Eternal Life and Forgiveness of Sins

Hands up who would like eternal life in a perfect world? The good news following my statement that Christians believe everyone is a sinner (see previous blog) is that Christians also believe everyone can be forgiven and saved. Now, this sounds like good news, but what does it actually mean?

God sent Jesus to earth to live amongst mankind and experience the difficulties of being human, the temptation to sin. But Jesus, being the Son of God, was able to lead a perfect sinless life. As is well known Jesus’ life came to an early end when he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and he was crucified. The death on the cross of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith. In effect it is an exchange orchestrated by God for our benefit. God planned that Jesus, his only Son, would die so that our sins can be forgiven.

I find it difficult to grasp the full extent of the implications of God’s generous exchange. When Jesus died on the cross he somehow took on all the sins of the world, both contemporary and future sin. God exchanged all the sin in the world for the life of the only perfect man that has ever lived. In this amazing deal God gives everyone the option to have their sins forgiven and be rewarded with eternal life in heaven. It sounds easy! Why would God do this, because he certainly doesn’t seem to get much from the deal? The simple answer is God does this because he loves us and has given us the freewill to decide for ourselves.

Now as we would expect in our material world such a promise does not come without a condition. The sins that you and I commit can be forgiven by God. We need to take action to have our sins forgiven; we need to say sorry for our selfish ways, the things we do that are not motivated by love. Christians would describe this as “repenting our sins”. We need to thank God for sending Jesus to die in exchange for our sins and recognise Jesus as our Saviour. If we do this genuinely, from the heart, then we will be forgiven and will get eternal life. This is what Christians mean when they talk about being saved.

Does this mean Christians can do whatever they want, knowing their sins are forgiven? Well no. If you accept God as Saviour and love God with all your heart then you will wish to lead your life to God’s standards or at least aspire to. I guess this is the hard bit, our motives are critical, we have to be genuine. If Christians aren’t genuine then the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful God will know. Basically it is back to love, which needs to be the primary motive for all a Christian’s thoughts and actions. And this is so difficult!

Sin - What is Sin?

Once I started reading about Christianity and talking to other Christians it soon became clear that sin is one of the key concepts to grasp when trying to understand Christianity. I have come to realise my view of sin was totally mistaken and I don’t think I had a particularly different appreciation to many other non-Christians. It makes you wonder how Christians have so let others fail to understand their view of sin for the last 2000 years!

I had assumed Christianity was all about being good, doing your best to live a virtuous life. A life in many ways defined by no and not: no swearing, no drinking, no smoking, no drugs, not being materialistic, acquisitive or obsessed by earthly things like money, fashion and gadgets. In short no fun. I thought a Christian life was about being sensible, acing in moderation and avoiding excess. In my mind Christians were the good guys, despairing of everyone else; the sinners. This makes Christians seem judgemental and even superior and not surprisingly can cause resentment. But this is not what Christians believe nor is it what Christianity teaches about sin.

So what is sin? Well, it’s a difficult question but the answer starts with God and our old friends Adam and Eve. For me sin is perhaps the main reason why we hear about Adam and Eve in the Bible. Most people understand the traditional story in so far as Eve follows the advice of the serpent and influences Adam to eat an apple from the forbidden tree. Then there is much more confusion. Somehow this was not a good thing to have done and it had consequences for the whole of humanity, not just Adam and Eve who were expelled from the Garden of Eden.

My view is this is one of those Bible stories that make a far deeper point easier to understand. God created a perfect world, with everything in balance giving humans all they needed to live. There was no need to grow food, plough fields etc, we could enjoy nature and live in harmony with God. I think of this as the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve symbolise humanity and the choice humans make to go against the wishes of God. This is one of those other Christian concepts, what gets called “freewill”. God gave us the ability to think and make decisions and Adam and Eve used it to decide to go against God and follow the advice of the devil (serpent). The result of this turning away from God is man has to work to feed himself and woman has to suffer in childbirth. Being expelled from the Garden of Eden is saying the perfect world became corrupted with the man made introduction of sin.

Christians know the advent of sin as “the fall” or will say that we live in a “fallen world”. It is mankind’s turning away from God and doing anything in conflict with God’s wishes that is sin.

The story is so human. It has behaviour and characteristics that are directly relevant today. Adam and Eve had everything they needed, but they wanted more. They had to have the one thing they were expressly forbidden from having. When they finally succumbed to temptation and had the forbidden fruit they were embarrassed and hid from God. They knew they had done wrong. Today we still have an innate sense of when we are doing wrong, even if we have no idea where these values of right and wrong originate.

