As people look for answers to our existential questions, the options are fairly easily categorised: there are basically two. 

The answers may come from human beings, or may be given by God. Centuries of human intellectual pursuit have failed to provide the answers that our hearts crave – answers that both clearly correspond to reality and that provide meaning and purpose to our existence. 

God may give answers. Indeed, if he is our creator, he would have the infinite wisdom to know why he created us the way we are; as any human inventor or creator, he would have a purpose in mind for his creation. If he created us with the capacity of communicating, he would logically have the ability to communicate also. So he could get a message through to us, answering our many queries.

But it would seem there are many gods with many conflicting messages about how we are to find fulfilment. How to be sure we have the real God?

Very few religions teach that God is our Creator. It is on the first page of the Jewish Bible; it is repeated in the Christian New Testament; it is alluded to in the Koran. What makes the difference  between these three? The fact that in Christianity alone, we have God becoming incarnate – coming down into our world in human form in the extraordinary person of Jesus. Both Jews and Muslims deny this; the Christian New Testament affirms, however, that the Lord Jesus Christ was himself the creator: He is presented as “the Word” who one day “became flesh and dwelt among us”; and he, “the Word” was the Creator, because “All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made that was made” (John’s Gospel, chapter 1, verses 1-18). “By him all things were created”, the New Testament repeats; “in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1.16-19).

As “the Word”, the Lord Jesus Christ had the divine wisdom of the Creator, and was able to communicate God’s will and truth to us human beings. He himself lived a sinless human life, taught profound truths about God and human goodness and, when he was rejected and crucified, he demonstrated his divine nature by rising alive from the dead three days later.

“I have come,” he said to the people, “that they might have life, and have it abundantly” (John’s Gospel 10.10). “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth” he declared (John 18.37). He therefore communicates truth we need to know in order to have abundant life. In other words, he brings the answers we need to our existential questions. 

By the historic life of Jesus, we can finally have access to the unique source of true answers; all we have to do is read and understand what he taught in the New Testament Gospels which, written by his close disciples, record his words of wisdom and truth. 

Speaking of Jesus, the New Testament explains, “all things were created by him and for him” (Colossians 1.16). Think about that for a moment: all things – including you and me – were created not only by Christ, but for Christ. We find fulfilment therefore, when we find Christ – for we were made for him. Our human confusion is that we are cut off from the only one – Christ – who can love us, forgive us, cleanse us, make us right with God and even dwell within us when we pray to him and ask him to come and save us from our sins. He is alive; he is divine; he can hear and answer our prayer as we call upon him. This is the way we will find the fulfilment our heart craves.

Clive Every-Clayton