Monday June 24, 2017

 

If you wanted to lose weight where would you start? If you wanted to play an instrument where would you start? What if you wanted to learn about science, where would you start? Now, let’s pretend you know nothing about Jesus and let’s pretend you have absolutely no faith, what would be the starting point for developing faith?

 

There is a chance you might think that the starting point for developing your faith is the Bible and technically you would be right. However, when you take a look back at history, there were no Bibles for the first 250 to 300 years of Christianity. This did not stop people from becoming believers, as a matter of fact, Christianity exploded during those first 300 years. In spite of the fact that that there were no Bibles during this period, and under systematic and fierce persecution, the faith of these early Christians was so strong that they did not waiver in their belief. When we look back, we can appreciate that their faith was far stronger than the faith of most believers today. First century believers faced social, economical, and physical harm and in many situations, death; yet they could not be moved. Nowadays we pray and if God fails to answer our prayers by the end of the week we throw in the towel. If we lose our job and can’t pay our bills we lose our faith. However, in the first century countless believers lost their lives because of their faith and never gave their sacrifice a second thought. So, what was the starting point for the first century believer’s faith? Perhaps we should begin where they began.

 

The starting point for the faith of the first century believers was neither a theology nor a philosophy. For the first century believer, the starting point of their faith was the answer to one simple question; who is Jesus? If Jesus, was who He proclaimed himself to be, that means He was more than a good person, teacher, or leader, He was God living amongst us. He was God the Creator of all things in heaven and on earth dwelling in our midst. For the first century believer the only thing that mattered was the veracity of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

 

It was Jesus himself who birthed Christianity and the faith of those early believers and not His teachings. For the most part, people were unable to understand His teachings and this includes His disciples. Furthermore, the teachings they did understand like pray for your enemies or if someone slaps you in the cheek turn the other and let them slap you again sounded irrational to them. While they could not understand Him, they could not deny that they had seen Him die and then resurrected.

 

1 Corinthians 15:14-15 NLT

 

If Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave.

 

In the first century, the starting point of a person’s faith was to ask, who is Jesus? Did He really die and resurrect? And if they concluded as many did, that Jesus was who He said He was, that He resurrected from the dead, and this became the starting point for their faith should we not ask ourselves the same questions? Perhaps we need to make answering these questions the starting point and foundation of our faith.