Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this pur­pose I was born and for this pur­pose I have come into the world—to bear wit­ness to the truth. Every­one who is of the truth lis­tens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back out­side to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.” (John 18:37–38)

…nev­er­the­less the Jews want­ed to kill Jesus. Pilate gave in to them despite know­ing that in this moment a great injus­tice would take place.…

Who was this Jesus? What was his mes­sage? How did he live? Why was he killed? Why do we think that he can­not be placed along­side the most notable per­son­al­i­ties of the his­to­ry of mankind?

The basic facts of Jesus’ life and death are attest­ed to by renowned his­to­ri­ans of antiq­ui­ty such as Tac­i­tus¹, Flav­ius Jose­phus² and Sue­to­nius³.

What we real­ly know about Jesus though, is found in the Bible itself. We know that what is writ­ten about him in this book is true. Why? You can read the rea­sons for this in the arti­cle “The Cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Bible”.

Jesus was a Jew who act­ed pri­mar­i­ly among the Jew­ish pop­u­lous in Pales­tine.

Most of the peo­ple that Jesus came in con­tact with were deeply root­ed in the belief in the one and only God (monothe­ism).

Just as Jesus assumed this belief of his audi­ence, we shall also pre­sup­pose it as a base for read­ing this text. More gen­er­al thoughts about God’s exis­tence can be found in a sep­a­rate arti­cle.

Jesus’ own pub­lic act­ing and words are not the only tes­ti­mo­ny to his cred­i­bil­i­ty. Beyond that, it is con­firmed in the prophe­cies of the Jew­ish scrip­tures writ­ten long before him.

The Old Tes­ta­ment describes how long ago, God helped those who were upright in heart to recog­nise that he was the one true God. Found­ed on this recog­ni­tion, a nation was formed—the Israelites—who lat­er were called Jews. God revealed key aspects of his being and his will through his act­ing among them.

Many books of the Old Tes­ta­ment nev­er­the­less make clear that the real­i­sa­tions and expe­ri­ences of the Israelites through God’s act­ing in their his­to­ry are the foun­da­tion for a deep­er, more far-reach­ing rev­e­la­tion of God.

Jew­ish peo­ple led by God, the prophets, pro­claimed that God would one day enable one man to preach his will with all clar­i­ty (Deuteron­o­my 18:15–19). This man would gath­er and lead those from among the nation who want to do God’s will out of a sin­cere heart, just as a shep­herd gath­ers sheep that have scat­tered togeth­er and cares for the sick and weak ones (Ezekiel 34:11–31).

It was God’s will to make a new covenant with his nation. With his help they would be able to live for him and each oth­er out of thank­ful­ness and love—loving and help­ing each oth­er from their hearts (Jere­mi­ah 31:31–34).

The prophets knew very well that God’s elec­tion and spe­cial lead­ing of one par­tic­u­lar nation could only be tem­po­rary. It was the prepa­ra­tion for offer­ing all peo­ple of all nations the same chance at a rela­tion­ship with God. The prophet Isa­iah proph­e­sied that this chance would come through the one he called the “ser­vant of God” (Isa­iah 42:6, 49:5–6).

Through­out the course of his min­istry, Jesus clear­ly showed that the Old Tes­ta­ment ref­er­ences to the Shep­herd and Ser­vant of God found ful­fil­ment in him (Luke 4:14–22; John 5:37–47; 10:1–30). Many Jews did­n’t accept Jesus because they were hop­ing for some­one who would give them polit­i­cal free­dom. In con­trast to this, Jesus spoke of an inner freedom—the free­dom to love and do good inde­pen­dent­ly of what­ev­er sit­u­a­tion one faced, by the strength giv­en through the union with God.

Let us now look at Jesus’ life and teach­ing more specif­i­cal­ly:

Jesus grew up at the turn­ing point in his­to­ry, in Pales­tine. We know very lit­tle about the first 30 years of his life. Luke (a doc­tor who wrote one of the four gospels after hav­ing done exact research about what hap­pened) tells us of one brief inci­dent when Jesus was twelve. Even at this age, Jesus amazed the reli­gious Jew­ish teach­ers with his inter­est and ques­tions about faith and life with God. From the same author we know that Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his pub­lic min­istry.⁴

Jesus said that he came to call sin­ners to repen­tance.

