You might have heard people saying this: “Jesus is a wise man who taught his followers how to be good, moral men. So how is Christianity different?”

The truth is, Christianity is not just a religion that teaches people to be good. Indeed, following Jesus is not just about following a set of moral rules. Rather, it’s about being pardoned for our sin so that each of us can be reconciled to God and experience an everlasting personal relationship with him.

Try as we might, we cannot be good consistently and perfectly because all of us are born with sin, and our hearts are inherently imperfect. So we can never satisfy the perfect standards of the perfect God. We cannot return into his presence by our own efforts, and we will all have to face the consequences of our sin—death.

That’s why God had to send his son Jesus to earth. Jesus led a perfect life, completely free of sin, and then died on the cross, taking the punishment on our behalf. It is only through Jesus that we can receive forgiveness from God.