It can be quite easy to believe in God in a fairly general sort of way.
Maybe there is something bigger than us. Maybe the universe was created and has a purpose. Maybe prayer matters. Maybe there is a spiritual reality beyond what we can see.
You could choose to leave all of that reasonably undefined.
Christianity brings you back to a particular person in history who said some very direct things about himself.
At the centre of Christianity is a person.
And sooner or later the question becomes: Why Jesus?
You don’t have to start by believing everything
Sometimes this will seem more complicated than it really is.
You do not have to settle every question you have about Christianity before you seriously look at Jesus.
Jesus was a first-century Jewish teacher who gathered followers and was executed by crucifixion under Roman authority. The important questions are what he was like, what he claimed, why he was killed and what happened after his death.
Christian faith is not about closing your eyes and hoping something is true.
Faith is trust based on evidence, even when we cannot see or verify everything for ourselves.
When I get on an aeroplane to travel overseas, I usually don’t know the pilot’s name. I haven’t checked their licence, training or experience.
But I still get on the plane.
I trust the airline to have chosen someone capable of flying it. That trust is based on evidence I do have — the airline’s history, my own experience, what others have written about it and what the airline claims about itself.
I don’t have all the evidence personally, but I have enough to place my trust in them.
Christian faith works in a similar way.
I cannot stand beside the empty tomb. But I can examine the testimony of those who said they saw Jesus alive, the accounts passed down to us, what Jesus claimed about himself, and what happened to those who became convinced that he had risen.
Faith is what happens when, on the basis of that evidence, I decide Jesus can be trusted.
Jesus is harder to keep at a distance
There are things Jesus taught and lived out that almost everyone seems to admire.
He cared about people who were overlooked. He challenged hypocrisy and taught mercy, forgiveness, humility and love for others.
He treated people in a way that demonstrated how important every person is, while never pretending that every choice they made was good for them.
Jesus could be gentle with someone carrying shame and very direct with people whose religion, pride or status had led them to take advantage of others.
But the Jesus we actually meet in the Gospels does not allow us to see him as simply a nice or friendly spiritual teacher.
His claims go much further than that.
Jesus put himself at the centre
Jesus does not simply say, Here are some things I have learned about God.
He speaks and acts as though knowing him and knowing God are tied together.
One of his disciples asks him to show them the Father. Jesus replies:
“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” John 14:9, NIV
And Jesus says something even more direct:
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6, NIV
That is not the language of someone saying he is one spiritual teacher among many.
Jesus forgives sins, calls people to follow him and says our response to him is connected with our response to God.
Jesus put himself at the centre.
I believe Jesus was telling the truth about who he was.
God came to us
Christianity says that in Jesus, God did more than send another teacher.
He came to us.
Jesus knew family, friendship, grief, rejection and betrayal. He wept when someone he loved died and eventually faced death himself.
In Jesus, God stepped into human life and suffering.
But Christianity says we need more than comfort
According to Jesus, our problem is not only that life hurts.
Something between us and God needs putting right.
The Bible calls that problem sin.
We were made by God, but keep wanting the final say over our lives. We want God’s world and God’s gifts, but we still want to be in charge.
That damages us, our relationships and our relationship with God.
We do not simply need better advice.
We need reconciliation.
Which is why the cross matters
Jesus was arrested, humiliated and nailed to a Roman cross. But he had already spoken about giving his life for others.
The cross was not simply something terrible done to him.
Jesus went towards it for us.
God is a God of justice. He cannot simply pretend that sin does not matter or allow evil to go unpunished. If he did, he would no longer be just.
So sin has to be dealt with.
The Christian claim is that on the cross, Jesus takes that punishment on himself.
In Jesus, God satisfies justice and makes forgiveness possible at the same time.
That is why the cross sits at the centre of Christianity.
And then everything rests on what happened next
If Jesus died and stayed dead, Christianity is false.
The earliest Christians did not simply say that Jesus’ teaching lived on.
They said Jesus was alive.
They were convinced that the same Jesus who had been crucified had been raised from the dead. They testified that they had seen him with their own eyes, and continued to proclaim it despite opposition, persecution and personal cost.
If Jesus really rose from the dead, then what he taught about God and what he claimed about himself have been demonstrated to be true.
The resurrection is God’s validation of Jesus.
If he was raised from the dead, then he really is who he said he was.
If he was not, Christianity falls apart.
That is one of the things that makes Christianity unique. Its truth rests on something Christians say actually happened in history, not simply on whether its teaching is inspiring.
Everything stands or falls on whether Jesus was raised from the dead.
And I believe he was.
That belief is not blind hope. It is trust based on evidence — the testimony of those who said they saw him alive, the accounts passed down to us, and the transformation of his followers into people who publicly proclaimed that Jesus had risen.
The Bible says Jesus’ resurrection begins God’s restoration of what sin and death have broken.
Death does not get the final word.
So why Jesus?
Jesus matters because Christianity makes a truth claim about him:
If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.
Look at the way he treated people. Look at what he challenged and forgave. Look at the claims he made, the cross, and the evidence for the resurrection.
You may not believe him. You may question whether the accounts of his life can be trusted.
Who is Jesus?
What did he claim?
What happened to him?
Did he really rise from the dead?
Because if he did not, Christianity is false.
But if he did, then Jesus is not simply one option among many ways of understanding God.
He is who he said he is.
And his invitation to know God through him is true.