Every­one knows that there is so much suf­fer­ing in the world because of love­less­ness, lies, hypocrisy, envy, greed and ego­tism. Every­one who tries to be good tries to find a way out of this for them­selves, and for those close to them.

Jesus showed the way out very clear­ly: Each one of us should take a crit­i­cal look at our­selves. God, the Cre­ator, laid his stan­dards, our con­science, with­in each of us. If we are ready to look for this stan­dard, it is easy to know what is good and bad in our lives. If how­ev­er, we act against this stan­dard of God, then this stan­dard becomes distorted—even to the point that we call what is bad good, and vice ver­sa. This is a fact in each of our lives: no one can claim to have always act­ed com­plete­ly right­eous­ly, upright­ly, truth­ful­ly and selflessly—to nev­er have had bad thoughts towards oth­ers or to have been indif­fer­ent towards them. Jesus was dif­fer­ent. He claimed that he always act­ed in love (in God’s will):

And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleas­ing to him. (John 8:29)

This meant that Jesus touched a sore spot, and clear­ly named the points where peo­ple act­ed against God’s stan­dards. He did this so that peo­ple can live in love, uni­ty and free­dom togeth­er. The reli­gious lead­ers of his day were espe­cial­ly hos­tile towards Jesus because of this. Even they, how­ev­er, could­n’t find any­thing to accuse him of in what he had preached:

But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you con­victs me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Who­ev­er is of God hears the words of God. The rea­son why you do not hear them is that you are not of God. (John 8:45–47)

Jesus can cor­rect the dis­tort­ed stan­dards of man, because he com­plete­ly ful­filled God’s stan­dards.

Jesus’ mes­sage con­sists most­ly of reminders of the val­ues and virtues that lie hid­den under the rub­ble of man’s sin, that is, man’s actions against the Cre­ators’ prin­ci­ples for life. Man has to clean up this rub­ble. As soon as he has the readi­ness to do this, then he becomes aware of the dam­age and guilt that is brought about by sin. This dam­age and guilt is caused towards two par­ties. On the one hand, the dam­age and guilt towards oth­er peo­ple should be made up for, as far as it is pos­si­ble. On the oth­er hand, all sin cre­ates guilt towards God, by rebelling against and dis­hon­our­ing the Cre­ator. This guilt can­not be made up for. Man has noth­ing that he could give for it, because every­thing is God’s. What he can do, is to admit his guilt, regret his sin, ask for for­give­ness, and do every­thing that is in his pow­er to imme­di­ate­ly change his actions. This is what is behind Jesus’ call to repen­tance.

This call is direct­ly con­nect­ed with the call to believe the gospel. The word gospel means “good news”. This good news, is God’s mes­sage about his love for mankind. God wants to restore us and lead us to a rela­tion­ship with him, and for­give the guilt which sep­a­rates mankind from him. When man gives up his rebel­lion and regrets his sin, God freely gives his grace. Jesus was sent as an unmis­tak­able sign of the grace and love of God.

Since we are God’s cre­ation, we need a rela­tion­ship with him, because we can only find a tru­ly mean­ing­ful life through a rela­tion­ship with our Cre­ator. Only through him can we expe­ri­ence for­give­ness for our sins and deep peace. We need God’s help in order to have ongo­ing strength to love and do what is good. Jesus com­pares this with the pic­ture of a vine and its branch­es. Only by being con­nect­ed with the vine can the branch­es bear fruit, oth­er­wise they with­er and die (John 15:1–8). God knows all the weak­ness­es of man. He does­n’t take away man’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to take steps to change, but he wants to grant man all pos­si­ble help in order to be able to take these steps.

