Why do I believe?

Some scientists have suggested that life could have arisen on Earth from a "prebiotic soup", a theoretical pool of all the chemicals that make up a living cell. However, there is no positive evidence that such a "soup" ever existed ^[8].

If the prebiotic soup had existed it would have had to contain a large amount of nitrogen because amino acids are nitrogenous. However, the earliest sediments of Earth are not nitrogen rich as would be expected if a prebiotic soup had existed in any large quantity. Sediments with large deposits of nitrogen have never been found ^[8].

Further, even if the prebiotic soup had existed, it would have caused any amino acids in it to quickly react with the other chemicals present and form substances not conducive to the creation of life ^[8].

In 1952, Stanley Miller performed an experiment in which he formed amino acids by shooting electricity through a mixture of gases that his doctoral advisor, Harold Urey, thought was similar to the atmosphere of primitive Earth^[2]. Proteins, which are vital to the function of a living cell, are made from specific types of amino acids. This experiment is thought to demonstrate how life could have been spontaneously created from non-living matter.

However, there are a couple of aspects of the Miller-Urey experiment that make it an unlikely explanation for the origin of life.

First, it is now thought that Earth's early atmosphere probably contained much less hydrogen than Miller and Urey assumed. The same experiment performed on a more realistic atmosphere results in chemicals such as formaldehyde and cyanide, substances unlikely to form biological material in an unguided process ^[2].

Second, even if the experiment were a credible success, going from amino acid to protein to living cell is absurdly unlikely in an undirected process ^[2]. No scientist has ever been able to create a living cell, even in a carefully contrived and directed environment containing all of the necessary substances and none of the harmful ones. So, how likely is it that a living cell would form on its own by chance in less-than-ideal conditions with no intelligent intervention?

Another oft-heard proposal for how life could have emerged naturally is that it just happened by random chance. In other words, even though the probability is very small, it can still happen over an extremely large period of time.

The truth is that the odds of life emerging by chance are so incomprehensibly small that no scientist proposes this as a sufficient explanation for the origin of life anymore. Microfossils have been used to estimate that the time between the Earth cooling to the point it could support life and the time life first appeared was only about 400 million years. Even under absurdly optimized conditions this is nowhere near enough time for even a single protein molecule to form by chance, much less a complete single-celled organism ^[13].

Why is it so unlikely for a protein molecule to form by chance? A protein molecule has a minimum number of amino acids it must have in order for it to function in an organism, all of these amino acids must be "left-handed" (the only one of the two possible varieties of amino acids found in living beings), and they all must be assembled in the correct order. All of this together makes the probability of forming even a single protein molecule by chance prohibitively small, let alone the at least 300 proteins required by a simple living cell ^[8].

It has also been suggested that self-ordering tendencies in the form of bonding affinities could explain the natural formation of life, similar to the properties of salt that cause it to form crystals when a saturated salt solution evaporates.

However, amino acids don't have any significant bonding affinities amongst themselves, and the slight ones they do have don't correspond to any of the known sequence patterns in working proteins. So, the formation of amino acids into proteins can't be explained by self-organization ^[8].

Additionally, the four chemical "letters" (the bases adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine), whose sequence in DNA tells a cell how to construct amino acids, don't have any bonding or attraction among themselves that causes them to be arranged in the necessary order. They only bond with the sugar and phosphate molecules that make up the two "backbones" of the DNA chain, and each base is equally capable of bonding to any point in the chain ^[8].

Even if there were bonding affinities among amino acids or the DNA bases, they would be unlikely to adequately explain the vast amount of information found in living beings. Naturally occurring self-ordering tendencies tend to result in short and repetitive patterns rather than complex and varied sequences like those found in DNA ^[13].

The fossil record presents a challenge to the theory of gradual descent from a common ancestor due to a period known as the Cambrian explosion that scientists believe occurred about 540 million years ago. The Cambrian explosion is so named because the fossils from this period show most of the major animal phyla alive today appearing over a period of time that is very abrupt compared with the rest of Earth's history^[2]. Contrary to the tree model predicted by gradual descent, the Cambrian explosion exhibits a "top down" pattern in that all the "major differences in form and body plans appear first" without any transitional forms, and then smaller variations on these forms appear later^[8].

One proposed explanation for this sudden appearance of phyla in the fossil record is that the bodies of pre-Cambrian organisms were too soft to form fossils. However, this is an unlikely explanation given that fossils of soft-bodied creatures have been found both from before and during the Cambrian explosion^[2].

From the biological information perspective, the Cambrian explosion is an issue in that it requires an explanation for how all of the new DNA information involved suddenly appeared rather than gradually arising through mutation and natural selection. Some scientists believe that DNA mutation and natural selection are insufficient to explain the appearance of "new biological forms" because DNA does not contain all of the information needed for creating different kinds of cells, tissues, and organs and placing them in the right spot at the right time during embryonic development. This means a tremendous amount of new information would have to have suddenly appeared in all the right places for the Cambrian explosion to occur^[8].

The concept of "irreducible complexity" in biological systems is one of the more significant challenges to the idea of gradual descent from a common ancestor. An irreducibly complex system consists of multiple components that interact to perform a specific task, with each component being vital to the successful completion of that task.

According to Charles Darwin, "if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.^[34]" While it is perhaps unlikely that anyone will ever be able to prove that they "could not possibly have been formed" by evolution, irreducibly complex systems in organisms do exist, and so far scientists have been unable to come up with satisfactory evolutionary explanations for how they were assembled^[7]. Some examples of irreducibly complex biological systems include cilia, bacterial flagella, and the blood clotting process.

Cilia, hairs on the outside of some cells used for propulsion or for movement of outside substances, are composed of microtubules, nexin linkers, and motor proteins (dynein). The complete removal of any of these causes cilia to fail^[7].

Flagella are propeller-like systems used by many bacteria cells for movement. A functional flagellum requires 30 to 35 proteins that make up at least three parts: a paddle, rotor, and motor. The absence of any one of these parts completely disables the flagellum^[7].

