I've had cancer and I am not angry with God

When I first heard about Stephen Fry’s now infamous outburst against God in a recent interview on Irish TV, I admit that I dismissed it as the ranting of a celebrity amateur atheist.

However, I’ve started to take it a little more seriously after something I saw on facebook. What I saw was Stephen Fry’s ranting replayed in someone’s own words in commenting on a Christian tweet. “Reasons we should be angry with God,” said the person, “He allows all the suffering in the world. Cancer, rape, war, murder…”. Fry’s comments, I assume therefore, have struck a chord with a number of non-Christians, who would call themselves either atheists or agnostics. And therefore Christian responses also need to be heard and spread.

However, what follows here is not attempting to be a full response. In fact it’s not even how I would usually approach this issue.

What is on my mind on this occasion is simply that lots of Christians suffer and still love God.

In fact I have suffered myself and I am not angry with God. I have had cancer twice in the last 5 years and I am not angry with God.

I have been made redundant at least 3 times, and had one 8-month period where I was unable to find a job and almost came to financial ruin, and I still believe in God. In fact I love God.

Perhaps someone will say to me, as Satan suggested to God about Job (Job 2:4,5), that I haven’t suffered enough to really test my faith. Perhaps that’s true. And perhaps there are harder challenges to face in the future. But for now, no one can accuse me of speaking with no experience at all of suffering. At the very least people should concede that when I speak of my faith in relation to suffering I am not speaking abstractly.

I guess this is on my mind because people like Stephen Fry (when they say “God is mean”, “God is horrid”, “How dare you God?”, etc, etc) speak as if it’s obvious that if there is a god we should hate him for all the bad things that happen in the universe. And they don’t bother to ask what Christians actually believe about God and about the suffering in the world before making vitriolic statements. The implication is that if you’re suffering and remaining a Christian then you must be stupid, because suffering should lead you to hate God. But I want to point out, 1) there are, and have been, millions of Christians that have suffered and have not lost faith; and 2) the Christian worldview in fact does have a perfectly cogent positive explanation for the existence of suffering in the world.

Suffering is bad

Perhaps I should also make clear at the outset that I hate suffering. I hate cancer. I hate war. I hate murder and oppression. I hate earthquakes and the death of children in floods and hurricanes and plane crashes. Suffering is bad. Pain is bad. Death is bad. Illness is bad. There is no sugar-coating the awfulness of suffering, whether it’s the middle-aged lymphoma sufferer being laid aside for a few months suffering sickness, exhaustion and financial difficulty, or whether it’s the thousands of infants both killed and orphaned in the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.

And I could write another whole article explaining how those statements make sense within a Christian worldview but don’t make sense in an atheist worldview. If we are just randomly formed collections of atoms, developed as a species after billions of years of random mutations, how does it make sense to say that cancer cells are abnormal? How does it make sense to say that pain is bad? How can we make value judgments about random purposeless happenings, painful or not?

But that’s not what I want to draw out here.

The question I want to explore is: Why do we Christians love God in the face of such awful pain and suffering?

God is all-powerful and perfect by definition

First let me say that God is most certainly all-powerful and perfect. I say that because it’s common for atheists to argue that the all-powerful and perfect God of Christianity cannot exist because of human suffering. They say that a good and loving God would want to alleviate suffering, and an all-powerful God would be able to alleviate suffering. So they say that the fact that human suffering exists shows that such a God doesn’t exist. If a god does exist, suffering exists because he is either powerless to prevent suffering (and therefore he is not all-powerful) or he doesn’t want to prevent suffering (and therefore he is not perfect). The force of the Fry-type argument is the latter. But the outcome is similar.

And atheists and agnostics come to the same practical conclusions. An atheist may say that God doesn’t exist because if there was an all-powerful good God then there wouldn’t be suffering. An agnostic may say that there may be a good God, but if there is He’s irrelevant because He can’t do anything to make a difference in the world (this is the kind of God mocked in The Simpsons). On the other hand the Fry-esque agnostic may say that there may be an all-powerful God who created the world, but if there is He’s not worth bothering with because He doesn’t do anything to prevent human suffering. For both atheists and agnostics there is no God they want to believe in, and certainly no God they want to love.