Humanity as a whole is sinful, we are all sinful. Christians are sinful. The only human life ever lived that has been without sin, is Jesus, the Son of God. Humans clearly do many bad things that most would recognise as bad or sinful, they murder, steal, cheat on marital partners. But sin runs much deeper than that, humans do things that might not necessarily seem bad for selfish reasons and to look good. Our motives for action can make those actions sinful. Our motives are suspect when we do not act out of love.

In being sinful Christians are no different to non-Christians, except perhaps they are more conscious of it!. It explains to me why my Grandmother always used to retort “I go to church because I’m bad, not because I’m good” when one the family teased her about being a goody-goody who went to church. Christians should not judge people as judgement is Gods prerogative not ours. There is no hierarchy of sin, there is no thinking “well this is only a tiny sin” and “this one is a much worse sin”. A Christian recognises the sinful world, believes in God and loves him wholeheartedly. A Christian tries to conduct their lives in accordance with Christian teachings out of their love for God.

Having now said that we are all sinful, my next blog must be more cheerful! The good news is there is plenty to be cheerful about in the face of sin.

You can't Believe that Adam and Eve Story, can you?

The story of Adam and Eve was another of the reasons I rejected the whole Christian package.

We all know the story of Adam and Eve, don’t we? God created Adam, the first man on earth, put him to sleep and extracted a rib from which he made Eve. They lived at one with God in the Garden of Eden, a kind of paradise with plenty of food to eat. The devil in the form of a snake tempted Eve to eat an apple from the forbidden tree. This resulted in Adam and Eve being flung out of the Garden of Eden, with Adam destined to work land for food and Eve destined to suffer pain in child birth. The first couple had two sons, Cain and Abel, one of whom killed the other and somehow the whole world gets populated from there on.

This simplified account, or something close to it, is probably the account most non-Christians are familiar with. I am embarrassed to admit my views were formed without reading the biblical account in the first few pages of Genesis.

Having now read Genesis and works on the subject by other authors I have come to the understanding that many Bible stories are not meant to be taken literally. It seems this story would have meant something quite different to those who read it at the time it was written down. Most of us lack the contextual understanding of the language and culture to extract the full original meaning from the text, apart perhaps from some Old Testament scholars.

That said I believe there are a number of points we can clearly take from the story.

• God made the world perfect with people in his image
• In choosing to disobey God, humans brought sin in to the world
• Man has a responsibility to look after the earth upon which he lives
• Man and woman are meant to be together as one, in partnership.

I think in context of the other Genesis stories that both precede and follow Adam and Eve, the important point of the Adam and Eve story is that it introduces sin to the world. The successive descendents of Adam and Eve are shown to become ever more distant from Gods path, causing great frustration and anger in God. God’s anger eventually produces the flood to wipe out life on earth, apart from Noah who God allows to save his family and the animals because Noah is the only one who lives a good life. So from Adam and Eve’s initial sin humanity has a downward path of greater sin, until God regrets creating people and wipes them out apart from Noah and family.

Maybe one day in my studies I will reach a much fuller understanding of this story. I’m sure it can be pieced together, but for now it is enough for me to know it is not a literal story. The story is a mechanism for a deeper message, to teach us about the workings of God.

Can you really believe in Divine Creation

My rejection of the whole Christian package was largely based on my understanding of the Creation versus Big Bang debate. I could not see how to reconcile a seven day divine creation with scientific knowledge of the formation and development of the earth and universe. If the Bible was incorrect on this point, then it undermines its whole credibility. In order to become a Christian, confident in my faith, I have had to genuinely overcome this obstacle. This is my personal understanding, far simpler than academics on both sides of the debate, but how I have come to resolve the question.

The Bible is not a concise history of the universe and our world, nor is it a science book. It does not seek to tell us everything that has happened and how from the beginning of the universe onwards. What the Bible does contain is Gods message to humanity, teaching about our place in the vast universe, why we are here, the purpose and meaning of life, our responsibilities on earth, how we should conduct ourselves and the future that can be ours.

Genesis, the first book in the Bible, seems to have been written approximately 3000 years ago. It is amazing that something written so long ago can still cause such passionate discussion. Despite its age the Genesis creation story carries a timeless message for all, which is obviously the point.

I understand this to be essentially a simple message that is surrounded by much confusion. In context, the creation of the universe naturally is the first story of the Bible, but it is told in a single page before the narrative moves on to the Garden of Eden.

The simple message of the Genesis creation account is that God created everything.

There is no need to dwell on the seven days of creation or the particular order of the creation. The Bible often uses stories to help us understand its message. I am convinced this is a story to present the main point that God created everything. The universe is here because God created it, there is light and dark, day and night, land and water, animals and people because God wanted this to be so and made it happen.