Blood clotting is accomplished via "a highly choreographed cascade of ten steps that use about 20 different molecular components," a delicate process that, if not done in the right place, time, and quantity, can be fatal (e.g. clotting in the brain). Without the whole system in place, an animal would either bleed to death or die from clots forming in inappropriate places. It is unlikely that blood clotting could have formed via a gradual process using natural selection because an animal with a partially-completed blood clotting system would either bleed to death or die of improperly regulated clotting, thereby actually eliminating that animal naturally rather than selecting it ^[7].

DNA contains the genetic information necessary for creating all of the proteins used by the organism to which it belongs, and this information is accessed and utilized by a specific cellular process. To explain the origin of life, one must explain the origin of this information^[8].

"Information" in DNA refers to the specific linear sequences of four chemicals commonly referred to as "bases": adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. These sequences provide the cell with the specific patterns needed to construct all of the different types of proteins used by the organism. This is comparable to the way specific sequences of letters in the alphabet convey information by forming different words^[8].

There is a tremendous amount of this information stored in DNA. Just one type of protein is built using a specific sequence of anywhere from 1200 to 2000 of the DNA bases ^[8], and the DNA found in a single human cell contains more information than the entirety of the Encyclopaedia Britannica^[13].

When we find sequential information that corresponds with a "functional requirement" (an independent specification for interpreting the meaning of the sequence) in any other context, we automatically and reasonably assume that it came from an intelligent source; why not do the same with DNA?^[8]

"Information is not something derived from material properties; in a sense, it transcends matter and energy. Naturalistic theories that rely solely on matter and energy are not going to be able to account for information. Only intelligence can…. we know [information we interact with daily] invariably comes from intelligent agents. So what do we make of the fact that there's information in life? What do we make of the fact that DNA stores far more information in a smaller space than the most advanced supercomputer on the planet?"^[8]

The Big Bang theory supports the idea of a creator in that it states that our universe (energy, matter, space, and time) all had a beginning, implying the need for a cause that exists outside of these domains^[3]. While initially met with skepticism and distrust, the Big Bang theory has been consistently validated by supporting scientific predictions and discoveries.

In 1915 when Albert Einstein developed the theory of general relativity, he discovered that it predicted that the universe is either expanding or contracting. In the 1920's Alexander Friedman and George Lemaître developed models that predicted the universe is expanding, leading to the conclusion that going back in time, it had a point of origin—this is when the theory was mockingly christened "The Big Bang" by astronomer Fred Hoyle. These models were supported in 1929 by Edwin Hubble's discovery that distant galaxies appear more red than they ought, indicating that they are moving away from us at very high speeds. In 1940, George Gamow deduced that if the Big Bang model's prediction of a highly dense initial universe were true, then currently the background temperature of the universe should be just slightly above absolute zero, and it was discovered in 1965 that this background temperature is indeed a mere 3.7 degrees above absolute zero. Finally, while we know that heavier elements such as iron are formed inside of stars, the formation of lighter elements such as helium require much, much hotter temperatures than are present even in the center of stars, suggesting that these elements must have been formed in the extremely high temperatures predicted to exist at the start of the Big Bang^[4].

The fine-tuning of the universe suggests that an intelligent creator was its cause. The "fine-tuning of the universe" refers to "the extraordinary balancing of the fundamental laws and parameters of physics and the initial conditions of the universe," which has enabled our universe to support life. There are a wide variety of these parameters that, if changed only slightly, would result in a universe incapable of sustaining life^[5]

One such parameter is the difference in mass between protons and neutrons. If the mass of the neutron were 1/700 larger, nuclear fusion in stars would not be possible, meaning they could not exist. Without stars, there is no source of energy for a life-sustaining planet^[5].

Another has to do with the way hydrogen is converted to helium. As part of this process, 0.007 (seven thousandths) of the mass of the hydrogen is converted to energy. If this number were 0.006, then the transformation couldn't take place at all and the universe would consist solely of hydrogen. If it were 0.008, then the universe would have run out of hydrogen long ago^[35].

It is also very likely that the initial conditions of the universe were very fine-tuned. Many scientists subscribe to inflation theory, which states that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was extremely high and then slowed later, and which conveniently avoids the highly-specialized initial conditions required by the standard, non-inflationary model of the Big Bang by pushing them "beyond the range of what we can observe". However, there is no empirical evidence that proves inflation has occurred, and none of the numerous models for it have ever been generally accepted^[4].

So many other examples of the fine-tuning of the universe exist that it is exceedingly unlikely that all of them came about by chance to form our universe. Some scientists have proposed that our universe is just one of an extremely large number of universes and therefore ours happens to be the universe in which all of this fine-tuning occurred randomly. However, the existing multi-verse theories are highly speculative, and there is as yet no sound empirical evidence that any universe exists beyond our own^[5].

There are several properties of the Milky Way galaxy and Earth's position in it that make it possible for life to exist here, as well as properties of other galaxies that make it impossible for them to produce or support habitable planets.

Despite the large number of stars in a galaxy, habitable planets are only possible in certain places. In fact, of the three types of galaxies (spiral, elliptical, and irregular), only a spiral galaxy has areas that can potentially support such a planet. Elliptical galaxies have erratically orbiting stars which pass through dangerous parts of the galaxy, and they don't contain enough heavy elements to produce life-sustaining planets. Irregular galaxies have no safe spots because supernovae occur at the same rate everywhere within them.^[6]

In a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, only the areas between the arms of the spiral could contain a safe, life-sustaining planet. The center has more frequently occurring supernovae, and at least in the Milky Way, there is a massive black hole that releases a variety of deadly radiation any time matter gets into or near it. The arms themselves are also hazardous due to frequent supernovae, and contain giant molecular clouds in which life could not survive.^[6]

In the Milky Way specifically the thinness of the galaxy's disk shape helps the sun stay in a circular orbit, keeping it within the safe zone rather than having it enter the central region of the galaxy or one of the dangerous spiral arms as it would if it followed a more irregular orbit.^[6]

There are many specific properties of the sun, the other planets in Earth's solar system, and Earth's position relative to these other members of the system that make it possible for life to survive on Earth.

