Sermon Central
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What Is Christianity?
Contributed by Brian Menear on Feb 22, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: A basic outline of the truths of Christianity
What is “Christianity?
If you haven’t yet define what you believe, or if you don’t know specifically what it means to be a Christian-you may be tempted to base it on what other people think, or what there definitions are.
“A Christian is someone who believes in God”
“A Christian is someone who goes to church”
“A Christian is someone who obeys the Ten Commandments”
While there is truth in these statements, it is not the entire picture of what it means to be a Christian.
Here we are going to talk about 3 things
Why should you become a Christian.
How exactly do you do it.
What happens when you do.
If you were to tell a friend or family member that you had become a Christian the first question they would likely ask is “Why”?
1st Peter 3:15
.............And if you are asked about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.
This is a legitimate question. Do you know or understand why yourself?
The most common answer is that you realized you were a sinner and did not want to go to hell. What? If God loves everybody why would you go to hell? You realized your need for salvation. To understand salvation we must begin with God. Everything about salvation and Christianity starts with God. Heres why it’s necessary for a person to become a Christian and have salvation.
God is Holy
Holy is not just a word. It describes exactly who and what God is. Since God is holy he can have nothing to do with sin. This means complete separation from it.
God and sin are mutually exclusive. Where God is, there can be no sin. Where sin is, God cannot be. Just as you cannot have darkness where there is light, God cannot exist where there is sin. God cannot have a personal relationship with you if yo are sinful. This is where the need for salvation begins.
God created humans with free will
Why did God give us free will which gives us the potential for sin and the potential to ignore or deny that he even exists? God wanted us to choose to love and except him. He wanted people who could think and decide for themselves to have a relationship with him. That makes the relationship more meaningful to both parties involved. The downside was that this free will gives the potential for disobedience and sin.
God had a perfect plan for us
If you want to read about his plan, you can read about it in his word.
You’ve got a a paradise called “Eden”. You’ve got beautiful trees, rivers and animals all living together in perfect harmony. You even have God himself coming to visit(Genesis 3:8). by giving us this paradise, God made sure we would have no reason to disobey him.
But something happened to affect this perfect plan. It happened by our own nature as humans.
Humans are sinful creatures
Gods original plan had just one rule for Adam and Eve.
15 The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it. 16 But the Lord God gave him this warning: “You may freely eat any fruit in the garden 17 except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.”
So what went wrong? How were able to ruin Gods perfect plan with only 1 simple rule to follow? Disguised as a serpent, Satan slithered into the garden and put doubts and questions in Eve’s mind about God plan. He talked here into disobeying God and eating an apple from the tree. She also talked Adam into taking a bite. With that one decision, Adam and Eve put an end to God’s perfect plan. Using there free will, given to them by the creator of the universe, they disobeyed the one thing he told them not to do. In the process they brought sin and death into the world. Remember that God’s original plan was for sinless people to live forever. This legacy of sin was passed down to their children, grandchildren, and onto us. How could something they did at the beginning of time affect us today?
12 When Adam sinned, sin entered the entire human race. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned.
Adam and Eve didn’t do anything that we wouldn’t do or have done. All of us have done something sinful or turned away from God.
Romans3:12
12 All have turned away from God;all have gone wrong. No one does good,not even one.”
Romans3:23
23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
We are all tainted by sin, not only as descendants of Adams and Eve, but by our very own actions. This fact has consequences for us
