Guys, not being a Christian myself I've been wondering a lot about Christianity and I have a question for you which I ask out of sheer curiosity and need for knowledge and I mean no offense either to you or to Christianity or to Christ.
So. As far as I understand, Christ is the central person in Christianity. But is it really so? Is the New Testament has a bigger degree of holiness than the Old Testament??
Hi Nepeta,
"Christ is the central person in Christianity. But is it really so?" . Yes, it really is so. All Christians of all denominations affirm this, as Jesus is the central person as God incarnate in man, the Son of God, and God himself.
The definition of who, what, and when a person is' 'christian' is to be found in their relationship to Jesus Christ according to the scriptures, as central in their life, theology, and practice.
For example groups such as the Jehovas Witnesses are not 'christian' as they do not affirm Jesus as God. Nor do the Quakers, Mormons, or to a lesser extent the Roman Catholic Church that also weakens their theology of Christ by affirming Mary as 'co-equal redemitrix', and as 'mother of God' (nowhere found in scripture).
Confusion may arise by observing the behaviour and antics of many who call themselves 'Christian', but this is not new, ever since the 6th century when Caesar declared all in the european Roman empire to be 'christians' overnight, regardless of their personal convictions, will or desires; plainly this branding of the masses as 'chrsitian' was ludicrus.
Theologically Christ is the central person in christianity. Can I ask; why do you question whether is treally is so?
Secondly, "Is the New Testament has a bigger degree of holiness than the Old Testament?" What do you mean by holiness? The New Testament is the fullest (most recent) revelation of God in Christ, and the new covenant is consistent with old, yet different for those who enter into it. In Christ the sacrifical elements of the law (for sin) are fullfilled by Jesus when he died on the cross. Forgiveness and atonement for sin is available for those who turn to Christ in repentance thus averting the the full penalty for transgression of the law.
Romans chapter 3: verse 23,
Romans chapter 6: verse 23,
John chapter 3: verse 16
Hi Nepete,
I woukd encourage you to read the Gospel of John. This is the third book of the New Testament. John wrote his gospel or good news to show the world that Jesus is the Son of God. One becomes a Christian by faith in Jesus.
As you read ask God to reveal to you who Jesus is. If you have questions any of us in the forum will be glad to help you. I pray that God will guide you in your quest for Jesus.
Will be praying for you.
Blaine
Standing, I delighted in reading your response. I am not the original poster, but thanks for the clarity on the person and lordship of Jesus Christ. It's great refreshment to hear from a Christian who holds Christ in high regard.
Nepeta, I'd like to echo Standing's point that confusion may arise when you observe the lifestyle of those that profess to be Christian. This is not new at all; in fact, the Bible itself does warn of this. A real Christian can be seen from the fruit of their life, as the scriptures say in Mathew 7:16.
I encourage you to search the scriptures, and cry out to God for salvation.
Without Him there would not be any life itself let alone Christianity.As far as I understand, Christ is the central person in Christianity
He is the Alpha and the Omega the Genesis and the Ending. He is called Son of God because He came out from God. Even we who are born of His Spirit are called sons of God because we too in a sense came out from God and Christ is not only our Lord and Saviour but He encourages us to call Him a Brother and Friend.
There is a larger degree of Holiness in the New Testament because God resides in men whom man has welcomed into his heart. In the Old Testament, man had to slave away at producing a physical type of holiness which were all a spiritual type or what is in the heavenlies. It was meant only to show us something far greater. But those things never produced holiness because God was never in them because God doesn't dwell in things that man makes, He dwells in His own creation. He visited the temple on occasion but He never staid there. In man He stays, it's what man was created for, for God to have fellowship with His creation man.
In it's simplicity and without the garggling jargon of endless doctrines God is more approachable than what men think. Man thinks that that he has to go through some ritual to obtain God's favour and we haven't made it easy for man to do that. We bury him with our ways and God's ways get buried beneath our ways and we make it hard for him to enter in. I apology for that.
Christianity is not the Vatican or some other outfit, Christianity is God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself because God loves people. And we as His offsprings have failed to properly show to the world that God does indeed love them and wants to fellowship with them through Jesus Christ.
Thanks for asking the question.
Hello Nepeta,
It's nice to see an inquiring nonChristian here.
I just want to respond to your question about the relation of the Old Testament to the New. The Old Testament was given as preparation for the Messiah God promised from all the way back in Eden. He was to be a Savior who would come to save us all from the sin (disobedience of God) which began with Adam and Eve's sin. Prophecies and symbols of the promised Messiah abound throughout the Old Testament, in ways hidden to someone who doesn't study it in that light.
The Messiah came 2000 years ago, fulfilling all the Old Testament prophecies, and that is Jesus Christ. He turned out to be a lot more than they'd previously thought He'd be, truly God Himself in human flesh, the Savior of all who trust in Him.
Jesus Himself said that the Old Testament scriptures taught of Him:
John 5:39 Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
Luke 24:27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
May God bless your search for truth.
Welcome to SermonIndex, Nepeta.
I too was not always a Christian. My Grand-mother was raised Jewish and my Grand-father was a non-practicing Catholic.
I believed in GOD from a young age and believed very much in Jesus, for a reason I can hardly explain.
I was raised for 10 yrs with my Grand-parents and there was a very old picture of Jesus sitting on a rock at night time, over-looking Jerusalem on a mountain, that hung on my bedroom wall. All I remember is just that picture somehow made me to believe in Jesus.