The Earth is positioned within the sun's Circumstellar Habitable Zone at an ideal distance for supporting life, and remains at that distance due to its near-perfect circular orbit. The Circumstellar Habitable Zone is the area around a star where liquid water can exist on the surface of an Earth-like planet: too close to the star and it all evaporates; too far and it all freezes. The further a planet is from the sun, the more CO2 it needs to trap the sun's radiation and keep water liquid. However, too much CO2 in the atmosphere results in there being insufficient oxygen to support mammal life. So, there is only a small area of the Circumstellar Habitable Zone in which an Earth-like planet can exist, and it would need a circular orbit like Earth's to stay in that area.^[6]

The sun possesses several properties uncommon to stars in general that are necessary for life on an orbiting planet to survive. First, the mass of the sun allows Earth to orbit far enough away to keep solar flares from causing drastic, deadly climate changes, but close enough to maintain liquid water. This isn't possible with red dwarf stars, which are smaller than the sun and make up roughly 80% of the stars in the universe. Second, it emits just the right balance of red and blue light, unlike red dwarfs which don't emit enough ultraviolet light to build up oxygen in the atmosphere at a sufficient rate, or F-type stars which are larger than the sun and emit so much ultraviolet light that any small breach in the ozone layer would instantly bombard the unprotected area with deadly amounts of UV radiation. Third, if the sun were more massive, it wouldn't live nearly as long and its luminosity would change at a much higher rate during its main sequence (the time during which a star is undergoing fusion of hydrogen into helium), resulting in more significant temperature variations on Earth over a shorter period of time. Finally, the sun is very stable compared to other similar stars, varying in luminosity by only one tenth of a percent over a sunspot cycle (approximately 11 years). This helps prevent drastic shifts in Earth's climate.^[6]

The other planets in Earth's solar system also contribute to its habitability. The majority of the other gas giant planets discovered orbiting stars in other solar systems have very elliptical orbits and would therefore throw off the circularity of the orbit of any Earth-like planet in the same system, causing it to undergo life-threatening temperature variations. By contrast, Jupiter has a near-circular orbit and so does not cause this issue for Earth. Planets in Earth's solar system also protect it from being struck by other celestial bodies. Jupiter acts as a comet shield for Earth, as do Saturn and Uranus to a lesser degree, and Mars and Venus shield Earth from asteroids.^[6]

Certain properties of Earth's moon contribute to sustaining life on Earth.

First, the moon's size helps regulate the temperatures on Earth. Its large size compared to Earth helps to stabilize the tilt of Earth's axis, preventing Earth from tilting to drastic angles which would result in major differences in seasonal temperatures. However if the moon were larger, it would slow down Earth's rotation, causing greater differences in temperature between night and day.^[6]

Second, the moon accounts for 60% of the tides on Earth. The tides are important for pulling nutrients from the continents out into the ocean, and they also contribute to large-scale ocean circulation, which moderates the temperatures closer to the poles.

Finally, scientists now think the moon was probably formed by a glancing collision of Earth and a celestial body the size of Mars. So unless there is a more common way for moons like the Earth's to form, this suggests that planets capable of sustaining life may be as rare as such collisions.^[36]

The Earth itself has several properties that support its habitability.

First, consider the Earth's mass. If it were too large, the Earth would be unable to retain an atmosphere or keep from losing heat too quickly. However, if it were too large, gravity would level the surface to the point where it would be completely submerged in water. Eventually, the water would become too salty to support even ocean life because salt is removed from the ocean by rapid evaporation in shallow coastal areas.^[6]

Second, Earth has marine algae that naturally regulate its albedo (proportion of sunlight reflected vs. absorbed), which in turn regulates temperature. These marine algae release dimethyl sulfide which helps build cloud condensation nuclei (particles in the atmosphere upon which water condenses to form clouds). When the ocean gets warmer the algae reproduce at a higher rate, releasing more dimethyl sulfide; increased cloud cover increases albedo and the ocean cools as a result, bringing down the rate of algae reproduction and corresponding release of dimethyl sulfide.^[6]

Finally, Earth contains a variety of elements in all the right places necessary for life to survive and thrive. There are several properties of water and carbon that make them vital for life—non-carbon-based life forms could not work because other elements are incapable of forming complex-enough molecules. Further, a bacterium requires approximately 16 different essential elements to survive, and humans require 26. A planet would have to have sufficient quantities of at least the 16 to support even very simple life.^[6] In addition to the elements required by organisms themselves, the presence of radioactive elements deep in the Earth supports the convection of liquid iron surrounding the core, creating a dynamo which generates Earth's magnetic field. The magnetic field protects Earth from radiation from low-energy cosmic rays, and it also protects the upper atmosphere from being stripped away by solar winds, which would result in water being lost too quickly.^[6] Finally, the availability near the Earth's surface of the ores used in the technological advancement of civilization is a result of a very particular series of circumstances and conditions.^[38]

In the time and culture in which Jesus lived, books and scrolls were quite rare, and so it was common for religious material to be memorized (Jewish teachers were known to have the entire Old Testament memorized). So, it is totally plausible that the gospel writers committed Jesus' teachings and the events of his life to memory and recorded them accurately in the gospels even though they were written 40+ years later.

It should also be noted that studies of cultures with oral traditions have found that there was some flexibility in how much of a given story was told; however, key points remained unaltered and the audience had the right to correct the storyteller on these. In the ancient Middle East, the retelling of an important religious history could vary by 10-40% from one telling to another, depending on which parts of the story the teller chose to elaborate and which parts he chose to summarize or paraphrase. The range of variation in the [synoptics] is the same on any given part. So, it is likely that variations in the gospel accounts are explained primarily by the nature of Middle Eastern oral histories rather than the unreliability of the authors' memories.^[21]

Some people argue that such oral traditions cannot be trusted because their transmittal through history is like one giant game of telephone in which the end result is dramatically different from the true events. However, this is really a bad argument against the accuracy of oral tradition because in a game of telephone, the participants are not carefully working together to preserve accuracy as ancient cultures did with religious teaching and history, but are instead inclined to be careless in order to increase the amusement of the game.^[21]

Critics of the gospels often claim that their supernatural content, particularly the resurrection of Jesus, is really legend that developed over time, so the true accounts of Jesus' life and ministry didn't contain any of this sensational material. However, there are several reasons to believe that the miraculous events described in the gospels are not the result of legendary development.

