Faith
Christians believe in a God who is holy and just, loving and active and interested in being in relationship with us all and God’s love wants to enable us to share oneness with him.
How Christians experience and express their faith varies from person to person, but our faith is grounded in two principles:
1. The Christian faith is more than just belief. It involves commitment expressed in trust and obedience.
2. The Christian faith is focused on Jesus Christ and at its heart is our personal relationship with him.
For some Christians this relationship is experienced as warm and intimate, for others as intellectual and cerebral. However, whatever the experience of faith, the Christian faith is centred on Jesus, and on following him throughout life. Jesus revealed God to us in the fullest and best way, and he also gave us a path to follow in our behaviour to other people, and in our handling of the world. We believe that Jesus, who had never stepped out of fellowship with God, his Father, allowed himself to be put to death on a cross. In dying he carried the just punishment for human sins. He did this because God loves us. God then did something amazing: he raised Jesus from death to a new life. He then enabled all who had faith in Jesus, that is they believed in him and followed him, to share in that new life.
Over two thousand years after he walked the earth, Jesus of Nazareth remains one of the most talked-about and influential people who have ever lived. He is the source and focus of our faith and we could all do with learning more about him so begin your journey here.
The Church is the name for this family of God and we are part of this new community, as linked together as legs and feet, arms and hands. Thus God began a whole renewal of creation.