Superheroes of the Faith – Athanasius (Download Powerpoint)
A great way of helping people to remember something or to make something know is to come up with a jingle for it.
Here are some famous jingles you may have heard before? (Audio)
“I’m lovin’ it!” [MacDonalds]
“Who gives you extra? Who? Who? We do!” [Halifax]
“Compare the Meerkat Dot Com” [Compare the Market]
“If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit join our club” [Club]
“Washing machines live longer with Calgon” [Calgon]
In Alexandria, Egypt, around 320AD there was a jingle going around that went like this: “there was a time when he was not”.
The problem was that this jingle was making a lie known. A lie about Jesus that a man called Arius was teaching.
Arius was saying that Jesus was created and so he wasn’t really God.
And even though at first people could see this teaching was a lie, over time more and more people began to believe that it was true – that Jesus was not fully God.
What was need was a superhero, someone who would speak up for the truth and keep speaking up for the truth of what the Bible says about Jesus.
The Bible says that Jesus is fully God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)
Enter onto the scene, Athanasius, who Mike Reeves calls Athy the Vampire Slayer.
Athanasius kept on reminding people that Jesus is God, even when lots of people said he isn’t. Even when he was forced to leave his home in Alexandria 5 times during his lifetime, he kept on telling people the truth about Jesus.
Athanasius said: “The Jesus that I know as my Redeemer cannot be less than God.”
The reason Athanasius kept on telling people that Jesus is God was because if Jesus was not God, He could not rescue people. For Jesus’ death to save everyone who trusts in Him, it needed to have the value only someone who is fully human but also fully God could have.
Athanasius is a superhero because he kept on reminding people that Jesus is God, and because He is God, He can be our Saviour if we trust in Him.