Who is Jesus?

Recently, we bought 25 beautiful, new Chichewa Bibles from the Malawi Bible Society  to use in our home Bible study. Two weeks ago, we announced to our neighbors that we would be begin a women's Bible study today. 

This afternoon when we opened our doors, there were 30 women, our neighbors here on the mountain,  gathering for a study of the book of John (which in Chichewa is Johane). When I distributed the Bibles, I realized that most of the women had little prior knowledge of the Bible.  

They didn't know New Testament from Old, and they certainly had no idea how to locate a text. Since all of the Bibles were the same, we announced what page the text was on so the women could follow along as we read.  

In today's study we discussed only verses 1-4 of chapter 1, but that was enough. In those few verses, they learned that Jesus is the pure expression of who the Father is, that he existed with the Father before time began,  from all eternity, that he is the Creator of all things, and he the one who holds all things together by his powerful word. They also learned that mankind is uniquely made above all other created things to know God and to have fellowship with him.

I told the women that Jesus is unique among all the world's religions. All the gods of all the world's religions are dead and buried, but Jesus is alive and his grave is empty. At the end of the class, I asked the women, "And who is Jesus?" They answered, He is God, the one who created everything."