Now when they heard about Jesus they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apos­tles,

“What shall we do?”

(Quot­ed from Acts 2:37)

In the year A.D. 30 many Jews and God-fear­ing Gen­tiles who had gath­ered in Jerusalem for the Jew­ish feast of Pen­te­cost asked this ques­tion after hear­ing Peter speak to the crowds about Jesus. We also asked our­selves this very same ques­tion, as does every­one who thinks more deeply about the sense of life, regard­less of whether they are an athe­ist, a Bud­dhist or a Catholic.

We have come from a wide range of back­grounds, reli­gious and non-reli­gious, but we have all come to realise that the many dif­fer­ent paths avail­able do not lead to one and the same des­ti­na­tion. There are so many ways out there to choose from—so many peo­ple offer­ing answers; Protes­tants, Catholics, Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es, Adven­tists, Methodists, Pen­te­costals, Bud­dhists, Mus­lims, athe­ists,…. The ques­tion is:

What Is the Right Way? What Is Truth?

The answer you often hear is, “Every­body has his own truth”, or, “No one can real­ly know it.” In our opin­ion, such state­ments con­tra­dict the fact that there is an objec­tive real­i­ty. Either the earth is round or it is flat. It can­not be both. The one real­i­ty remains absolute and unchanged regard­less of the way you look at it. It is the same with reli­gious ques­tions. When it comes down to it, it is not pos­si­ble for two oppos­ing and con­tra­dic­to­ry alter­na­tives to exist simultaneously—one for you and one for me. If the real­i­ty is that there is a res­ur­rec­tion after death, then there can­not be rein­car­na­tion. You can­not have both eter­nal life after death and the anni­hi­la­tion of the soul. If mat­ter was cre­at­ed by God it can­not have exist­ed from eter­ni­ty. Or let us con­sid­er some oth­er ques­tions to which con­tra­dic­to­ry answers can­not both be right: Is Jesus God, or is he not? Does God pre­des­tine peo­ple to con­dem­na­tion, or does He give them free will? Can a Chris­t­ian fall away from God, or is he “once saved, always saved”? Is man sin­ful by nature, or is he not? Does hell exist, or does it not?

Ques­tions like these ought to inspire every­one who wants to get to know God’s nature to form an opin­ion. Can we remain indif­fer­ent when faced with these ques­tions if we are inter­est­ed in find­ing out how to live accord­ing to God’s will?

To find answers to these ques­tions we do not think that we need a new rev­e­la­tion, or some kind of new spe­cial method of inter­pret­ing the Bible. Nor do we think that we are the source of the truth—we are very aware of our imper­fec­tions and humbly accept our limitations—but we believe that truth is acces­si­ble, because Jesus revealed it to mankind.

The major­i­ty of peo­ple hold the opin­ion that there is no absolute truth. In our soci­ety, the view that the truth is rel­a­tive is the pre­dom­i­nat­ing ide­ol­o­gy. Many peo­ple have become accus­tomed to this stream of thought and think that one’s idea of truth is rel­a­tive and has no valid­i­ty for oth­ers: “What seems good to me is what is right for me!” How­ev­er, if every­thing has the same valid­i­ty, then in the end noth­ing mat­ters. The stan­dard accord­ing to which good and bad, right and wrong are mea­sured is com­plete­ly miss­ing. Every­one can find some­thing to suit his own per­son­al taste and needs. Peo­ple paint their own pic­ture of heav­en, choos­ing the colours from a palette of their own desires and wish­es, cre­at­ing their own reli­gion, which seems to fit well enough for the time being…. In fact, reli­gion is wide­ly treat­ed as yet anoth­er branch of the arts, like the world of fash­ion in which peo­ple shape trends and trends, in turn, shape peo­ple. How­ev­er, God’s way is dif­fer­ent….

How Does God Want Me to Use My Life?