Jesus embod­ied the love of God. His words and deeds gave hope and courage to those who, at that time, were con­sid­ered hope­less cas­es with no chance of help or change. He exposed the hypocrisy, love­less­ness and arro­gance of the reli­gious lead­ers. His aim in this was also that they too might be led to repen­tance, that is, to a change in their atti­tudes and their lives. He focus­es their atten­tion on the ancient com­mand­ment;

Jesus answered, “The most impor­tant is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The sec­ond is this: ‘You shall love your neigh­bour as your­self.’ There is no oth­er com­mand­ment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29–31)

God is love. He cre­at­ed us to love each oth­er, to have joy in life and to have fel­low­ship with our neigh­bour that is, with every­one. Who­ev­er decides for this love, knows that it is not about behav­ing accord­ing to rules and reg­u­la­tions. Out of the rela­tion­ship with God, and through the exam­ple of Jesus’ life, every­one can know what is right and good, and what is best for their neighbour—for them­selves and for all peo­ple. This is the good news that Jesus brought—the way out of the mire of suf­fer­ing, hope­less­ness, dis­ori­en­ta­tion, hate and death.

Now we come to the point of what things Jesus did that can­not be explained as hav­ing mere­ly been out of his human abil­i­ties. He said that his deeds tes­ti­fied to who he was. The peo­ple of that time heard his words and could see the amaz­ing mir­a­cles he did with their own eyes. They were Jews, and knew that it is by God’s act­ing alone that the blind are made to see and the lame to walk, the deaf could hear again, and even the dead were raised to life. These mir­a­cles were a clear rea­son why peo­ple could­n’t sim­ply pass by Jesus as they often do today. Jesus was just too spe­cial to ignore.

The claims he made were not those of one who sim­ply teach­es virtues to the nation. No oth­er per­son in his­to­ry caus­es more peo­ple to take sides, for or against him, than Jesus. This is because of the state­ments he made about him­self. Today if some­one were to claim to be the light of the world, the truth or the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, they would sim­ply be ridiculed and not tak­en seri­ous­ly.

In Jesus we find a very unique com­bi­na­tion: on the one hand, even when peo­ple look at his life today, they recog­nise that it shows moral truth in incom­pa­ra­ble per­fec­tion, and that his words and deeds reflect a most appeal­ing wisdom—sober and true to real­i­ty. On the oth­er hand, he claimed to be the light of the world, and to have com­plete uni­ty with God, ascrib­ing him­self with incom­pa­ra­ble author­i­ty.… This was why peo­ple’s reac­tions to him are either hot or cold. Who­ev­er remains indif­fer­ent to his words has­n’t under­stood them.

The Jew­ish lead­ers of his day, who did­n’t want to accept his claims thought they could solve the prob­lem by killing him. Jesus remained true to his words even through his vio­lent death because he knew it is the truth. Jesus’ life and just devo­tion pre­pared the way for those who want to fol­low him in the same way, and accept the real­i­ty about God and mankind.

The Bible calls on many eye-wit­ness­es in report­ing about Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion.⁵ Many that were with him before his death saw him again—talked with him, touched him and ate with him. We can believe the reports of the eye-wit­ness­es that he is alive. We expe­ri­ence his help in our dai­ly life. When we turn to him, he changes our life and gives us clar­i­ty and strength in what we should do. His res­ur­rec­tion shows us that evil does not have the vic­to­ry. God showed the world that the right­eous do not sim­ply die and dis­ap­pear. Jesus trust­ed and knew that God is just. This is true for all who believe in God through him. Death is not the end of the line, or a ter­ri­ble awak­en­ing. Who­ev­er fol­lows Jesus will live with God, even when they die.

Jesus is often put togeth­er in the same list as Mohammed and Islam and Bud­dha and Bud­dhism or Hin­duism.

We would like to sum­marise a few impor­tant thoughts about Islam:

In pur­suit of his aim to build a polit­i­cal nation of monothe­ists, Mohammed was pre­pared to use force. Jesus brought a com­plete­ly con­trast­ing view. Before his death, he made it clear to Pilate that his king­dom is not like any that can be brought about by force or human endeav­our. He said, “My king­dom is not of this world” (John 18:36). You can only belong to God’s king­dom by your own free deci­sion, and not by birth or force.

The Quran describes quite a few for­mal actions that are sup­posed to demon­strate respect for God, or that should lead one to have more respect for him. By con­trast, Jesus showed that love and sin­cere faith are what are most impor­tant and are not expressed through the keep­ing of for­mal reli­gious duties. Chris­tian­i­ty is about learn­ing to turn to oth­ers and love them as a result of the love received from God.

