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Why do Christians believe in Christ?

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Why do Christians believe Jesus is the only way of salvation? Isn't that being rather narrow-minded and judgmental? The world has a lot of people in it who don't believe in Jesus but some of them are just as good as the Christians I know (or even better).

One reason Christians believe Jesus is the only way of salvation is because this is what Jesus claimed about Himself. He declared, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).

Why did He make such a startling claim? Was it out of pride or ego? Or was He mentally unbalanced, or even deliberately lying to trick people into following Him? No, none of those "reasons" stand up once you carefully examine Jesus' life and teachings. Why, then, did He say He was the only way to the Father? Simply this: He knew that He was the unique Son of God, sent by His Father into the world to save us from our sins.

You see, only one thing separates us from God and keeps us out of heaven-and that is our sin. This is why our greatest need is to have our sins forgiven and cleansed, for only then can we be reconciled to God and go to be with Him throughout eternity.

But how is this possible? No matter how good we are, we can never erase our own sins. Only God can do this-and that is what He did by sending Jesus Christ into the world for us. The Bible says, "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" (John 3:16). Don't turn your back on His love, but by a simple prayer of faith commit your life to Christ today.

Read Today's Devotion

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Why do Christians believe Jesus is the only way of salvation? Isn't that being rather narrow-minded and judgmental?

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"Why do Christians believe Jesus is the only way of salvation? Isn't that being rather narrow-minded and judgmental? The world has a lot of people in it who don't believe in Jesus but some of them are just as good as the Christians I know (or even better)."

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Understanding Christianity

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Orthodox Christian View of the Doctrine of Salvation

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Understanding the Christian Orthodox Faith - Part 1

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Understanding the Orthodox Faith is an introductory guide to learning the basics about the Christian Orthodox faith. Ellinas Multimedia has combined interviews with Orthodox Priests along with beautiful photography inside Orthodox churches to teach you about the following: * When did the Orthodox faith begin? * Who was the founder of the Orthodox faith?

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Christianity at a glance

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BBC - Religions - Christianity: Christianity at a glance

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A brief overview of Christianity, the biggest religion in the world, centred on God and Jesus Christ.

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Percentage of Christians in the world

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Political Views

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Editor's Note: HuffPost Religion is running a series of posts by Lisa Sharon Harper and David Innes on how Christians should view social issues. The first issue is Occupy Wall Street.
Left, Right and Christ: Believers Occupy Wall Street
By Lisa Sharon Harper
Last week, just hours before the New York City launch of our book, " Left, Right and Christ: Evangelical Faith in Politics," I took a trip down to Zuccotti Park -- the site of the Occupy Wall Street encampment.

Usually wide-open, clean and full of weary shoppers and business people on lunch breaks, Zuccotti Park was now jam-packed with protesters, sleeping bags, tents, food, protest placards, celebrities and press.

My favorite placards were "I will not let food stamps numb my hunger for righteousness and justice," and "Democracy is too big to fail."

What are the occupiers talking about? Is our democracy in danger of failure? What isn't right about the way things are?

The foundation of Innes's political worldview is summed up in two words: "Limited Government." According to Innes, the role of government is solely to "punish those who do evil" and "praise those who do good." (Left, Right and Christ, 60) This says nothing of things that are neither good, nor evil -- like cancer. Does the government punish it or praise it? Does the government do nothing to help find a cure or create regulations on pollutants that cause it?
The Bible clearly establishes government to ensure the basic protection and flourishing of the image of God in all of its citizens and residents. All humanity is created in the image of God and has the same basic needs: life, food, shelter, work, and the ability to migrate ( Genesis 1:26-28). These basic needs lay the foundation for modern day human rights.

Scripture offers a glimpse into God's thinking about the proper roles and boundaries of government and business in the establishment of Israel and the Ten Commandments (the Bill of Rights for a nascent nation of Israel) as well as the institutions of Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee.

The Sabbath day policy required all workers, the land, all livestock, and even immigrants working in town to rest. The Sabbath Year policy mandated that every seven years Israelites were required to forgive debt and give workers, land and livestock a year of rest. The Year of Jubilee mandated that every 50 years land lost to pay debts was mandated to be restored to the original deed holders. These regulations prevented the accumulation of gross wealth and the entrenchment of gross poverty in God's economy and protected workers, land and animals from exploitation and oppression.

I talked with several Occupy Wall Street protesters; a web designer, a documentarian and Noreeda, a homeless 28 year-old woman whose creased face belied manifold brushes with straight up evil. Noreeda was born and bred in the Bronx. She joined the occupation because there she found community. Plus, she admitted to me, she still has dreams of being a doctor...one day.

