Today's topic was simple, on the surface.
Most folks agreed, a Christian believes in God.
We see that the word "Christian" has the name 'Christ' in it.
One person pointed out that Jesus is the messiah.
"Christ" and "Messiah" both describe God's hero to save the world.
Chloe pointed out that Christians worship Christ, who is God.
Max added the difference that Christians follow Christ.
We talked for a while about what the Bible says about reincarnation.
Eventually 'the gospel' came into the conversation. What is the gospel? Gospel literally means good news. There is a short description of the good news in Paul's first letter to the people in a city called Corinth. We have this letter in the Bible called
1 Corinthians.
Here is what it says:"...Christ died for our sins (like it says in) the Scriptures, ...he was buried, ...he was raised on the third day (like it says in) the Scriptures, and ...he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive... (1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 3-6, English Standard Version)
We also talked about the subtle difference between
1. believing,
2. following and
3. worshiping God in the person of Jesus Christ.
We also discussed positives and negatives about Christians in the world. Some the good things like moral people who honour God and some of the bad things like rude people who think being pushy and argumentative about their faith is what God wants.
so after ALOT of laughs, (and some daft moments!), and interesting conversation, we agreed that one way to describe a Christian is: "any person who believes that Jesus was God, who died for our sins on the cross and was buried and rose from the dead on the third day just like he said he would."; and also "that the believing person lives differently because of their faith."
Next week we decided to talk about "why did Jesus have to die."