In God’s eyes every per­son who does not seek the truth is enslaved. But Jesus wants to deliv­er us from slavery—it is up to us to accept his offer.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are tru­ly my dis­ci­ples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31–32)

The truth will set us free—this means that we need to see the truth about our­selves, we need to realise and con­fess our sin­ful­ness, and accept that we need God’s for­give­ness through Jesus, as Peter said:

Repent and be bap­tized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the for­give­ness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spir­it. (Acts 2:38)

Then He can give us the pow­er to give up our sins and live a holy life, then He can give us the strength to devote our whole life to serve Him. Jesus wants to redeem us, He wants to set us free from self­ish desires and sex­u­al sins, from van­i­ty and envy, from the feel­ing of infe­ri­or­i­ty and pride, from arro­gance and the urge to win the favour of oth­er peo­ple.

Jesus also wants to set us free from all kinds of decep­tive teach­ings which lead peo­ple to con­cen­trate on them­selves even more in the effort to save them­selves. But He also wants to set us free from wrong ideas which peo­ple call Chris­tian­i­ty, where peo­ple devote vast amounts of time and ener­gy to the cause of social jus­tice but neglect the spir­i­tu­al fight against sin.

Jesus wants to free us from teach­ings which pro­vide an assur­ance of God’s for­give­ness but for­get that dis­ci­ple­ship is all about fol­low­ing Jesus. He wants to lib­er­ate us from doc­trines which promise God’s grace, but renounce obe­di­ence as legal­is­tic. For this rea­son we seek the truth, search­ing for God’s will in both our lives and teach­ing.

This search for God’s will led us to the ques­tion:

What Should a Christian Community Be Like?

The com­mu­ni­ty of Chris­tians in Jerusalem that formed after the apos­tles’ preach­ing is described in Acts 2:

They were con­tin­u­al­ly devot­ing them­selves to the apos­tles’ teach­ing and to fel­low­ship, to the break­ing of bread and to prayer…. Day by day con­tin­u­ing with one mind in the tem­ple, and break­ing bread from house to house, they were tak­ing their meals togeth­er with glad­ness and sin­cer­i­ty of heart…. (Acts 2:42 and 46, NASB)

For Chris­tians in that time it was nat­ur­al to come togeth­er for fel­low­ship and to deal with the teach­ing every day. Their com­mon life bore wit­ness to their great inter­est in, and love for God and their broth­ers and sis­ters. We, too, have this sin­cere desire to share our lives with our sis­ters and broth­ers in faith, to read the Bible togeth­er, and to take part in each other’s joys, sor­rows and spir­i­tu­al fights. We are very thank­ful that we can live in a time when good trans­port and con­ve­nient work­ing hours make dai­ly com­mu­ni­ty pos­si­ble. For us, dai­ly com­mu­ni­ty is an expres­sion of love and a result of the wish to live out what we believe, to devote our time to God and to our broth­ers and sis­ters in faith. We use our time for the things that are impor­tant for us.

If any­one says, “I love God”, and hates his broth­er, he is a liar; for he who does not love his broth­er whom he has seen can­not love God whom he has not seen. And this com­mand­ment we have from him: who­ev­er loves God must also love his broth­er. (1 John 4:20–21)

This vibrant, com­mit­ted fel­low­ship is of great val­ue in help­ing us to strength­en one anoth­er in our strug­gles and prac­tice the prin­ci­ple expressed in the Bible:

But exhort one anoth­er every day, as long as it is called “today”, that none of you may be hard­ened by the deceit­ful­ness of sin.(Hebrews 3:13)

We do not want to build super­fi­cial rela­tion­ships or show a good front to one anoth­er and by doing so avoid reveal­ing the real­i­ty about our­selves. Instead, we con­fess our sins and weak­ness­es to one anoth­er in order to help one anoth­er in the fight for holi­ness, fol­low­ing the exam­ple of Jesus.

A new com­mand­ment I give to you, that you love one anoth­er: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one anoth­er. (John 13:34)

This is the kind of love we want to live—not just on Sun­days or at cel­e­bra­tions but every day alike; not only with par­tic­u­lar friends but with any­one who wants to live in the truth.