But as a Christian I see things differently.

God created the universe. And if He is powerful enough to create the entire universe in all its mind-blowing scale as well as its infinitesimal detail, then He is certainly powerful enough to do something about human suffering. He could have made fire that doesn’t burn flesh. He could have stopped the earth’s crust from fracturing and causing earthquakes and tsunamis.  He made our emotions, so He could change our emotional responses. He made our bodies, so He could make them impervious to pain. He created desire, so He could have created only pure unselfish desire.

God is all-powerful by definition, because He created all by His power, and he created all power (heat, light, gravity, magnetism, etc) by His power.

And God did not have to create the universe. He was happy and complete without it. It was His decision to create it. And having decided to create the universe He wasn’t bound to necessarily create it in a particular way. There is no physical or logical law in the universe that meant God had to (i.e. was bound to) allow suffering.

So if I believe God has power to prevent suffering, and if I hate suffering, why do I still love God who still allows me to suffer, and others to suffer more? Doesn’t that make Him mean and uncaring? Doesn’t that also make Him hypocritical on one level, because He commands His followers to love and care for others, even their enemies, and yet He apparently doesn’t do everything in His power to do the same?

Before we get to answer that, though, there’s something else we have to be clear about. God is not just sitting back, folding His arms and not doing anything about suffering. He is not an idle bystander who could intervene but chooses not to. In the Bible God tells us that suffering is something that He initiated in response to human disobedience. God created a perfect world with no suffering, but God brought suffering into the world.

The first time suffering is spoken about in the Bible is in Genesis 3, where God responds to the first sin: “I will surely multiply your pain…” (v16); “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it…” (v17)

Stephen Fry and today’s angry atheists/agnostics make out that God allows suffering because He isn’t perfect. How can He be perfect? How can He be called Good if He causes and allows all this suffering? But the opposite is true.

God initiated human suffering and universal decay because He is perfect.

Being the Creator of everything makes God the definer of everything. Human beings, we’re told are created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27). That means we are made to function in the same way, with creativity, with relational capacity, with moral sense, acting, thinking, speaking, and so on. And by definition the original is always the perfect version, against which the ‘copies’ are compared. So when we look around the different moral standards operated throughout humanity, if we want to know what is perfect we must look at the original. God is by definition perfect, because we were made to be like Him. He is the original, who we were intended to be ‘copies’ of.

Sin has marred us as His special creation, because we have distanced ourselves from His character. We are no longer the perfect ‘copies’ that we were before The Fall. And just as sin marred us, God has ensured that human beings cannot live without the frustration and pain of an unmarred universe. Why should beings that have shrugged off the image of the perfect live in a world fit for the perfect?

So God’s omnipotence (all-powerfulness) and His perfection are foundational. If God is the Creator of everything He is all-powerful. If God created human beings in His image then He is perfect. And suffering, pain and death, are the consequences of sin ordained by the all-powerful, perfect God.

The unfairness of suffering points to the solution

Now at this point I’ll acknowledge that part of the struggle we have with thinking about suffering is not with suffering per-se. If Osama Bin Laden suffered, who cares? If Adolf Hitler suffering, who cares? If a mass murderer or terrorist suffers, who cares? Right? The suffering we struggle with is the suffering of those who don’t seem to deserve it: The child who has leukaemia, the poor who starve in the Third World, the families devastated by earthquakes and tsunamis. Even if we admit that nobody is perfect, the pain that some people go through seems out of proportion with their sin.

Why do I love a God who seems so unfair?

Jesus’ disciple, John, said, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10)

God loved us? With all the pain and suffering and misery and death in the world? God loved us?

Yes. Because if we struggle with the unfairness there seems to be in suffering, we need to ask ourselves what was the most ‘unfair’ suffering in the history of the world? The widest disparity possible between the extent of suffering and the amount it was deserved would be between infinite pain and sinless perfection. Jesus was sinless perfection, and yet on the cross suffered infinite pain in His death and in separation from His Father.

