Who is Jesus Christ?
Jesus Christ is the son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit). God the Father sent Jesus to the earth to be born of a virgin (Mary). And that is what happened. Jesus was conceived within Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus earthly father, Joseph, was a carpenter, and Jesus followed in his footsteps. At age 30, Jesus began his earthly ministry.
Jesus spent his earthly ministry recruiting disciples and teaching about repentance from sin, love, forgiveness, and the necessity of accepting Him as Savior and Lord. Those same disciples carried on the work of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ after His ascension into heaven. Even though He never sinned, Jesus accepted being falsely accused of crimes he did not commit and allowed himself to be crucified so that he could pay for our sins.
Why do we call Jesus our Lord and Savior?
We live in a fallen word where sin is present. This fall began with Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Sin separates us from God. Because God is righteous, He cannot overlook sin. Our sin has to be paid for. Either we will pay for it and spend eternity separated from God, or we can ask Jesus to pay our sin debt for us and, therefore, spend eternity in heaven.
With the old covenant, God instructed people to give an animal (unblemished) sacrifice as payment for their sins. But God knew all along, and informed the profits of the fact, that He would send Jesus to the earth to one day die on the cross as payment for our sins so that all who accept Jesus as their savior could spend eternity with Him in heaven. Just as God wanted the Jews in the Old Testament to sacrifice an unblemished animal, only an “unblemished” person could pay our sin debt in full. Jesus, having been conceived without sin and having lived a sinless life, is the only person who could have served as the sacrificial lamb. Being fully human and fully God, Jesus could have stopped the crucifixion process at any point, but He didn’t so as to serve as the sacrificial lamb for our sins.
There is nothing we can do to earn our way into heaven. Doing more good than bad doesn’t do it. Going to church doesn’t do it. Being a minister or priest doesn’t do it. We can never be “good enough” to “deserve” spending eternity with God. To go to heaven, we have to repent of our sin, ask God’s forgiveness, and ask Jesus to be our Lord and Savior. When we do this sincerely, we then want to obey God’s laws and to live our lives as best we can in accordance with what Jesus taught us. So we do not go to heaven because we do good things. We do good things because we know we are going to heaven because we have asked Jesus to be our Savior.