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!