture of God’s people and carried the promise that if they kept its commands, God would be intimate with them, lead them, speak to them, care for them, and use them in His redemptive work in the world.
After entering the Promised Land, God greatly blessed Israel, but such blessing was in direct connection to their obedience to represent and live out God’s character to the surrounding nations. While God’s people certainly had moments of shining embodiment of their calling, they often wandered, worshipped false gods, adopted corrupt practices, grew deeply selfish, ignored the poor, lacked justice, and forgot their role as God’s representatives. God would firmly discipline His people, but He remained merciful throughout their history, sending prophets to remind them of their true identity as God’s people. Through the prophets, He ensured that He would still keep His promises in spite of the people’s great rebellion. Even when the nation of Israel was divided and sent into exile as a result of their abandonment of God’s ways, there remained a hopeful and faithful few who remembered God’s promises and looked forward to their fulfillment when peace and justice and renewed intimacy with God would thrive again.
The longings for God’s redemptive work to continue through Israel were fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Just when it seemed like God would not carry out His promises, Jesus was born in a manner consistent with prophesies about the coming Messiah. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. In Jesus, all the majesty of the God of Israel became a human. Unlike any expectations, Jesus came as both fully God and fully man. A new exodus of God’s people began in Jesus, not from a nation but from the dominion of evil. Unlike the first exodus, this new exodus would move to every nation in the world. Jesus came announcing the Kingdom of God—the reign God being accomplished over any rival power or evil. Although a few followers radically trusted and stayed close to Jesus to witness His miraculous life and message, there were many more who rejected Him and sought to kill Him because His message threatened physical, spiritual, political, and social powers. Yet even as He suffered, was rejected, and was betrayed, He never sinned. He never for a moment in thought or action went against the way of God the Father. Jesus, God the Son, lived the life that no other person had been able to live— a life of complete holiness completely controlled by the Holy Spirit. It was a life that represented the life God designed humanity to live from the beginning.
Eventually the plots against Jesus led to His betrayal, arrest, false trial, fierce beating, and tortured death on the Cross. As He breathed his last breath, it seemed that death and evil had finally prevailed, but in the mysterious wisdom of God, just the opposite had occurred.
Death is the result of sin because sin is separation from God who is life. Jesus had no sin and therefore owed no death. He did not have to die, but gave Himself into the will of the Father to do so. His death was thus able to stand as a substitute death for those who believe in Him. He took human sin upon Himself and incurred God’s wrath for such sin so that all who would believe in Him could be counted as clean and utterly forgiven. As Jesus died, He screamed, “My God My God why have You forsaken me?” and later, “It is finished,” pointing to his complete abandonment by God on the cross in our place and His finished work of reconciling all His followers to God through His death.
Three days after his death, Jesus miraculously rose from the grave. Because Jesus had no sin and owed no death, death could not hold Him. The power of God raised Him from the dead and in that moment a new world began. Soon after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to all who had been following Him before His death and announced that what He had taught them was moving forward in action.
Jesus gave those first followers and every person who believes in His life, death, and resurrection His life and His Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit awakens to faith and affirms all those who are God’s true children in faith—the Church. The Holy Spirit empowers the Church with gifts, convicts, guides, counsels, and leads us into all God-inspired truth through a communal life of worship. The Holy Spirit propels us into a life of mission that reflects God’s character and His desires for all of creation. When we trust fully in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, our relationships with God, each other, our inner selves, and the world around us are healed and restored. We are given a mission to carry that redemption and renewal into the entire world, reflecting Jesus and inviting many to believe.
One day, Jesus—who ascended to Heaven after giving His followers their mission of taking His Kingdom to the known world— is going to return. When Jesus returns, He is going to judge the world and bring an end to sin, misery, war, and injustice. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. God will reclaim this world, renew it, and rule over in forever. Those who reject Jesus have no hope of this renewed world, but those who have trusted Jesus and been filled with God’s Spirit will live forever with God in the wholeness and peace of renewed creation. We are now working for the Kingdom that Jesus inaugurated to be moved toward completion, and although God must bring this completion to reality, we get to participate today through faith and obedience.
