The world as we know it has been created by a single Spiritual Power, commonly referred to as God. This Spiritual Power relates to human beings as Person. The revelation of God to the Israelites and Jews was of a One who could not be manipulated by human beings, but who instead initiated a history of encounter with human beings intended for their deliverance from what oppressed them. The record of this dialogue between God and the people Israel, or the testimony to it, is found in what Christians refer to as the Old Testament.
God has come into the world in the human person, Jesus of Nazareth (born, as is supposed around 5 B.C.). In Jesus, God has provided the way for peoples of the whole world to find relationship with God as God's children, in communion with the one known as the Son of God. Paradoxically, God has done this through the death of Jesus (he endured the Roman execution of crucifixion), and also through a resurrection, which, so far, has neither precedent nor sequel. Through faith in God, as revealed in Jesus Christ (in other words, through acknowledging as true God's loving initiative towards human beings in Jesus Christ), people receive renewed relationship with God. They experience this renewed relationship, this communion with God, as God's forgiveness of their sins, or of those things which mark their separation and alienation from God. This forgiveness, they believe, has been accomplished through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus' death. They experience renewed relationship with God also as new life in God's Spirit, and as the first instalment of God's eternal life. Testimony to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is presented in the New Testament of the Bible.
Through faith or response to the truth or reality of what God has done for human beings in Jesus Christ, a community of faith is brought into being. It is known as the Church. Its purpose is to be Christ's Body in the world, sharing God's love in Christ, until God's purposes for the world are complete and until all that is inimical to God is overcome. Followers of Christ have hope in resurrection, when the true Lord of our lives will be seen to have supplanted death's limited dominion.