A study by classical historian A.N. Sherwin-White has shown that it took more than two generations for legend to develop in the ancient world to the point where there's no historical truth behind it.^[37] Most of the major letters written by the apostle Paul are dated in the 50's A.D., roughly 20 years after Jesus' crucifixion. This isn't nearly enough time for legends about Jesus to have developed, yet these letters contain clear statements that Jesus was divine, died to atone for our sins, and was then resurrected, some of them using literary forms that suggest they are creeds which were circulated among Christians before Paul wrote his letters (see Philippians 2:6-11, Colossians 1:15-20, and 1 Corinthians 15:3-7).^[20] This 20 year gap is also within the lifetimes of witnesses of Jesus' ministry, and it is unlikely that these doctrines would have survived if eye witnesses could contradict them.^[26]

In addition to the dating of Paul's letters, there are further reasons to believe that the doctrine of Jesus' resurrection, specifically, is not the result of legendary development. First, it is quite likely that Jesus' tomb was in fact found empty, because Jewish rebuttals to Christianity from around the same time period presuppose the empty tomb—that is, they never argued that it wasn't empty, but instead produced excuses as to how or why it was empty. Further, it is implausible that the Christian movement, which was founded on belief in the resurrection, could have begun in the same city as Jesus' tomb if the tomb was still occupied by his body.^[31] Second, given the lowly status of women at the time, particularly in Jewish culture, the fact that a group of women were the first to discover the empty tomb strongly suggests the account is not legendary. A made-up account would most likely have attributed the discovery to one of the prominent male apostles.^[31]

When compared with all other writings from antiquity, the gospels were composed remarkably soon after the events they describe. The earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch over 400 years after Alexander's death, yet they are considered trustworthy. Compare that with the standard scholarly dating of the gospels which places Mark in the A.D. 70's, Matthew and Luke in the 80's, and John in the 90's—putting them about 40, 50, and 60 years after Jesus' death, respectively.^[20]

It is a common misconception that we can't really know what the original contents of the New Testament were because all we have today are copies of copies of copies, with no way of knowing what is original and what was later added or miscopied by scribes. However, the application of textual criticism to the surviving copies of the New Testament reveals that we can have great confidence in the purity of its transmission through history.

Probably the most important factor that allows us to have confidence in the purity of the New Testament is the unmatched number of surviving ancient manuscripts. As of 1998, there were more than 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament catalogued. The runner-up is Homer's Iliad, of which we have only 650 ancient Greek manuscripts—however, the earliest of these are dated approximately 1000 years after the Iliad was written in 800 B.C. By contrast, the earliest surviving manuscripts from the New Testament are dated around 100 to 200 years after the originals. All languages included, there are around 24,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament in existence today.^[22] When we have many copies of an ancient text from different geographical areas, then we can check them against one another and logically conclude that the portions that match one another must be descendants of a single, earlier copy. This is a very important factor in helping textual critics deduce the contents of the original text.^[22]

Among the ancient manuscripts of the New Testament we have today, there are approximately 200,000 variants. However, this number is misleadingly high due to the way a "variant" is counted—for example, a single word misspelled in 3000 manuscripts counts as 3000 variants, even if it is spelled the same way in those 3000 manuscripts. Further, the majority of these variations result from mistakes that make the correct text easy to determine. For example, in the Greek language word order doesn't affect the meaning of a sentence, so when a Greek manuscript contains an accidental word swap, it is obvious what the correct order is supposed to be. Variations that have any significant effect on the meaning of the passage are rare, and most good Bibles have notes pointing them out.^[22] All things considered, the New Testament we have today is approximately 95% pure in its transmission from the original, and none of the uncertain passages call into question any significant doctrine.^[39]

Critics of the New Testament sometimes claim that early church leaders purposefully excluded equally legitimate writings from the New Testament canon because they found the portrayals of Jesus in these writings to be personally distasteful. In reality, this criticism is based on a faulty understanding of how writings were chosen to be included in the New Testament canon. Rather than some sort of politicized meeting in which church leaders argued for the documents they personally preferred, all the church councils really did was officially recognize as canon documents which had already been generally accepted by the church as a whole (that is, all Christians). In fact, the majority of the New Testament canon was generally accepted within Christianity's first 200 years by Christians from diverse backgrounds and geographical areas.^[22]

Besides this general acceptance by all Christians, the other two criteria for inclusion of a document were that it must have been written by an apostle or one of his associates, and it had to agree with the beliefs that all Christians considered fundamental.^[22] Despite what some critics claim, the gospels that didn't make the cut were most likely excluded from New Testament canon legitimately. For example, some people claim that the Gospel of Thomas, a second century book of sayings attributed to Jesus, should have been considered legitimate by the early church, and it is true that some of the sayings in it match some of the things said by Jesus in the four canonical gospels. However, the Gospel of Thomas also includes some pantheistic and antifeminist content that is contradictory to the earlier gospels and more consistent with Gnosticism, a religious movement that began in the second century.^[22][25]

Some critics of Christianity have claimed that it can't be taken seriously because it borrowed aspects from other religions. However, a careful examination of the other religions from which it supposedly borrowed reveals that this is unlikely.

For example, one such religion revolved around a man named Apollonius of Tyana, who supposedly performed miracles, including raising a girl from the dead, and allegedly appeared to some of his followers after his death. The similarities between Apollonius and Jesus have prompted some to suggest that Christianity borrowed some of its claims about Jesus from the claims that were made about Apollonius. However, there are several facts that make this unlikely:^[25]

• There is only one written record of Apollonius's life that we know of.
• This record was written 150 or more years after Apollonius's death, and does not pass the same standard tests of historical reliability that the gospels pass.
• The author was paid to write it by an empress who was a follower of Apollonius in order to commemorate a temple of Apollonius, so he had a strong motive to embellish it.
• It uses noncommittal language, such as "It is reported that...", "Some say...", etc.
• It was written in an area where Christianity had already existed for quite some time.