Scientists are trying to answer the questions surrounding the what, when and how of the creation of the universe and human life. There is an excellent book by Bill Bryson, “A short history of nearly everything”, which succeeds in explaining science to non-scientists. I took from this book just how precarious life is and how perfect creation is. If the equations and balances at play were only just slightly different, then there would be no life. It seems implausible that all these perfect arrangements exist through random chance.

The science as yet is incomplete. Assuming at some point in the future scientists develop complete coherent theories describing and explaining life and the universe, we will still be left with the question, why? And why we are here? This is what the Bible is telling us. We are here because God made it so.

Christians Give Christianity a Bad Name

The wicked things done in the name of religion were one of the major reasons I rejected any involvement with any religion. There is a disgracefully long list of crimes that the Christian religion has been used to justify, including violence, fraud, greed, corruption and all kinds of atrocities. A few examples readily spring to mind:
Spanish Inquisition and the torturing of heretics

• Institutionalised child abuse within the Catholic Church
• Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland
• Catholics and Protestants burning each other at the stake
• The crusades in the Middle Ages
• Selling of dubious relics claiming to be from Jesus or other saints
• False TV evangelists who are always ready for your credit card

And I know there are many more that could be mentioned, but the most distressing fact is religion is still abused in this way.

What I have come to recognise is that you can’t blame God for the actions of those who claim to be Christian. God teaches us through the Bible and the example of the life of Jesus how we should conduct ourselves; acting always out of love. This central Christian message is separate to the actions of people, however much they claim to be Christian. People after all are only human; they get things wrong, have imperfect motives and are clearly capable of great wrongs. To deny the message of God because of the actions of some followers would be like blaming a football team for the behaviour of its supporters or blaming parliamentary democracy for the MPs expense scandal.

Christianity is primarily about a person’s relationship with God. He loves us and wants to have a relationship with us, but has granted us the free will to decide for ourselves whether we want this relationship. A Christian does not necessarily have to be part of a church or organised religion; it can be a very personal matter.

I have found developing a relationship with God a difficult concept to get to grips with and have been surprised to find many mature Christians also have difficulties. Like any other relationship it grows from small beginnings. It takes time and builds through prayer, which is just talking to God. I find encouragement in books by other Christians, reading about their experiences helps develop your own faith. I now enjoy going to church where I meet other Christians and feel part of a community (the Christian word for this is fellowship). Through church I have joined a house group where we study Christian teachings.

I now see church as a community of like minded individual Christians who come together to worship God.

There Must be More to Life...

Until recently I lived a Godless life. I felt there was no purpose to life. Modern scientific discoveries showed how the world was created by a big bang and that the universe has been expanding ever since. Over millions and millions of years the earth moulded itself by chance in to a planet that could host humans, who themselves are the product of evolution from some slimy organisms.

Between birth and death is a period of time called life, it is all there is, it is all we have. There is no purpose to life, it just results from a random set of circumstances that have given all of us an opportunity to have some time on earth. What we do with our time is up to us. Why not just focus solely on our own pleasure and not worry about anyone else?

I broadly accepted this accidental, random and meaningless nature of our existence in the world. But I have come to realise that this must be wrong. There has to be more to it than this. There are three key realisations that have changed the way I now view humanity and the world.

1. This World is Extraordinarily Complex

The world is supremely complicated where everything is connected, dependent and interrelated, and I am not talking about technology. Science is discovering how eco-systems work and how the natural world has a perfect balance as a sustainable eco-system. Humans with our insatiable thirst for knowledge and increased capability have developed the power to disrupt the natural balance. Consequently global warming, species extinction and raw material shortage are realities. I am sure human advances will be causing problems we don’t even know about or understand. It seems likely our knowledge is only partial, maybe only ever can be partial, and yet the natural world around us is so fantastically beautiful and intelligent.

It seems utterly implausible to me that the whole world could be the result of random chance. Surely it must have been designed. Even a relatively simple house does not get randomly assembled from a set of accidentally thrown together atoms. The house has a designer and builder. So how could this whole cohesive fantastic system, known as the earth, be randomly flung together? It seems implausible to me it could be a product of chance.

2. There is an Innate Sense of Justice

People have an innate sense of justice, a feeling that some things are just not right. Murder, physical assault and stealing are obvious examples. It is more than law that makes us think this is unacceptable, there is something deep within our core that tells us this is wrong. But it is wider than this we value honesty above dishonesty, integrity above duplicity, loyalty above disloyalty and love above hate. In fact where people engage in the less valued behaviour we tend to require a justification of actions. For example, consider the current MPs expense scandal in the UK Parliament.

