Faith

To truly believe in God is to have faith. To follow God requires faith. In order to pick up our crosses and follow Christ, we must have faith in God to direct our paths. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews states, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,” and “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11:1 and 11:6). Take special notice in the second verse, that he who comes to God must believe that He is—how can we please God if we cannot even acknowledge His existence? How can someone begin a relationship with something they do not believe is real?

1. Evidence supports Jesus Christ’s existence.

For starters, there is a monumental amount of evidence supporting the reality of Jesus Christ. At the base and foundation of all evidence, the Bible directly proclaims the truth about Jesus. The four primary sources directly supporting Jesus’s existence—the four gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—all provide first-hand accounts of the reality of Christ by people who were in direct contact with Him. Each gospel writes on Christ’s death and resurrection, but each one also delves into the person of Jesus and what He was like. There are also a myriad of secular sources that mention Jesus. An example of this can be found in Flavius Josephus’s writings—who lived around 47-100 AD—in Antiquities, which makes reference to Jesus in Book XX, writing: “and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews – Book XX, 93 AD).

Tacitus also makes mention of Christians and Christ in his writings of “Annals,” a history of the Roman Empire from the reign of Tiberius to Nero during the years 14-68 AD. In his writings, Tacitus accounts of the crucifixion of Christ by Pontius Pilate (Pilatus):

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popu