Why Is Jesus Important?

My to-do list is really long every day. So, when you tell me something is important, I kinda snicker. I know you can relate. Young professional women are b.u.s.y.

You are here wanting to know more about the person Jesus Christ, and I think a great question to ask yourself is, "Why is Jesus important?" If Jesus is not important, we should move on down our to-do list. I can assure you that Jesus is important in general, and He is important to your life right now.

Why is Jesus important? For starters, Jesus claimed to be God (John 10:30). So, you and I have a choice to make based on what Jesus said about himself. Jesus is either a crazy person who thought He was God, or He is a liar and knew He wasn’t God but still told His followers that He was, or Jesus was right and He is God. Those are our options.

Unfortunately, Jesus’ claims to be God cannot be accepted as wise teaching from some sort of prophet or moral leader because if Jesus is not God, like He said He was, He would be a horrible prophet, as their profession is to speak the truth. And He certainly can’t be a good moral teacher if He is not God. What kind of moral teacher lies about being God and causes thousands to risk their lives on His behalf for something that was not true?

Jesus was either crazy, a liar, or He IS God. I believe Jesus is exactly who He claimed to be because He was able to back up His claims with eyewitnesses of His miracles.

Now, if Jesus is who He said He is then that makes Him pretty stinking important.

So, that’s one reason why Jesus is important. Jesus is God.

Second, Jesus is the only way to spend your afterlife with God. You and I are broken, and we live in a broken environment. The world is not as it should be. Even when we try to be good people and do good things, we never attain perfection. That’s because we have this natural inclination to things that displease God. We are broken, and the system is broken.

The Bible affirms what we know to be true; we are broken (Romans 3:23). If you have any doubt whether you are broken or not, ask your last roommate. The Bible also affirms that God is perfect, and thus we can’t have a relationship with God because our brokenness is incompatible with His perfection. But thank goodness God doesn’t leave us to our brokenness. God sent Jesus to repair our brokenness and our broken relationship with God (John 3:16). In coming to earth, Jesus added full humanity to His deity. He lived a perfect life and, through His death on the cross as our substitute, He provided for the forgiveness of our sins and then through His resurrection from the dead. Jesus repairs our brokenness. Jesus was perfect, and His death paid the penalty for our sins, and now we can have communion with God in a relationship, and this relationship will last forever (Romans 5:6-8). When we accept this truth and believe it, we are healed by Jesus and can know we have an eternal life with God (Romans 10:9).

Jesus is the only way to spend your afterlife with God; the only way. (John 14:6). Because Jesus is alive, He promises us that we will be raised from the dead, too (1 Corinthians 15:22). This should make Jesus important to you.

I rarely think about what will happen after I die. Honestly, I just have too much to worry about this week. The farthest I think into the future is, like, 5 years. But if there is an afterlife, and there is only one way to spend it with God, maybe you and I should be thinking more critically about the afterlife.

If there is an afterlife and only one way to get there, and that one way is through Jesus Christ, that would mean Jesus is important, and He is important to you.