Jesus lived utter­ly truth­ful­ly to his own teach­ing. He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.“⁶ Mohammed nev­er claimed any­thing of the like about him­self, but rather con­demned any such state­ment as heresy. The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead shows that his words are truth. God does not sup­port a liar or a heretic.

Mohammed nev­er claimed to be infal­li­ble. He saw him­self as a prophet to lead peo­ple to monothe­is­tic faith. In Jesus how­ev­er, God him­self comes very close to us and shows us his great love and good will for us.

These are just a few rea­sons why we fol­low Jesus and not Mohammed.

East­ern reli­gions give us a pic­ture of dis­so­lu­tion of the soul rather than res­ur­rec­tion. Bud­dha taught that life is only suf­fer­ing. He saw the ori­gin of this as being the desires that cre­ate Kar­ma. Kar­ma, in turn, main­tains the cycle of rein­car­na­tion.⁷ Bud­dha saw this as tor­ture. In the west­ern world today how­ev­er, rein­car­na­tion is seen as anoth­er chance at life. For those who hold this view it is a sweet and tempt­ing thought—but one which can­not be found in Bud­dha’s teach­ing. For Bud­dha, the aim of all thought and action is to extin­guish the flame of life for rein­car­na­tion. The way to reach this is to renounce all demands on one­self, on oth­ers or life itself—to not want any­thing, but rather sink into a kind of divine calm­ness through med­i­ta­tion.⁸ In real­i­ty this means being indif­fer­ent. This was the enlight­en­ment that Bud­dha reached on his path of tri­al and error.

The fol­low­ing sto­ry is a clear exam­ple. It is an excerpt from the Bud­dha leg­end “Sangá­ma­ji Thera”, which is part of the Udá­na, from the Pali canon (ancient Bud­dhist texts from the 3rd to the 5th Cen­tu­ry BC). Here he calls on the hear­er to give up the will to live:

I have heard that on one occa­sion the Blessed One was stay­ing near Sāvatthī at Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. And on that occa­sion Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji had arrived in Sāvatthī to see the Blessed One. His for­mer wife heard, “Mas­ter Saṅgā­ma­ji, they say, has arrived in Sāvatthī.” Tak­ing her small child, she went to Jeta’s Grove. On that occa­sion Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji was sit­ting at the root of a tree for the day’s abid­ing. His for­mer wife went to him and, on arrival, said to him, “Look after me, contemplative—(a woman) with a lit­tle son.” When this was said, Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji remained silent. A sec­ond time…A third time, his for­mer wife said to him, “Look after me, contemplative—(a woman) with a lit­tle son.” A third time, Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji remained silent.

Then his for­mer wife, tak­ing the baby and leav­ing him in front of Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji, went away, say­ing, “That’s your son, con­tem­pla­tive. Look after him.”

Then Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji nei­ther looked at the child nor spoke to him. His wife, after going not far away, was look­ing back and saw Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji nei­ther look­ing at the child nor speak­ing to him. On see­ing this, the thought occurred to her, “The con­tem­pla­tive does­n’t even care about his son.” Return­ing from there and tak­ing the child, she left.

The Blessed One—with his divine eye, puri­fied and sur­pass­ing the human—saw Ven. Saṅgā­ma­ji’s for­mer wife mis­be­hav­ing in that way.

Then, on real­iz­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of that, the Blessed One on that occa­sion exclaimed:

At her com­ing,
he did­n’t delight;
at her leav­ing,
he did­n’t grieve.
A vic­tor in bat­tle,
freed from the tie:⁹
He’s what I call a brah­man.¹⁰

This guid­ing prin­ci­pal is inher­ent in clas­sic Bud­dhism. In the west­ern world, the most com­mon form of Bud­dhism is that of the lat­er peri­od of Tibetan Bud­dhism, which empha­sis­es social jus­tice or belief in gods, but the basic phi­los­o­phy behind it remains unchanged, even if it is some­what dis­guised.