There is also a group of ancient religions known as the "mystery religions" that some people believe Christianity borrowed from. These religions involve stories where gods died and were resurrected, and included ceremonies that some claim could have been the inspiration for the Christian practices of baptism and communion. However:^[25]

• These religions are dated after the New Testament
• Their stories are written in the style of legends, as opposed to the gospels, which read like eye-witness accounts and which include specific names of individuals involved, such as political and religious leaders.
• They don't include the core Christian concepts of forgiveness and eternal life.
• The supposed parallels to baptism and communion involve gruesome practices unlikely to have been adopted by Jews, such as being bathed in the blood and entrails of a bull as it is killed, and then eating the bull. (Jewish law has strict instructions governing how blood and dead animals are to be handled, and the consumption of blood from any animal is strictly prohibited; see Leviticus 11, 17.)

It is actually quite likely that the four gospels were indeed written by the authors they are named after.

Ancient writings from members of the early church affirm that the [synoptics] (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were all indeed written by their namesakes. There is no evidence that anyone thought that the true authors were different. The gospel of John is nearly undisputed as well, the only exception being that it is unclear from one source whether references to John the apostle and John the elder are the same man serving two different roles, or two different people with the same name.^[20]

It's also worth noting that, with the exception of John, the traditional authors of the gospels are not individuals that anyone would have been likely to choose if they wished to promote the gospels through dishonesty. Matthew, while an apostle of Jesus, was also a tax collector, a position universally hated in the ancient world. Mark and Luke weren't apostles, but were instead companions of the apostles Peter and Paul, respectively. The unlikely nature of these authors is further supported by the other gospel-like accounts written long after John and the synoptics. These accounts claim to be written by famous Christians, such as the apostle Peter or Mary the mother of Jesus, and they are widely regarded as fictitious.^[20]

Some scholars have argued that the apostle Matthew is not a likely author for the gospel named after him because it borrows material from Mark, who was not an apostle. However, Mark was a close associate of Peter and wrote his gospel based on Peter's testimony, and Peter was one of the three apostles who were especially close to Jesus, while Matthew was not.^[20]

It is clear from what we know about the authors, and from the content of the gospels themselves, that they weren't trying to deceive their readers, but instead really believed they were writing the truth.

It is unlikely that the gospel authors were attempting to hide the truth or outright lie because they included a lot of hard-to-explain content that could easily have been omitted. A few examples include Jesus' baptism (Why would the son of God need to be baptized?), his outcry while on the cross saying, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (What did he mean by "forsaken"? As God in the flesh, shouldn't he already know the answer to his question?), and the statement in Mark that he couldn't perform many miracles in Nazareth due to the people there lacking faith (Why would people's faith affect Jesus' power?). "If [the gospel writers] didn't feel free to leave out stuff when it would have been convenient and helpful to do so, is it really plausible to believe that they outright added and fabricated material with no historical basis?" The writers also included a lot of content that made the apostles (including two of the authors themselves) look like idiots—they are frequently depicted as misunderstanding Jesus' teachings and behaving selfishly, even cruelly, to other people, often resulting in a rebuke from Jesus. It is highly unlikely that authors of fabricated accounts would portray themselves in this way.^[21]

Even bias or unintentional skewing are unlikely in the gospels because the authors had nothing to gain by it. Most of them died gruesome, painful deaths for sticking with their story. Would they really be willing to die for something they knew to be a lie?^[21]

People often argue that the gospels can't be considered reliable because they are too inconsistent with one another. However, by ancient standards the gospels are really very consistent, and the inconsistencies they do have actually enhance their credibility.^[21] A total lack of discrepancies in the gospels would suggest disingenuous collaboration among the authors rather than independent accounts of the same events.^[31]

Some of the apparent contradictions between the gospels can be explained by differences in perspective, as in the case of the different genealogies of Jesus listed in Matthew and Luke. It is possible that one of these genealogies is that of Joseph, Jesus' adoptive father, and that the other is of his mother Mary (both were descendants of David); or it is possible that both genealogies were of Joseph, but one was the legal genealogy while the other was hereditary, with the differences occurring where someone in the line had no children and so had to choose a legal heir. The differences can also be explained by the fact that some members are omitted, a practice considered acceptable at that time. Some of the contradictions in the gospels, the genealogies included, can also be explained by shifts in the spellings of names from translation between languages, which could easily result in one name being mistaken for another.^[21]

The gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus in particular are often criticized as inconsistent, but these inconsistencies have plausible explanations. For example, while the gospels differ in which names are included for the members of the group of women who discovered Jesus' empty tomb, none of them claim to be giving a complete list, making it likely that more women were present than are named and that different gospel writers chose to name different women (except for Mary Magdalene, who is named in all of the gospels).^[31] However, it is important to remember that from the perspective of a historian, the contradictions and differences in the resurrection story aren't so important as the fact that the core story is intact in all four gospels—a group of women went to visit Jesus' tomb, discovered it empty, and saw angels there who told them of Jesus' resurrection. By the standards normally applied to ancient historical documents, this story can be considered reliable.^[31]

Several surviving ancient letters and histories outside of the Bible provide independent evidence that the events described in the New Testament actually took place.

A Roman historian named Tacitus wrote about Christ being crucified by "Pontius Pilatus" (i.e. Pontius Pilate, the Roman leader who the gospels say ordered Jesus's crucifixion), and about the Christian religious movement that took place after his death. He reported that "an immense multitude" were convicted and tortured for being Christians by the emperor Nero. The tone of his writing makes it clear that he disapproves of Christianity (he refers to it as a "most mischievous superstition" and "the evil"), so it is unlikely that this was a fabricated account by later Christian manuscript copyists (such fabrications tend to speak favorably of Christianity).^[23][40]

There are also surviving letters from the Roman governor of Bithynia, a man named Pliny, to Emperor Trajan that speak of Pliny's persecution of Christians. One letter dated around A.D. 111 mentions their unwillingness to recant, even when given three chances to do so and warned they'll be executed if they don't. These letters also confirm that Christians held themselves to a high moral standard and worshipped Jesus as God.^[23][41]

There are also some surviving writings from ancient authors that reference the darkness that the gospels say occurred during the crucifixion. Writings by Thallus, Phlegon, and Tertullian all mention the darkness, and Phlegon and Thallus attribute it to a solar eclipse. (Thallus's work itself is lost, but it is quoted in a surviving writing by Julius Africanus.) Phlegon's writing also references the earthquake that some of the gospels say occurred when Jesus died.^[23]