On this particular day homeless Noreeda sat in the shadow of Wall Street. Protesters buzzed around her and she motioned to them with hope. She said, "I still believe...one day...it will all be made right."
Left, Right and Christ: Dreamers on Wall Street
By David Innes
The Occupy Wall Street movement has really brought out the...well, it's not fair to say the crazies, but certainly the dreamers. If Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" was the anthem for the 60s protests, the anthem for Occupy Wall Street has to be Harry McClintock's " Big Rock Candy Mountain."
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
But even that is too specific. From the start, OWS has been a movement without a message. The location of the original protest indicates the importance of one particular animus: Wall Street prosperity at a time of high unemployment everywhere else. But as vague as this message is, it has been further muddled by calls for closing Gitmo, pulling the troops home from everywhere, etc.

This has left the movement open to co-opting by related causes that see energy going to waste. At some point the unions showed up in hope of giving it a labor focus. The Democrats have been thinking about how they might use the movement to boost their 2012 prospects the way the Tea Party carried the Republicans into blue skies in 2010.

The leftist Evangelical group, Sojourners, has also been working at bringing these directionless but passionate young idealists into their fold. Jim Wallis, Sojourners CEO and grand-daddy of the Evangelical left, published " An Open Letter to the Occupiers from a Vietnam Troublemaker." He encourages them to "[k]eep asking what a just economy should look like and whom it should be for."

Supposedly, it would look like what my co-author, Lisa Sharon Harper, calls "God's economy" in our book on the competing Evangelical views of politics, Left, Right and Christ. On the basis of a controversial reading of Leviticus 25, she advocates widespread redistribution of wealth, a limitation on wealth accumulation, "Sabbatical-year rest for workers and the land," and perhaps even nationwide debt forgiveness every 50 years (p.79). She also seems to suggest the nationalization of all agricultural land and natural resources (pp.79, 85). She certainly advocates public control of the economy (p.81). That's a lot of control.

Lisa does what she does and believes what she believes because, as a good Christian, she loves people. This is obvious. But we disagree on how God calls people to love one another. What I see in the Evangelical political left is a dangerous, and I believe unbiblical, combination of Utopian expectations for government combined with an unjustifiably optimistic willingness to empower government for this breathtaking work. They want the Kingdom of God on earth; they want shalom fully realized now through political and economic reform. But if they came into the power they would need for this, they would quickly find their own movement co-opted by opportunists and their beautiful new day turned into a nightmare.

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Christian Views On Social Issues: Occupy Wall Street

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Editor's Note: HuffPost Religion is running a series of posts by Lisa Sharon Harper and David Innes on how Christians should view social issues. The first issue is Occupy Wall Street.

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Carrie Underwood is a Christian

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Tyler Perry is a Christian

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Most Commonly used symbol of Christianity

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Ten Commandments

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Other Ways to become informed about Christianity

- Reading the Bible

-Attend a christian church service

-Refer to our textbook

-ASK QUESTIONS

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Movie: The Life of Jesus Christ

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The Life Of Jesus Christ - LDS - Full Movie - Best Quality...

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NO FILM CAN TRULY PORTRAY THE PERSON OR TIMES OF YESHUA. I CHOSE THIS ONE BECAUSE HIS WORDS ARE DELIVERED WITH A QUIET VOICE THAT PENETRATES THE MIND. HIS WORDS SHALL NEVER PASS AWAY. NO FILM SHOULD EVER BE USED TO UNDERSTAND HISTORY OR DOCTRINE.

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Video About Christianity

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What is Christianity? explained in 2 minutes

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Suggested Books

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Suggested Books

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Tithing is (1/10 money paid) to the religious institution (church)

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Prayer is a very important ritual to most Christians

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Christian attire for priests

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Baptism is a ritual that Christians do to accept Christ

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Holy Communion

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Bible is the book that Christians live by.

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The Definition of Christianity

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Where did Christianity come from? How did it begin? What is it?

Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched. Francis Schaeffer Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in 'another' or 'better' life. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

Christianity is one of the strongest and perhaps most misunderstood movements in the world. Perceptions of the religion and its adherents range from Nietzsche's, which borders on the militant, to Schaeffer's, which celebrates Christianity as the climax of humanity.

Indeed, as the last two thousand years of history attest, Christianity has been-at the very least-a polarizing movement.

In the Beginning

Many people place the beginning of Christianity some two thousand years ago with the life of Jesus. In actuality, Christianity began as a reform movement within Judaism, which had been established nearly two thousand years earlier. To understand Christianity, we must go back to the roots of Judaism.