The worst suffering in the universe was inflicted on the One who least deserved it. And who is Jesus? He is God’s one and only Son. He is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), “all the fullness of God” is in Him (v19).

And what did He die for? As John said, He was sent “as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” He took the ultimate punishment that we deserved so that our sins could be atoned for, removed, dealt with, so that we wouldn’t have to face that punishment.

Paul characterized Christ’s sacrifice in this way: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:6-10)

Elsewhere we read, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)

So those who accuse God of not doing anything about human suffering are ignoring the most significant event in human history. In dying on the cross, and rising from the dead, Jesus, God’s Son, was not just dealing with suffering. He was dealing with the root cause of suffering – sin. He was dealing with the sickness and not just the symptoms. And that leads us to three points:

•      The physical suffering, pain, betrayal and rejection Jesus suffered, and the wrath he suffered at the hand of his Father on the cross, shows that we under-estimate the seriousness of our sinfulness. We don’t appreciate how much God’s image has been radically ruined in our selfishness, our desire for self-rule, our hatred of His rule. Because Jesus died for our sins we see in the horror of his death the horror of our sins. Not only is it what we deserve for our sins and our sinfulness, but you can get a measure for the seriousness of the disease from the seriousness of the treatment. Just as cancer requires drastic treatment like chemotherapy, surgical organ removal, stem cell transplants or radiotherapy, sin requires drastic treatment in the death of God’s only Son. That shows you how seriously God takes sin.
•      Jesus’ death takes away our sin, and through his resurrection God’s purpose was to give us the hope of eternal life. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul says in Romans 6:23, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” So our concern for the suffering and pain of this life (as well as the meagre pleasures) must always be set against the infinitely greater pleasures of the eternal life that is promised in Christ.
•      More than that – for those who have repented of our sinful, self-centred ways, and have faith in God through Jesus Christ, it is those very pains and sufferings that prepare us for the glory of eternal life by exposing to us the transience of this life. “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

It’s these perspectives that characterise the Christian gospel and worldview. It’s why the Christian worldview is good news, not just an alternative philosophical system. It teaches us, as it taught Job in the Bible story, to be humble as we both recognise our sin and recognise the eternal nature of God’s good purposes for His people.

That’s why Corrie Ten Boom could remain joyful and faithful when living in the squalor of the Nazi death camp.

It’s why Joni Eareckson-Tada has remained joyful and faithful after being totally paralysed below the neck in a diving accident 50 years ago.

It’s why the apostle Paul stuck to his mission to preach the gospel in spite of beatings, imprisonment, shipwreck, illness and persecution.

And that attitude is displayed by Christians the world over. Not perfectly, not consistently, but visibly and tangibly. Suffering may knock back the true believer. It should still shock us and move us. But rather than despising God for allowing it, we recognise God’s justice in it, and look to God our Father for our relief both now and for eternity.

My hope

Atheists and agnostics who tell us all the reasons why God is worthy of our hatred and anger imply in doing so that Christians are either sadly deluded or dangerously stupid. But I hope at least two things emerge from what I’ve outlined above:

•      Christians have a faith that is rational. Suffering is not a philosophical problem that undermines our belief in the existence of God. On the contrary: The big picture solution to suffering is what the Christian message is essentially all about.
•      The joyful, faithful, Christ-praising, lives of suffering Christians around the world, will I hope at least give pause for some thought among those tempted to jump on the Stephen Fry bandwagon. If Christians can be joyful in the face of the inescapable awfulness of suffering – some much much greater than my own – if their faith does not fail, shouldn’t that at least cause some tempering of the rhetoric?

Ultimately my hope is that somebody somewhere would read this and rethink their attitude to God, because of what Jesus Christ did on the cross, turn to him in repentance and faith, and enter into eternal life.

David Silvester’s Mistake – Was He Right or Wrong?