Some critics of the gospels have argued that they are unreliable because their portrayal of Pontius Pilate conflicts with other surviving records about him. Histories about Pilate that predate the gospels depict him as a stubborn and unyielding leader, but in the gospels he is weak and indecisive, ultimately giving in to the Jewish leaders' demand that Jesus be crucified even though he clearly didn't believe Jesus deserved it (see Matthew 27:11-31). However, Pilate's change in character between earlier histories and the gospels can be explained by the fact that Sejanus, the man who appointed Pilate to his position, fell from power in A.D. 31 because he was caught plotting against the emperor. This made Pilate's political position very precarious, so it makes sense that he would have wanted to avoid trouble with the Jewish leaders at this time.^[23]

In short, if all we had to go on were the non-biblical accounts of Jesus, we could still know:^[23]

1. Jesus was a Jewish teacher.
2. He reportedly performed miracles
3. Some believed he was the Messiah
4. He was rejected by Jewish leaders and crucified by Pilate during Tiberius's reign
5. He had many followers, in spite of his death, who worshipped him as God and were willing to die for that belief

The credibility of the New Testament is enhanced by the fact that we have archaeological confirmation of much of the geographical and historical information it contains.

Luke 3:1 states that Lysanias was the tetrarch of Abilene around A.D. 27, and an inscription dated between A.D. 14-37 was found that refers to Lysanias in this role. Acts 17:6 talks about political leaders called "politarchs" in the city of Thessalonica, and for a long time this was criticized as a historical inaccuracy because there was no other known reference to "politarchs" in ancient Roman manuscripts or archaeological discoveries. However, today more than 35 inscriptions mentioning the politarchs have been found, many of them in Thessalonica.^[24] There are many more historical facts in Luke's contributions to the New Testament (the books of Luke and Acts) which have been verified by archaeology, including references to 9 islands, 32 countries, and 54 cities.^[42]

Archaeological discoveries have provided support for details found in the other gospels as well. The Pool of Bethesda was discovered with five porticoes, just as it was described in John 5:1-15. Discoveries validating the existence of Jacob's Well referenced in John 4:12 and the Pool of Siloam mentioned in John 9:7 have also been made.^[24]

Skeptics and critics have attacked the credibility of the gospels based on seeming inaccuracies and discrepancies of several other passages for which we now have archaeological evidence:

• Some have argued that Nazareth, the village where Jesus spent most of his childhood, didn't actually exist until hundreds of years after Jesus' time. However, archaeologists have discovered a registry of Jewish priests and the places to which they were relocated after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, and one group of priests was listed as being stationed in Nazareth. Jewish tombs dating to the first century have also been found in the Nazareth area.^[24]
• Both Mark and Luke refer to an incident where Jesus healed a blind man, but Luke says it happened while Jesus was entering Jericho Luke 18:35 while Mark says he was leaving town Mark 10:46. This is most likely because Jericho existed in at least four different locations. In the ancient world, cities were sometimes destroyed and resettled nearby multiple times. Jesus could have been leaving an older part of Jericho and entering a newer one, or vice versa.^[24]

One incident recorded in the New Testament for which we do not have archaeological support is the murder of boys 2 years old and younger in Bethlehem by Herod the Great Matthew 2:13-18. However, there are a couple of plausible explanations for why this incident was not recorded elsewhere. First, Bethlehem was a very small settlement of only a few hundred people, so there probably wouldn't have been very many boys 2 and under. Second, Herod was infamously paranoid regarding potential usurpers of this throne, and he killed many people who he suspected were plotting against him, including some of his own family members. Compared to some of his other actions, the slaughter of a few children in a small, out-of-the-way settlement wouldn't have seemed very noteworthy to ancient historians.^[24]

If Jesus' miracles were outright lies and nothing like them ever happened, the opposing witnesses of the time would have called them out. Instead, opposing Jewish writings imply the truth of Jesus' miracles by referring to Jesus as a "sorcerer" who tricked some Jews into following him.^[21] So, some people argue that perhaps the gospels are historically reliable and authored by honest witnesses, but the miracles Jesus supposedly performed weren't really supernatural. Instead, they believe that Jesus tricked people into believing he was performing miracles. However, a close examination of the details surrounding Jesus' miracles reveals that this isn't very likely.

Some have suggested that Jesus could have been a master hypnotist, and intentionally used hypnosis to convince people that he was performing miracles. This explanation seems plausible on the surface, but there are numerous problems with it:^[27]

1. Stage hypnotists pick out vulnerable audience members who seem to be responding to their intentionally soothing tone of voice. Crowds are collectively resistant to hypnosis, and Jesus would have had to hypnotize huge crowds to get them to believe in miracles like the feeding of 5000 men (plus women and children) from just a few fish and loaves of bread (Matthew 14:15-21, Mark 6:35-44) or the earthquakes and darkness that occurred at the time of his death (Matthew 27:45, 50-54; Mark 15:33, 37-39).
2. Hypnosis generally doesn't work well on skeptics, yet one of Jesus' most devoted followers (and the author of the majority of the New Testament books) was the apostle Paul, a man who originally went around killing and imprisoning Christians after Jesus' death, but later converted to Christianity after having a vision of Jesus (Acts 9:1-22). It is quite a stretch to suggest that hypnosis could be responsible for so radical a change, especially since proponents of this explanation believe that Jesus, the supposed master hypnotist, was already dead when Paul's conversion occurred.
3. Hypnosis doesn't explain the empty tomb. The Jews and Romans would have gladly produced a body to silence Christians.
4. When Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:1-10), he never spoke to the banquet master who pronounced it to be wine and served it to the guests, nor did he ever even tell anyone that the water was wine. He would have had to hypnotize all of the guests to believe it was wine as well.
5. The many words and actions of Jesus recorded in the gospels don't match up with any known hypnosis techniques.
6. Why would someone that talented at hypnosis willingly die on the cross (or make others think he did) and then totally disappear from the public at large, especially after spending so much time in the public sphere beforehand?