We find aspects of the history of the Israelites recorded in the Bible, which is ultimately a collection of writings conveying the story of God's relationship with humanity. "In the beginning," the Scriptures state, "God created the heavens and the earth." ¹

However, sometime after creating humanity, things began to go awry. People chose to defy God's command, and sin entered the world.

Rebellion

As a direct result of this disobedience, humans have since been struggling with broken relationships with God, themselves, others, and creation. ² Even worse, through that act, death was introduced to the world.

In order to restore everlasting relationship with his creation, God chose one righteous person-Abraham-and initiated a plan of redemption. Through Abraham's family, a people became a nation that was destined to be a light, a blessing, and a model to the entire world: Israel. ³

Though there were moments when they forgot who they were and neglected God's commands, in time the Israelites succeeded in being God's faithful people-despite threats and attacks leveled against them from surrounding nations. In the Christian understanding, the Israelites' presence in the world and their message of the one true God prepared the peoples of the earth for the next phase of God's plan.

Hope for Resolution

Through his prophets, God foretold a final resolution to the broken relationship between God and humans: God himself would enter the world in the form of a human being. He would experience what we experience. He would suffer the pain that we suffer, endure the temptations we endure, feel the emotions we feel.

But more than that, he would be beaten, broken, and crushed. ⁴ In his death he would take on all the sins of man, until "by his wounds we [would be] healed" and set free from the bondage of sin. ⁵ And in the end, he would restore his scattered and dispirited people, ushering in an era of unending peace.

The Promised One?

Enter Jesus. A Jewish carpenter who lived two thousand years ago, Jesus is called the Son of God. 6 Christians believe Jesus to be fully man and fully God, equally human and divine.

Early in his life, Jesus distinguished himself as an unusually precocious child, demonstrating tremendous spiritual wisdom and maturity. ⁷ When Jesus sensed the moment was right, he left behind his home and embarked on a new path. He began to preach, teach, perform miracles, and gather around him a band of rag-tag disciples. Eventually, they recognized him as the hoped-for messiah.

What his followers did not realize was that God's plan was going to take an unusual turn. He was going to restore the nation of Israel, as they hoped, but he would do it in a most unexpected way-not through shows of power and the oppression of enemies but through selfless love and compassion.

According to Christians, Jesus, the Son of God, was crucified, died, and rose from the dead. He conquered sin and death in order to restore humanity's broken relationship with God, the Father. Jesus did what we cannot: he lived a perfect, sinless life and paid the price for our transgressions.

Christians believe that Jesus' sacrifice for humanity saved us from the permanent consequence of our sins-eternal separation and isolation from God. Through Jesus, we can attain eternal life in relationship with God. Indeed, Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life," ⁸ and that whoever "believes in [him] will live, even though they die." ⁹

One day, Jesus promised, he will return to reign over his faithful followers in a peaceful kingdom where "there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain." ¹⁰ In the interim, he has sent the Holy Spirit to live and dwell with his followers, leading them in the way of truth. ¹¹

Now

Today, Christianity is practiced in three primary forms: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. Within each of these three branches, there are numerous subsets and denominations. However, each group concurs on the general story and purposes described above; they divide mainly in the details of how principles should be applied practically.

Over the years, Christianity has seen its fair share of glorious, proud moments and all too many humiliating, shameful ones. But this is less an indictment on God, Jesus, or Christianity than it is on his followers.

Mahatma Gandhi allegedly once said, "I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." He voiced the inconsistency found between the Son of God and those who claim to follow in his footsteps.

And yet, should that surprise anyone? The Bible tells story after story of those who failed to live as God called them to live. This is not true just for Christians but for all people. This is why we need a messiah, a redeemer, a savior.

Everyone's Story

Chuck Colson once said, "Christianity is an explanation of all of reality." Simply put, we all know the world is broken. The whole world, including me and you, needs fixing. And no matter how many different fix-it methods we try-whether self-help or sex, missionary work or money-none of them can fill the void that all of us feel.

Christianity, from creation up through God's restoring work in Jesus, is both the explanation of and solution to that emptiness. Ultimately, Christianity is the story of God's powerful, redemptive love for his people.

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Where did Christianity come from? How did it begin? What is it? Christianity is the greatest intellectual system the mind of man has ever touched. Francis Schaeffer Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in 'another' or 'better' life.

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Home of Christianity: Judea (Israel)

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Types of Christianity

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Beliefs of Christianity

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Population of Christian in every State