In 21st century postmodern culture it is quite common to assume that all major world religions, including Christianity, point to the same God. If all religions point to the same God, however, one would imagine that they would say the same basic things about him. But if we examine each of the major world religions, we find that they actually disagree over fundamental points. Buddhists disbelieve in the existence of a personal God. Eastern mystic religions teach that everything is God—you are God, I am God, the tree is God, good is God, evil is God, and so on and so forth. Hindu sects propose the existence of over 300 million gods of varying levels of importance. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam teach that God is the Creator, that we were made by Him, that He is holy and just, that He is a personal God, and that He has defined the difference between good and evil.
But there is a sense in which Christianity is different than any other religion. All other major world religions teach that you must get yourself together to earn your way into some alternative version of eternal bliss. You must pray five times a day, give alms, fast, take a pilgrimage, use a prayer wheel, abstain from certain foods, observe the Sabbath, or perform some other act to end up in heaven. Christianity is different. God tells us that we will never earn or deserve a right relationship with Him. We simply cannot live up to His standards. Instead, God has taken the initiative. Because of His great love for us, He came to earth as a man to rescue us from the penalty of death that our wrongdoing deserves. John 3:16 says this: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” No other religion can point to a moment in history and say, “This is what God has done for you.” No other religion describes how God has entered our world to save us. Religion is our attempt at finding God. Christianity is God’s attempt at finding us.
The question of why an all-loving and all-powerful God would allow suffering to exist —particularly innocent suffering—has plagued philosophers and theologians for thousands of years. It is important to understand that we will likely never find a complete answer in this world. We can, however, make efforts to understand the existence of evil in a world being controlled by a good and sovereign God.
Christianity says that God did not create evil, suffering, or death. He created us to enjoy Himself, each other, His creation, and the gift of life. He created the world good. However, when human beings chose to rebel against God and go their own way, our relationships with God, each other, and His creation were tainted and death entered the story. On every level of relationship, God’s original design was broken. In other words, when human beings told God to shove off, He partially honored their request. Nature began to revolt. The earth was cursed. Genetic breakdown and disease began. Pain and death became part of the human experience. The good creation was marred. We have been born into a world made chaotic and unfair by a humanity revolting against its Creator.
It is noteworthy, however, that our good and sovereign God will use our suffering for our good. Romans 8:28 says that “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” And in the end, we know that Jesus Christ died on the cross to provide the ultimate solution for suffering and death. He will transform this chaotic and seemingly unjust world into an orderly, just world. Revelation 21:4 says this: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Christ is God’s solution to the problem of suffering.
The irony of Christianity is that those who think they are holy enough to get into heaven are excluded from it and those who know they are unworthy to enter into heaven are included. In the Gospel of Luke (18:14), Jesus said, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” The Gospel flips the world’s values upside down and says that the only way into eternal life is not by gaining power but by losing it, not by becoming rich but by becoming poor in spirit, and not by earning merit but by humbling oneself. How does one enter into eternal life? Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Salvation is not something that can be earned. It is not the result of following a bunch of rules. It is not the result of “good behavior.” It is grace. It is the result of faith in Jesus Christ. It is the free gift to those who believe in the One who lived the life that we should live but can’t and died the death that we should die but won’t. You cannot earn it. Don’t try.
Yes, we believe that it is—all 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. We believe the Bible was written by a unique group of chosen human authors inspired by the Spirit of God. Scripture speaks with the authority of God while simultaneously reflecting the backgrounds, styles, and vocabularies of these human authors. We hold that the Scriptures, in their original manuscripts, are true and without error; they are the unique, full, and final authority on all matters of faith and practice. There are no other writings similarly inspired by God.
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