Maximal ideals give rise to bounded multiplicative linear functionals

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I am studying functional analysis. In the context of Banach algebras and their spaces of homomorphisms, my professor mentioned that "in commutative Banach algebras, maximal ideals give rise to bounded multiplicative linear functionals". I never took group theory (at any even introductory level), but I can read the Wiki definition of the maximal ideal. I am trying to develop some more intuition for this statement. Any examples for me to work through? Any more details about how it happens?