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Being a Christian

Christian life is lived in relationship with God through Jesus Christ and seeking to deepen that relationship and to live the way that Jesus taught. The heart of faith is knowing that we can trust God. The Bible says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”​

 

How do we know that God is ‘for us'?

Because Jesus, the one human being who is completely in tune with God, has carried the burden for the times when we have betrayed God or run away from his goodness. He has let himself be betrayed and rejected, executed in a humiliating and agonising way, and yet has not turned his back on us.  Death did not succeed in silencing him or removing him from the world.  He is alive; and that means that his love is alive, having survived the worst we can do.

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Nothing can separate us from this love

But this isn't an excuse for doing whatever we like, knowing we can get away with it.  Once we know that God is 'for us', we open up to the gift that God wants to give us - which is a share in his own love and freedom and mercy.  

 

We breathe with his breath

That's part of what it means to say that we receive God's 'Spirit', which makes us live, like Jesus, 'in tune' with God.  If we have really taken the message in, we shall live lives of selfless generosity, always asking how the gifts given us - material or imaginative or spiritual or whatever - can be shared in a way that brings other people more fully alive.  And we shall be able to trust the generosity of others and be free to receive what they have to give us.

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Generosity, gratitude, confidence that when we fail we are still loved. All focused on Jesus' life and death and resurrection.  

 

That's where we start in the lifelong job of being a Christian.

 

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Baron Williams of Oystermouth

Archbishop of Canterbury 2002-2012

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