Module 2: The New Covenant - What God did About it
To put right our disobedience of his Laws, God needed someone who was sinless and there was no-one that good, so God came himself in the human form we know as ‘Jesus Christ’.
Jesus had to act on our behalf, so he had to be like us in every way. As a result, he was born in human form as a baby.
Just as his birth was due, his mother had to go to the home town of her ancestors
(Bethlehem) to be counted in a census. The town was crowded with similar visitors, so all the inns were full; consequently Jesus was born in the outhouse of an inn – a stable.
Shortly after his birth Jesus was declared a king by 3 visiting ‘wise men’ so the local king at that time
(called Herod) felt threatened and killed all boy babies to avoid a competitor, but Jesus and his family escaped to Egypt as refugees until Herod died so the threat was removed.
On their return from Egypt, the child Jesus grew up in the town of Nazareth where Joseph
(his Mother Mary’s husband) was a carpenter. When he was about 30 he began his ministry – first being baptised
(‘Christened’) for the forgiveness of sins before going off into the wilderness to work out what he had to do and how to do it.
Jesus began his ministry by selecting 12 ordinary men as followers to be trained as Apostles
(means ‘one sent out with a message’); then went about teaching people how to interpret God’s Laws correctly and healing people in miraculous ways, which in hindsight shows us he was God as no-one can do what he did.
His teaching annoyed the established leaders who were not revealing God properly, so after 3 years they contrived to have him executed to get rid of him. After a sham trial he was condemned to death on a cross as a common criminal.
At his Last Supper with his Apostles, shortly before he was arrested, he gave us a new agreement, a ‘New Covenant’, that he will speak up for us in defence of our sins if we at least try to obey the Commandments by loving God and our neighbour as ourself.
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