Others have suggested that Jesus' miraculous healings were really just psychological "healings" of psychosomatic conditions. In other words, the healings were the result of the person's belief in Jesus' ability to heal them, like modern medical patients whose symptoms are relieved when they take a placebo that they believe is a real drug. While it is possible that some of Jesus' healings may have been psychosomatic, this cannot explain all of his miracles. For one thing, psychosomatic healing usually takes time, but Jesus' healings occurred instantly, and many of them were for people he had only just met. Further, some of the conditions Jesus cured were unlikely to be psychological, such as leprosy, lifelong blindness, and even death. Finally, some of Jesus' miracles had nothing to do with healing, such as the feeding of the 5000, turning water into wine, and calming a storm at sea (Mark 4:35-41, Luke 8:23-25).^[27]

One of the strongest pieces of evidence in favor of the resurrection comes from the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians, which is a letter from the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. It is widely accepted that the letter was indeed written by Paul, and it can be dated to around A.D. 57. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, Paul provides a list of people to whom Jesus appeared after his death, and this list is styled like a formal creed, which suggests that it has an earlier origin. The creed is introduced by Paul as something he "receive"” and "delivered" to the church in Corinth; these are rabbinical terms indicating the transmittal of holy tradition, so it is unlikely that the creed originated with Paul. It is more likely that he received it from Peter and James when he visited them in Jerusalem as described in Galatians 1:18-19. In these verses Paul uses the Greek word "historeo" to describe his conversation with Peter and James, which indicates he carefully questioned them rather than just having a casual chat, and both Peter and James are mentioned by name in the creed as having met Jesus after his death.

If this visit to Peter and James is indeed when Paul received the creed, it can be dated somewhere between 32 and 38 A.D., placing it as little as two years after the resurrection, but at the latest the creed can be dated to sometime before Paul's visit to Corinth in A.D. 51. This puts the creed's origin anywhere from about 2 to 20 years after the resurrection, making it far too early for legendary development to be a plausible explanation, and showing that a list of witnesses to the resurrection was likely being circulated by Christians at a time when most of those witnesses were still alive to be consulted for verification. And incidentally, because the creed is dated prior to the gospels and has the most extensive list of witnesses to the resurrection, it precludes the possibility of legendary development in the gospels.^[32]

Some critics have challenged the creed because it is the only known source to claim that Jesus appeared to 500 witnesses at once after his resurrection and also because it fails to mention any of the women who, according to the gospels, were among the first to see Jesus alive after his execution. While it is true that the creed is the only source that mentions the 500 witnesses, it is important to note that the creed is the earliest and best authenticated passage in the New Testament that refers to the resurrection. It could be that more than the 11 disciples mentioned were present when Jesus appeared on a mountain in Matthew 28:16-19. Also, Paul follows the statement that there were 500 witnesses by saying that most of them are still alive, something he would be unlikely to do if he knew it weren't true since this is a claim that people could easily have challenged him on. It also should be unsurprising that the women who saw Jesus alive were excluded from the creed given that women weren't considered reliable witnesses in the Jewish culture of the time.^[32]

In an effort to discredit the gospel accounts of Jesus's death and resurrection, skeptics of Christianity have proposed alternative explanations for the resurrection. One popular theory is that Jesus never actually died on the cross, but instead fainted. He then awoke in the tomb, escaped, and met with some of his followers, leading them to believe he had risen from the dead. There are, however, several factors that make it highly unlikely that Jesus escaped the cross alive.

First, we know that even before Jesus was crucified, he was likely already in serious or critical condition from the flogging he received. Roman floggings typically consisted of 39 or more lashes with a whip that had metal balls and bone shards at the whip ends, a beating so severe that it was often enough to kill the victim. The whipping would literally tear the victim's back to ribbons, sometimes cutting deep enough to expose the spine and bowels, and resulting in hypovolemic shock (a life-threatening condition resulting from the loss of a large amount of blood). In this condition, Jesus would have been highly unlikely to survive the crucifixion that followed.

When a victim was crucified, his arms were nailed to a crossbar through the wrists in a position that, when the crossbar was raised and attached to the vertical beam, would cause his shoulders to be dislocated and would force his chest into the inhaled position. His feet would be tied or nailed to the vertical beam, and he would have to push himself up on them in order to allow himself to exhale. Once the victim became too exhausted to push himself up any longer, he would die from asphyxiation leading to cardiac arrest.

John 19:34 reports that after Jesus died a Roman soldier pierced his side with a spear to make certain he was dead, and blood and water flowed out of the wound. A continuous rapid heartrate from the hypovolemic shock would have caused a clear, water-like fluid to collect around the heart and lungs (this is known as pericardial and pleural effusion, respectively), so this description is consistent with what we would expect to happen if the spear were thrust through Jesus's right lung and into his heart. Clearly if Jesus were still alive, this is not something he would have been likely to survive. It is also important to note that if a convict sentenced to death somehow escaped, the soldier responsible would be executed, so soldiers had a very strong motivation for making certain their victims were dead.

In light of everything Jesus experienced prior to being placed in the tomb, it is extremely unlikely that he somehow survived and escaped to appear to his followers. But even if he had, he would have been weak from blood loss, his shoulders would have been dislocated, he couldn't have walked well (if at all) from the wounds in his feet, and he likely couldn't have properly used his hands since his median nerves had been pierced. His disciples may have felt sorry for him or taken pity on him, but would they really have been inspired by his appearance to go around boldly proclaiming him to be the resurrected Son of God?^[19]

Other alternative explanations for the resurrection include the theft of Jesus's body from the tomb by his disciples, and hallucination or groupthink on the part of Jesus's followers. However, hallucination is a poor explanation since hallucinations are uncommon, are only experienced by individuals, and are typically the result of some kind of physical deprivation. Groupthink is equally unlikely because skeptics and outright persecutors of Christianity (such as Paul) also saw Jesus—in Paul's case, he was actually among a group of nonbelievers when he saw Jesus.^[32] As for body theft, the design of tombs like the one Jesus was buried in was such that it would take several men to roll away the large stone covering the entrance. Also, given that the disciples devoted their lives to preaching their belief in Jesus's resurrection, and that many of them died painful deaths because of that belief, it is highly unlikely that they simply stole the body in order to fool people.^[31]