What would life be like if everyone was only interested in themselves? It might be like one of those computer games, where the main character can act with impunity and shoot whoever crosses their path. I can imagine a world with endemic violence, deception, and greed, a world without trust, friendship and love, a world where people have no respect for their environment, other people or themselves and a world full of binge drinking, drug taking, neglect of children and rejection of responsibility.

Yes, this does sound familiar and perhaps it is what happens when we take God out of society, we turn our back on his values and pursue only self-gratification.

No, I thank the Lord that there is a different way.

3. People can be Unselfish

People do have a strong inner sense of unselfishness. We form friendships, groups, societies, become fans and supporters, campaign for others and causes, help other people. Above all we love, we trust. If our love is betrayed or our trust broken we are devastated and if we break someone else’s trust or hurt the ones we love we are disappointed in ourselves. We are clearly meant for companionship. A common thread that comes out of articles about people who have turned out to do bad things, murder etc is a lack of love in their lives from an early age.


These three realisations point me to the conclusion that there has to be a God. A God who has created mankind for his purposes, a God who has given people intelligence and free will to do what they decide, A God granting the consciousness of what is right and the desire and capability to behave in an unselfish manner. If more people could explore the teachings of God, through the Bible and the example Jesus gives in his life on earth, then our world would be a much better place.

Christian Beginnings

Becoming a Christian is a gradual journey for me. There has not been a single "Eureka" moment or "Road to Damascus" conversion that I can identify, where I know I became a Christian. When I was child my paternal Grandmother was a firm believer and attended her local CofE church each Sunday. I think she was more involved than that, but not totally sure in what way. I recall Grandma being the subject of family jibes about being the "goody-goody" for going to church. Her response was always the same, "I go to church because I am not a goody-goody, but because I am bad". I couldn't understand this, it did not make sense. How could my Grandma, a sweet old lady, be bad? I now know that no-one else in the family really understood this explanation.

Throughout my teens and twenties there were various things that kept me from developing a positive interest in Christianity. Whilst studying the Renaissance and Reformation periods of history I was appalled by the Church, this was mainly the Popes. Then I developed a keen interest in left-wing politics, blinding me to Christian perspectives, though I did recognise a similarity of some of their ideals. I have been on the periphery of a church since 1995 when I married my Christian wife, but at that stage was committed non-Christian. In fact I could go further as I was an agnostic.


I believed, and it was a belief, that you could not prove the existence of God one way or the other. If anything I thought there probably was no God because of various difficult objections I held.

• How could all the world's population be descended from Adam and Eve when they only had two sons?


• How can God have created the earth and the heavens when we now know it was created by the big bang?


• How can God allow there to be such evil and wrong doing in the world?


• Why do churches seem to be at the heart of many wars?


• How can God have created all the species on earth when Darwin showed they evolved?

These are big questions and there are lots more, but these will suffice for now. At first they precluded a belief in God, but I was beginning to look for answers to bigger questions. I had a successful career but was getting completely disillusioned with work, chasing money and promotions, defining success in terms of career progression, home, lifestyle and material possessions. In short, I was thinking there had to more to it than this. At this time there was an advertising campaign running with the slogan, "there has to be more to life than this". I seemed to come across the advert everywhere I went and looked. On billboards, radio, TV, magazines and newspapers the images and words kept greeting me, it was as if someone was speaking to me directly.

The advert was for something called the Alpha Course. I mentioned it to my wife who informed me there was one about to start at the church of which she was a member, so I enrolled. I started discussing God and asking for my wifes views, I started reading and thinking and shyly saying some fledgling prayers. Gradually my knowledge has grown and I have come to believe in God and accept that there is much that mankind does not fully understand. I know this sounds a cop out and so I will return to this subject later, but for now I am comfortable with this.

At the moment I am at the point where I believe in God. I believe that Jesus Christ is not only the son of God but was God on earth. I believe Jesus died on the cross for everyone. He died to forgive our sins. I believe he was resurrected from the dead. I believe he modelled the values that we should live by. I repent my sins and look to lead a life in this world inspired by Jesus and his love for all. I know that I am a sinner and that I am not perfect, that I am doomed to fall short of the perfect standards set by Jesus. But however I fail, Jesus still loves me. Jesus is the path to heaven and eternal life with God and all we have to do is genuinely believe, with all our hearts, that Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins and genuinely try in our imperfect way to live our lives in accordance with his values.

I'm not sure how theologically correct I am but I know I will continue to learn more with God's guidance. I now also know what my Grandmother meant. She recognised that she like everyone else is a sinner and needed the forgiveness of the Lord God. The true belief in Jesus dying to forgive her sins will have seen her to heaven. I hope to meet my Grandmother there again one day and talk about what I learned after her earthly death.