In my last post I was thinking about the reaction David Silvester received recently to his open letter accusing UK Prime Minister David Cameron of bringing God’s judgment upon the nation. In the letter he said that, “The Scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.” The particular breach he was talking about was the redefinition of marriage, passed into law by the British parliament months earlier, enabling same-sex marriages to take place. The natural disasters he linked to it were the heavy rains, storms and flooding that beset southern England early in 2014, and which continued to worsen even after his letter.

I observed last time that whether or not David Silvester is right to link the floods directly with the displeasure of God because of the same-sex marriage legislation, the reaction of the secular media and the public was really a reaction to truth that is central to the Christian message. He called homosexuality sinful and he portrayed God as involved in (and judging) the affairs of mankind. The reaction is because they don’t like the assertion that an unelected being is in charge, setting rules they don’t like, and enforcing them, whether they voted for Him or not. I concluded that since the gospel of love, forgiveness and hope cannot be understood without knowing what we need to be forgiven from and saved from, David Silvester was absolutely right to speak of an active sovereign God and point to the need for repentance from sin.

What I want to examine now is whether Mr Silvester is right to claim that the Bible clearly shows God as actively punishing wayward former-Christian nations with natural disasters; and whether he is right to link the winter 2013/14 floods with the same-sex marriage bill.

Sovereignty, sin and punishment

Mr Silvester claims that, “the scriptures make it abundantly clear”, and so we will turn to the Bible and check it out. Whole books are written on this subject, but let’s try to do it quickly…

1.  The Bible clearly conveys God as being in absolute control over His universe, and therefore nothing happens (including floods) outside of His purpose.  “For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses.” (Psalm 135:5-7) (See also Daniel 4:34-35; Psalm 22:28; 113:4.)

2.  The Bible clearly conveys God as holding every human being, family, community and nation responsible for living according to His rules, and judging them with His wrath for disobedience. (Psalm 9:8; 98:9; 96:13; 58:11; 149:7; 47:8; 94:10. See also Jeremiah 46.)

3.   God’s ultimate judgment will be in the future when this present creation is swept away and His people will inherit the new perfected creation, and the rest will be consigned to eternal torment being excluded from any of God’s blessing. (Revelation 20:11-15; 21:1-7; Matthew 25:46)

4.   However, the Bible shows us that God does act now in this life, punishing nations for systemic and ingrained wickedness, as well as blessing nations for genuine obedience. (Deuteronomy 9:4; Isaiah 13)

5.   In the Bible, God’s punishment on nations comes in the form of famine, wars, disease, economic hardship, division and confusion, being enslaved to other nations via debt, and the like (e.g. Deuteronomy 28). The 10 plagues on Egypt (Exodus 7-13) and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18-19) are among a very small number of occasions where God visits particular focussed judgment in a miraculous way. The Great Flood of Noah’s day (Genesis 6-8) was the only time recorded in the Bible when God used storms and flooding to bring about His judgment.

6.     Homosexuality is ‘an abomination’ according to God (Leviticus 18:22) and was one of the reasons that He punished the Canaanites: “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled... and the land vomited out its inhabitants.” (vv24-25).

So it’s clear that the Bible does portray God as all-powerful, able and willing to punish the disobedience and wickedness of nations directly, both now and in the final judgment. And it’s also clear in the Bible that homosexual sex is something that God sees as sinful and worthy of punishment, and that He uses both natural and human disasters as means of delivering judgment upon nations.

It’s also probably true that God does hold His own people under stricter discipline, and that the UK monarch’s coronation pledge in church, before God and all UK citizens, to rule according to ‘the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel’, makes the UK a Christian nation.

So I can see why David Silvester draws his conclusion that the UK is under God’s judgment, that same-sex marriage is part of the reason for that judgment, and that natural disasters (i.e. floods) are a manifestation of His judgment.

But there is, however, some evidence to the contrary.

Not an exact link

Jesus explicitly rebutted the claim that if bad things happen to people they must be worse sinners than those who don’t suffer. He was asked (Luke 13:1-5) ‘about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.  And he answered them,  “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?    No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.    Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem?    No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”’ So there were no specific sins to which those disasters could have been linked.