In oppo­si­tion to the teach­ings of Jesus, Bud­dha saw the desires as the ori­gin of human life. The desires are the “builder of the house” and brought forth phys­i­cal life, which in Bud­dha’s eyes is suf­fer­ing.¹¹

The notion that life is noth­ing more than suf­fer­ing does not cor­re­spond with the very essence of life as we know it, and does­n’t match real­i­ty, even if there is a great deal of suf­fer­ing in the world. We expe­ri­ence the love, joy and peace that Jesus spoke about as a very real part of our lives. The long­ing to expe­ri­ence these things is not some­thing that should be extin­guished. Rather, we should try to find the source of true love, joy and peace. God gives us the desire for these things—burned indeli­bly into our hearts. We want to use our entire strength—our entire will—for help­ing oth­ers to expe­ri­ence the joy of a rela­tion­ship with God. We only have one life on earth. Its pur­pose is not that we suf­fer, nor that we run away from it, but rather, that we say “Yes” to God’s love for us.

The truth that Jesus gave tes­ti­mo­ny to is the real­i­ty as deter­mined by God. There is one God, the ori­gin of every­thing and yet him­self with­out ori­gin. He is the Cre­ator of all things. Thanks to him, we exist. God is per­fect­ly good, and because we are depen­dent on him, we can­not expect to find what is tru­ly good inde­pen­dent­ly from him or out­side of him. Our hap­pi­ness depends on hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with him.

Because God is love itself, he wants to have a rela­tion­ship with us, built in love. We are free to accept a rela­tion­ship with him, which means accept­ing the real­i­ty that we must ask him for what is good and right, and that only if we live accord­ing to his answers to us, will we be able to live with him after death. Jesus did­n’t only talk about how to live, but showed it through his own life, and offers help to all those who want to fol­low him in it.

The fruit of our lives (read more here: “Who We Are”) grows out of the love that Jesus had for peo­ple. Through him we came to under­stand who God is. We searched for his will and he gave us new life. His love changed us com­plete­ly. Just as a father cares that his child grows and matures, so also, God forms us. This means that in place of hope­less­ness, lack of sense in life, self­ish­ness, hate and lies, there is life in love, in uni­ty and upright­ness and expe­ri­enc­ing the pow­er of God that changes us. Through the rela­tion­ship with him, our life is giv­en mean­ing which does not end when we die, just as Jesus’ life did not end when he died. We are thank­ful to God for this, and want to express this thanks to him by devot­ing our life to him day by day.

If you are look­ing for the truth, don’t let your­self be con­fused by the uncount­able num­ber of denom­i­na­tions that come under the name of Chris­tian­i­ty. Take a clos­er look at the per­son of Jesus by read­ing one of the gospels in the Bible. We invite you to make con­tact with us too. Each one of us expe­ri­enced how much it helps to search togeth­er for the right way to under­stand the words of Jesus, to look at the back­ground and work out what parts refer to what times, and above all, to put what we under­stand into prac­tice.

1. Tac­i­tus, Annals (115–117 A.D.). ↩
2. Jose­phus Flav­ius (*37 A.D.), Antiq­ui­tates XVIII, 63f /3,3. ↩
3. Sue­to­nius, Vita Claudii 25,4 (120 A.D.). ↩
4. Luke 3:23. ↩
5. e.g. 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–9. ↩
6. John 14:6. ↩
7. See Buddha’s state­ments, e.g. Dhamma­pa­da 153, 154. ↩
8. See Buddha’s state­ments, e.g. Sam­ma-samád­hi (Right Con­cen­tra­tion). ↩
9. This line is a dou­ble word­play on Saṅgā­ma­ji’s name. Lit­er­al­ly, it means a vic­tor in battle—a com­pound of saṅgā­ma (bat­tle) and ‑ji (victor)—but the Bud­dha also extracts from the first mem­ber of the com­pound the word saṅgā, which means “from the tie”. Strict­ly speak­ing, saṅgā­ma and saṅgā are not relat­ed to each oth­er. The abil­i­ty to engage in word­play using unre­lat­ed words like this was con­sid­ered a sign of intel­li­gence and wit. ↩
10. Source: accesstoin­sight. ↩
11. See again Dhamma­pa­da 153, 154. ↩