The problem was, as I came to be about 10 years old, I was very aware that I was doing wrong things. I grew up too fast because of what my home-life had been like and though I believed in GOD and that Jesus was probably GOD, I didn't know how to stop doing the things that I enjoyed doing that I knew were wrong. I even told Him that I knew what I was doing was wrong.
It wasn't until I was 23 years old and after a very bad life of doing everything wrong that people can do, that as I flipped through the channels on the TV and stopped on a man that was explaining that I "could be forgiven and that Jesus, Himself, could come into my heart/life and change me." The man said, "If you want to be forgiven and be changed, pray with me."
Well, I surely did and He surely did.
As we look back from the beginning of when GOD created man, we see that man has never been able to do what is right. Adam and Eve first did the one and only thing that GOD asked them not to do.
People ask, "Then why did GOD put that tree in the Garden with them?"
GOD did not create us to be His robots. He desires to have our love by our own decision. There has to be a choice made and if He didn't give us a choice - we would be robots.
Next we see Adam's son kill his brother.
Further on we see that mankind gets so bad that GOD had to have Noah build a huge boat for himself and his family, because the entire population of the world had mingled with evil.
Next, GOD gives these Laws after He called Abraham to be seperate from those doing evil. Moses brings these laws to the people but the vast majority don't understand what GOD is really after. A few did understand and were called His Children and His wife, even in the Old Testament.
All through the Old Testament, all of the Feast Days and sacrifices and Temple articles were designed to point to that day in the future when GOD Himself would become a man to take the sins of the world and to show mankind what He is truly like, because He loves the humans that He created.
We see in the Old Testament how the prophets wrote about how this God-man would come and why He would come and what He would do while on earth and those that loved Him back then, looked to the future for that day and trusted Him to come one day.
Nepeta, it's all about Love - His Love for His creation and His desire to be joined to His creation and be 'one' with them.
He can't be one with us when we're filthy from the terrible things that we've all done - but He loved us enough to come to be the living sacrifice for our sins and promised to indwell those that would look to Him for forgiveness and to be cleaned from our pasts. When this happens to us, a love that we've never felt before comes into our hearts and such Thankfulness for being cleaned and forgiven and that love for Him makes us want to know Him more and more.
When He comes into us, we read in the Bible that it is called being "born-again". I know that is what happened to me. I was no longer the same person. The more I learned from Him and of Him, the more I wanted to please Him, as a wife wants to please her Husband that she loves so very much.
What makes it different than the Old Testament days, is that now GOD indwells/lives inside of those that have put their trust in Him completely - to forgive and make us what we truly know inside that we should be - but didn't have the power without Him to live that way, without Him living inside of us. And little by little we are being changed even more.
It is the greatest love story ever told. It is super-natural. That He Who created all things would become a human being like us, so that we can never say that He doesn't understand what it's like to be just human.
And then for Him to die for us - to offer us Paradise With Him is beyond our understanding - but we surely do believe it, now. Such love He shows us by His life. What incredible joy to have met Him - Thank GOD, He made it possible for all people, He just asks that we seek Him for these things that He has done and will do in us.
He loves you Nepeta and He wants to come into your life as well.
We'll be praying for you that you'll meet Him soon, too.
His Everlasting Love and Peace is what we pray for you.
Look only to Him.
Amen.
Nepeta
There is a case of the new covenant being better than the old because it is enacted on better promises.
In the new covenant the better promises are
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people
Hebrew 8:6-13
6 But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.
8 For he finds fault with them when he says:
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
9 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers
on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.
For they did not continue in my covenant,
and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws into their minds,
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.
11 And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor
and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
and I will remember their sins no more.”
13 In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
edited for spelling
"I ask out of sheer curiosity and the need for knowledge, meaning no offense"
Oh Nepeta, how could anyone who loves Christ more than life be offended here. You ask about our first love. Would we not desire you to know as much about Him upon whom our affections are everything to us? How beautiful will be the testimonies of the saints who once were dead in sin, separated from God, having no hope and wondering about why they exist on this earth and what is the purpose of life?
One thing that might be worthy of mention is that we are talking about the creator of all things. In Him all things exist and apart from Him nothing that exists would exist. Even knowledge which many seek, He has spoken of in His Word 1st Corinthians 3:19, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness to Me(God)".
May God bless you in your search for truth, which can only be found in Him
John 14:6 "I Am The Way, The Truth, and The Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
As far as I understand, Christ is the central person in Christianity. But is it really so? Is the New Testament has a bigger degree of holiness than the Old Testament??
Hello Nepeta, It seems that you have some understanding of the Christian faith – that the Bible has two testaments and we have a Christocentric focus. Would you mind sharing something about your experience with the Christian faith, and what some of your reservations might be towards becoming a Christian at this point? Oh - and I'm not quite sure what you have in mind by "holiness" in your question. Perhaps you'd like to expound on that a bit.
Diane
I agree with Diane. A couple days ago I wrote a response to this, trying to be gentle, eloquent, and to the point as I thought the point might be. But then I felt a check- and deleted the post.
Something seemed strange, and I realized I didn't really know enough to post the message.
I also noticed that the original poster has not participated in any further conversation.
The gist of my original post is a compliment to the awesome thinking a genuine seeker would find from this group, so many well spoken views, so much genuine love for Jesus Christ, such a wide variety of experiences. Yet this is not a place where casual conversants would hang out. Like facebook for serious grown-ups, serious wisdom flows here. Non-believers would not be comfortable.
On the other hand, I sure hope hungry people, questioning their own spiritual reality, would come in and ask the questions.
And of course, listen to some of the sermons. This is a good place!
This discussion is locked.
