The most important thing for us to do in life is to come to know God. We must use every means possible to do this. God likewise used every means possible to help us come to know him: He sent his Son among us as a human and allowed him to die on a cross. What means beyond this could God have used?

Because God's working among us was so wonderful, it is possible for us to get stuck on the human experience of Jesus. We can get stuck on the Jesus of History: He can be friend, brother, and model of goodness to us. We can forget that Jesus is more than we see. Maybe Jesus is like a plainclothesman for God. But we can often get caught by a plainclothesman. We don't recognize that he or she is more than meets the eye. The Jesus of History was truly the Christ of Faith-the Messiah of God, the one sent for salvation in this world.

Great a-ha moments occurred when people realized that the Jesus of History with whom they walked and ate was at the same time the Messiah sent by God. We call him the Christ of Faith. Obviously not all people were able to make this transition. John in the prologue of his Gospel says, "He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him" (John 1:10-11).

You may know many things about Jesus, and this is good and as it should be. But what do you believe about Jesus? What about Jesus do you believe and live by that only faith, not reason and not merely history, makes available to you? It is on these latter matters that salvation depends.

© Harcourt Religion Publishers/BROWN-ROA