Jesus Christ and the Orthodox Church

Jesus Christ and the Orthodox Church
By George Kutulas

 

 

WHO WAS JESUS CHRIST?

HE SAID:

• that He had the authority to forgive people’s sins (which all Jews knew that only God had the  authority to do);
  

• that, even though He was a pious Jew, He was exempt from keeping the Jewish Sabbath just as God was exempt from keeping the Sabbath;
  

• that whoever saw Him thereby also saw God;
  

• that He was one with God;
  

• that He eternally existed as the divine I Am, and that He was alive many hundreds of years  before His ancestors were even born;
  

• that He would come at the end of the world and would judge every person who had ever lived on  the basis of whether or not they obeyed and confessed Him as Lord;
  

• that He was not from the earth, from below, but from Above.
  

WHAT CAN ONE SAY about  a  person who would say about himself things like these?
Well…To quote a contemporary writer (C.S. Lewis):

 “Anyone who were merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not merely be a great human teacher.  He would either be a lunatic — on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell.  You must make your choice.  Either this man was and is the Son of God:  or else He is a madman or something worse.”

ORTHODOX CHRISTIANS are those people who cannot believe that the Man who gave us the Sermon on the Mount is a lunatic.  They cannot believe that the one who showed so much mercy and love could be the Evil One.  They therefore believe that He was who He said He was:  The Son of God, risen from the dead.

WHAT IS THE
ORTHODOX 
CHURCH?

It is the original Church That Jesus Christ founded. It flourished in the ancient Roman world and survives to this day. Since those early days, the
Western 
Church has taken a different course and many, many churches and denominations have come and gone. But Christ did not establish denominations...He gave us the Church!  This is the Orthodox Church of Jesus Christ! 

Especially since the 20th century, many of its members have found themselves in the West.  When they came from
Greece or
Russia or the middle East, they brought their Faith in Christ with them.

Thus, the Orthodox church (whether called the “Greek Orthodox Church” or the “Russian Orthodox church” or merely the “Eastern Church”) is the one, original, ancient
church of
Jesus Christ as it has survived and developed throughout the centuries.

WHY THE CHURCH?

“After all,” some would say, “can’t you believe that Jesus is the Son of God without going to Church?”

Yes:  you can believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God without going to worship;

But No:  you cannot fully obey Christ and ignore the Church He founded.

For Christ came not only to die on the Cross for our sins and to rise again to give us new life;  He also came to build His Church — and He promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matthew 16).

He promised that when his believers gathered together as His church, He would be there in the midst of them to give them His forgiveness and new life.

SO...Christ commands His believers to meet together as His Church and throughout the centuries His believers have done so.  We have the opportunity today to join this Church and know Christ’s presence in our midst.

WELCOME HOME!