The behavior of Jesus's followers after his death is a strong indicator that the resurrection occurred. They believed that the Messiah would not die (Psalm 16:10) and that anyone "hung on a tree" was cursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:22-23; Galatians 3:13), so when Jesus was crucified his followers were scattered and demoralized. Then just a few days later, they abandoned their lives to devote themselves wholly to the gospel message, many dying gruesome deaths for it. There is no adequate explanation for this behavior besides that these people really did witness Jesus alive after his death as they claimed they did.^[33]

There are other events involving Jesus's followers that took place after his death that also support the truth of the resurrection. For one, some people who were skeptics of Jesus during his entire ministry and who knew or had seen Jesus before he died were converted after his death. These were the apostle Paul and Jesus's brother James. For another, Paul claimed in [NIV, 2 Corinthians], a letter he wrote to the church in Corinth, that they had witnessed him perform miracles. Obviously they would have known if he were lying about this, so why would he make such a claim if it weren't true?^[33]

Some critics of Christianity argue that the disciples' willingness to suffer and die for their belief in Jesus and the resurrection is no different than the many other times that followers of other religions have given their lives for their beliefs. However, there is a key difference. The disciples claimed to have seen and interacted with Jesus after his death, in-person. Unlike the Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, and even modern-day Christians that have given their lives for what they believed to be true, Jesus's disciples were eye witnesses of the event that formed the foundation of their religion—they knew whether or not their claims were true, and people don't choose to die torturous deaths for things they know are false.^[33]

The gospels ascribe most, if not all, of the same attributes to Jesus that the Old Testament ascribes to God:

• The Old Testament describes God as omnipotent (Jeremiah 32:17), and in Matthew 28:18, Jesus says "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth."
• The Old Testament describes God as omnipresent (Psalm 139:7-10, Jeremiah 23:23-24), and in Matthew 18:20 Jesus says, "For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them" and in Matthew 28:20, "And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age."
• The Old Testament describes God as omniscient (Psalm 147:5, Isaiah 40:28), and in John 16:30 John says to Jesus, "Now we understand that you know everything" and in John 21:17 Peter says to Jesus, "Lord, you know all things"—Jesus does not challenge these statements in either case.
• The Old Testament describes God as eternal (Psalm 90:2, Psalm 102:12,27), and in John 17:5 Jesus prays, "And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began" and John 1:1 starts out by stating, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" and later makes it clear that "the Word" refers to Jesus (see John 1:14-18).

Skeptics of Christianity sometimes claim that Jesus never actually intended to claim divinity. They claim that the more explicit references to Jesus' Godhood in the gospel of John were added later, and that the [synoptics] don't include these kinds of claims at all.^[19] However there is significant evidence that this is not the case.

While not as clearly-stated as in John, Jesus implies his own divinity in multiple ways in the synoptics. In the story of Jesus walking on water, when Jesus calls out to his disciples in the boat, the Greek words used in both Matthew and Mark are literally "Fear not, I am". "I AM" is the name God used for himself in the Old Testament when he first spoke to Moses (Exodus 3:14), and the Greek used in Matthew and Mark is identical to that of John 8:58 when Jesus is more obviously claiming divinity by saying "Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born, I am!".^[20]. Jesus also frequently refers to himself in the third person as "the Son of Man" in the synoptics. On the surface this looks like a way of emphasizing his humanity, however it is really a reference to a prophecy in the Old Testament, Daniel 7:13-14, which reads:

As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was led into his presence. He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.^[20]

This perspective on Jesus' use of the phrase "the Son of Man" is strongly supported by Matthew 26:63-64 in which Jesus is being questioned by the Jewish high priest:

But Jesus remained silent. Then the high priest said to him, "I demand in the name of the living God—tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God." Jesus replied, "You have said it. And in the future you will see the Son of Man seated in the place of power at God's right hand and coming on the clouds of heaven."

It is also important to note that it made sense for Jesus to be subtle about his own divine nature. Jews at that time firmly understood God to be the singular and exclusive deity; they did not have the Christian concept of the trinity (God existing as three united but distinct beings—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). If Jesus had declared loud and clear from the start that he was God, nobody would have listened to or followed him because it wouldn't have made any sense to them. He needed to build relationships first.^[26]

For further reading about the significance and meaning behind Jesus' use of the phrase "Son of Man" to refer to himself:

• If Jesus was the Son of God, why did He call Himself the Son of Man?
• What does it mean that Jeses is the Son of Man?
• "Son of Man" or "Human One?" Tough Translation Questions Raised by the Common English Bible

Some have suggested that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God because he was mentally unhealthy and delusional. However, when you examine the rest of Jesus' words and actions, this explanation seems very unlikely because Jesus doesn't exhibit any of the other behaviors that normally indicate a mental illness. Unreasonable emotional reactions are clues that a person may be mentally unhealthy, but Jesus' emotional reactions were always rational. Another cue is misperceptions and paranoia about reality, but we don't see this in Jesus' actions either. A third indicator of mental illness is the inability to think and reason logically, and again it is clear from Jesus' teachings that he did not struggle with this. Finally, people with mental illnesses often exhibit socially awkward behavior, such as being unable to effectively communicate with others or wearing strange or irrational clothing; again, this does not describe Jesus.^[27]

Instead, the accounts of Jesus in the gospels show us that he loved and accepted people without accepting their sinful behavior, he wasn't proud or arrogant in spite of the adoration he received from many of the Jewish people, and he cared for women and children in spite of the inferior status the culture assigned to them. People who at the time thought that Jesus was "demon-possessed and raving mad" (John 10:20) were not mental health professionals and were simply reacting to his theologically radical claims about himself, not providing an unbiased assessment of his general sanity. Further, the people making this statement are challenged by others in the very next verse (John 10:21).^[27]

⁹ God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. ¹⁰ This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. ¹² No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.

⁷ Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. ⁸ But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. ⁹ And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. ¹⁰ For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. ¹¹ So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

¹⁶ We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.

²⁸ One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate. He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

²⁹ Jesus replied, "The most important commandment is this: 'Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. ³⁰ And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.' ³¹ The second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these."

³¹ Do to others as you would like them to do to you.

—Jesus

¹² Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. ¹³ Make allowance for each other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. ¹⁴ Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

⁴ Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud ⁵ or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. ⁶ It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. ⁷ Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

³⁴ A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. ³⁵ By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

—Jesus