Philippians 2:5-11 

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Ephesians 2:4-10

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Philippians 2:10-11

10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Romans 5:1-2 

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace din which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

Ephesians 5:2

And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Hebrews 1:1-8

1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. 5 For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son”?  6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”  7 Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.”  8 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

John 14:6-7

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

John 3:16-18

“For God so loved the world,9 that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Josh McDowell

After more than seven hundred hours of studying this subject and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, OR it is the most fantastic fact of history.

C.S. Lewis

I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must take your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon, or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

The Apostle’s Creed

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again;
he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

David Platt

“Radical obedience to Christ is not easy… It’s not comfort, not health, not wealth, and not prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ risks losing all these things. But in the end, such risk finds its reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.”

A.W. Tozer

If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus’ fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.

C.J. Mahaney

The personal desolation Christ is experiencing on the cross is what you and I should be experiencing–but instead, Jesus is bearing it, and bearing it all alone.
Why alone? He’s alone so that we might never be alone.

Jesus is God’s son, the second person of the Trinity, possesses all the divine Excellencies, and Indies he is currently equal, consubstantial, and coeternal with the father. (John 10:30; 14:9, 10)

Jesus represents humanity and deity in indivisible oneness (micah 5:2; John 5:23; Colossians 2:9)

Jesus was born of the virgin Mary (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23, 25). He was God incarnate(John 1:1, 14). The purpose of his incarnation was to reveal God, redeem man, and rule over God’s kingdom. (Psalm 2:7–9; Isaiah 9:6; John 1:29; Hebrews 7:25-26)

Is the New Testament Picture of Jesus Reliable?
The grounds for accepting the New Testament as trustworthy compare very favorably with the grounds on which classical (Greek, Roman) scholars accept the authenticity and credibility of ‘reliable’ ancient documents.—F. F. Bruce (1912–), Distinguished English academic classics scholar, University of Manchester

Example: Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars–nine or 10 existing manuscripts. The oldest dates from 850 A.D.

However, there are 4,000 extant Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, in whole or in part. The best complete documents go back to 350 A. D. Parts of John’s Gospel are dated at 130 A. D.

Many of the pagan writers of the first century write about or mention Christ and his followers. Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. 55-120) was a Roman historian who lived through the reigns of over a half dozen Roman emperors. He has been called the ‘greatest historian’ of ancient Rome, an individual generally accepted as a moral man with high integrity and goodness. Writing of the reign of Nero, Tacitus alludes to the death of Christ and to the presence of Christians in Rome.

Lucian of Samosata was a Greek satirist during the last half of the second century; he spoke with distain about the Christians and Christ, never giving any hint that they were unreal. Suetonius, another Roman historian, court official under Hadrian, and annalist of the imperial House, stated in his Life of Claudius 25.4, “As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus [another spelling of Christus], he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.”

How could any intelligent 20th century person believe that Jesus rose physically from the dead?
A) If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the testimony of the disciples? Forty days later, you hear their voices with shouts of excitement, “We’ve seen a dead man walking!”

B) If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the faithfulness of the disciples to the testimony of the resurrection even in the face of their own deaths? Of the 11 disciples, only one died of old age—John—and he was exiled to Patmos, an island work camp. They died as martyrs with the truth of the resurrection on their lips.

C) If Jesus remained dead, why did 500 people say they saw Him alive (see I Corinthians 15:6)?

D) If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the credibility of the witnesses? In the first century, the people questioned the first–hand witnesses…and their story was not proven wrong.

E) If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the inability of the first century skeptics to deal with the resurrection with an alternative explanation? All the power of Rome and of the religious establishment in Jerusalem was geared to stop the Christian faith. All they had to do was to dig up the grave and to present the corpse. They didn’t.

F) If Jesus remained dead, how can you explain the reality of the Christian church and its phenomenal growth in the first three centuries of the Christian era? Christ’s Church covered the Western world by the fourth century. A religious movement built on a lie could not have accomplished that.

G) If Jesus did not rise from the dead, his closest friends were an extraordinary compulsive group of liars. This charge does not fit well with the ethical caliber of the writings of Jesus’ disciples. Virtually all religions now concede that the writings of the apostles represent a very high level of morality.

He is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created. Colossians 1: 15-16

In Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form. Colossians 2:9

The sun is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. Hebrews 1:3

Jesus is like no other person in scripture. All other men and women are sinners. His birth was special and different from all other births. Mary was a virgin so Jesus’s birth came about not as a result of human love but through a remarkable life-giving operation of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:2; Luke 1:35)

He was the Son of Man, and the son of God (mention 25 times in the Gospels).
He is our savior!
Romans 5:17–18
[17] For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
[18] Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

“How can you say that Jesus it the only way to God? How arrogant!”

“If I told you that there were other ways I would be lying to you. While you may think I am full of hatred or have no respect for other religions, we must look at what the Bible teaches. The Bible says, ‘Neither is there salvation in any other. There is no other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.’ Even if those of other faiths are sincere, what would happen if I sincerely believed that I was on a plane flying to Hawaii, but in truth I was heading for Afghanistan? You are forgetting that someone can be sincerely wrong. The only way to God is through Jesus Christ. There is one mediator between man of God, the Man Christ Jesus. Here’s the Big difference between Christianity and other religions. Jesus said, ‘The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins.’ No religion can forgive sin – only Jesus …because of the Cross. The Bible also says ‘Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under Heaven given among men by which we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12), ‘For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus’ (1 Timothy 2:5). Do I believe they will go to Hell because of being a different religion? Only if they have broken the Commandments. If they are perfect in thought, word and deed on the Day of Judgment, they will be fine. If they have lied, stolen, lusted, fornicated, etc. they will be in big trouble – no matter how religious they are. The Bible says, ‘Whoever transgresses, and abides not in the doctrine of Christ, has not God.’ You preach tolerance of other religions, but do you practice that as well? Are you tolerant about Christianity? Are you tolerant of the claims of Christianity – that Jesus is the only way to God?”

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