Hi,
I would like to know a few things please,, why are there statues in a church? Isn't that idolatry?
Not all churches have statues. But most of the traditional churches use images. This isn't idolatry, because we don't worship the images. There's a lot of history and theology that would need to be unpacked to discuss the differences between Western iconography and Eastern iconography.
The purpose for images is many, but some of the reasons include that they are tools for teaching the faith. So images of biblical stories help illustrate important lessons and teachings that we read and hear in Scripture. Images also draw us to contemplate the deep truths of our faith, such as that God became man in Jesus--hence images of Jesus. Images of the saints remind us of their lives and examples of the faith they had, as well as our own hope of life with God beyond this mortal life.
Also, how many times a day does a Christian worship Jesus?
Since we believe that Jesus is Himself truly and very God, we worship Him all the time. We worship God throughout the day and in many different ways. There are a lot of different ways, both in private devotion and in public worship that we worship God. Through our prayers, reading of the Scriptures, different devotional tools and practices such as prayer ropes or rosaries in some traditions, or something like the Daily Office which is a way for Christians to pray the hours, a practice that ultimately goes back to Jewish practice of praying at certain times of the day. We also seek to live our lives as a worship of God, by devoting ourselves to service and love of others.
Why the name is Jesus Christ, is that out of respect?
It's shorthand for "Jesus the Christ" that is, "Jesus the Messiah". In the Greek text of the New Testament it is Ἰησοῦς Χριστός (Iesous Christos), and it simply means "Jesus the Anointed". In Greek
christos is a translation of the Hebrew
meshiach, meaning "anointed", rather literally, as
christos is related the Greek verb
chrio, meaning "to smear with oil". In the ancient history of Israel kings, priests, and other important figures literally had oil applied to them signifying their status and importance. And so the term that came to be used to describe the hope and promise that, one day, someone from the lineage of King David would be the redeemer of Israel and all the nations, the term chosen was
ha-meshiach, "the anointed one", in English
meshiach becomes "messiah".
Christians believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the One promised to come from David's line. And so we call Him Jesus the Messiah, Jesus
Christ. And He is our Lord, our Master, our Teacher, our King, and our God.
If you say God Almighty does that imply Jesus too, or do you direct worship to Jesus as God Almighty. What about the Holy Father then?
In our confessions of faith we profess our faith that we "worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confusing the Persons, nor dividing the Substance". We believe that God is a Trinity of Persons. Now, that is often very confusing for those outside of the Christian religion, because the word "person" can be a little misleading.
We believe that there are Three co-equal, co-eternal, and con-substantial "Persons", that is, Someones, they are distinct, but not separate. That is, the Father is not the Son, and the Father and Son are not the Holy Spirit; but that each is truly, actually, and fully God. Not a god,
but the one and only God.
So Jesus is God because He is the Son of the Father. We say that He is "eternally begotten" of the Father, because we are not saying that at some point in time God literally sired a child, but that there is a relationship here that transcends our ability to truly comprehend. God never became a father, God never became a son; rather there has always been Father and Son, without beginning. The Son is God because His Father is God, and what One is the Other is also--without any division or separation. Meaning, they are the same God, the same
Being. Likewise, we say that the Holy Spirit is God, because He "eternally proceeds" from the Father (and the Son).
An entire, very long discussion itself could be had on this subject, as the doctrine of the Trinity is arguably the most complicated teachings in the Christian religion and there's a lot of misinformation out there that only makes people more confused.
So the short of it is: We worship the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit as one Eternal and Almighty God, there is none like Him. We don't worship three gods, but one God.
In Christianity what will happen when Jesus is resurrected? What I know is that he will return to this earth..
We believe He already rose from the dead. He was arrested, tried, and crucified, buried, and rose three days later. After He rose from the dead He ascended, and now reigns in heaven as King and Lord over all. When He returns in glory as judge of the living and the dead, the dead are raised, there is the Last Judgment, and then God makes all things new. The eternal life in the Age to Come.
I research a bit about Christianity and only raises more questions, I would rather not know the answers for, but find the need to. The book of John is not so easy to understand.
Thank you
The Gospel of John is the most difficult of the four Gospels, because it's not like the other three. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the "Synoptic Gospels" because they are all very similar to one another. John, however, is completely different. The Gospel of John is, in a lot of ways, a theological treatise about the Incarnation--that Jesus is God made flesh, and that Jesus is God's own Revelation of Himself. That is what is meant in the beginning of the text where it says "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The Word here in Greek is Logos, the Divine Word and Reason that holds the universe together.
The ancient Greek philosophers used the idea of "the logos" to describe the divine reason which makes the cosmos exist, this idea was also taken by some Greek Jews such as the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria to bridge the gap between Greek thought and Jewish thought. Early Christianity, borne within the two worlds of Judaism and the Greco-Roman world often employs and speaks from within both Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts because that is the world of the earliest Christians.
And so the earliest Christians spoke of Jesus as the very Logos of God, the Divine Word, God Himself, That which holds all things together and by which all things came into existence. This is who Jesus is. And so in the Gospel of John Jesus is understood as God's Word become a human being:
God in the flesh. And thus Jesus is, in Himself, the very Revelation of God.
Which means in Christianity we do not believe that God's chief revelation of Himself is a written work, a book, a text, a message, or something spoken or written by a prophet. We believe that God's chief revelation of Himself is a flesh-and-blood human person, Jesus Christ. We come to know God through Jesus, because Jesus is God Himself in the flesh. That is why, later in John's Gospel, Jesus says, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father" and "If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” and so on and so forth. Jesus Christ is the "image of the invisible God".
-CryptoLutheran