We might also consider that the famine in the time of Joseph (Genesis 41 and following) was not explained in the Bible as a punishment of the Canaanites, any more than the wealth that the Egyptians gained through it was due to their righteousness. And yet it was God who warns Pharaoh of it in advance, and God who brought it about.

We should also consider that the Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman empires were for long periods very rich and successful forces in the world, and yet that was not because of their righteousness, for they were some of the most corrupt and brutal regimes in world history.

Even in our living memory we could point to the fact that we suffered the horrors of two world wars during a period when church attendance was high and Christian morality was still very much adhered to by the majority of the British and American population. However bad the 2013/14 Southern England floods were, they caused nowhere near the same level of destruction or loss of life as the World Wars, and yet Christians would argue that we have generally morally declined rapidly since then.

So however much a disaster looks to be an extraordinary work of God, we are not entitled to draw the conclusion that it is aimed as a punishment on a specific misdoing.

Let me clarify further by saying that I do believe that the UK and other Western nations are under the judgment of God. Social fragmentation, economic crisis, STDs, increasing health and psychological problems, etc are all evidence of God’s wrath. And the weakness of the church is also a sign of God’s wrath. And I could even agree that the floods were part of God’s punishment, because they are financially draining on the country’s financial services sector (insurance companies).

And I also believe that the UK and Western nations have been gradually eroding Christian morality as the basis for national government and law – whether that be the abolition of the death penalty, the legalization of abortion, the acceptance of sex (hetero- and homo- sexual) outside of heterosexual marriage as normal, Sunday trading, talk of legalizing euthanasia, embryo research, not curbing the greed of rich bankers, or changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

What I can’t find support in the Bible for is the assertion that a particular spell of bad weather, or a particular catastrophe, can be linked to a particular rejection of God’s laws, unless God explicitly says it is.

A sad reaction to a slightly misguided prophet

So I do think that David Silvester is wrong to confidently assert that the winter floods were God’s judgment on the UK because of the same-sex marriage decision. There is no Biblical justification for saying that.

However….

I also think that if He were here in person, Jesus may have said something similar to his statement in Luke 13, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” In other words, God is in control, He is causing the rain, wind, storms and floods. And we are sinners, rejecting His ways. And He does threaten awful punishment for those who reject His Son and fail to repent of their sinful ways – definitely in eternity, but sometimes in this life too.

Sometimes even if natural disasters are not directed at any particular sin, the events demonstrate to us tangibly, visibly, audibly, physically,

1.     How powerful and awesome God is, because He has power over all those events; and

2.     That we have no strength to resist His power.

Natural disasters cause us to fear because we cannot resist or control these things, and that fear is really the fear of God, because He is behind it all.

I find it very sad that the reaction to hearing about God’s judgment is not fear. If you found yourself in gangland territory, and heard that you had annoyed the local mafia (even if you thought you’d done nothing), you would fear. Why is there no fear when there is a suggestion that we are on the wrong side of the Almighty Creator and Owner of the entire Universe, and that He is angry? Why aren’t we quaking, asking what we have to do avoid His wrath? Why don’t people at least ask whether this is true?

The reason is because our sin has blinded us. Our desire to determine our own destinies, our desire to live the way we want to live with no one telling us what’s right and wrong, has eclipsed our natural human sense that we are created and are responsible to our Creator. It’s as if we’ve turned the volume up on the TV deliberately so loud to blot out the voice of conscience, just because we don’t want to change…

It just shows how far we have strayed when we can even block out the voice of these storms. Because even if the floods are not a particular judgment on a particular evil, they still shout at us, “God is awesome! Don’t be on the wrong side of Him!” Events like this should force us to face up to the fact that Christianity is not a private religion – God in my little heart. If God is God at all, He is awesome, owns everything that exists, and can do anything with anything that exists. He can’t be limited to church buildings, and particular places or times. He is the One to whom every created being owes their existence, and every human being owes their worship.

The sad thing about the mainstream reaction to David Silvester’s letter to the Henley Standard is that the overwhelming response is ridicule and horror and not fear and repentance.

The prophets of the Old Testament faced the same kind of reaction among the Jews, who were supposed to be God’s special people. The prophets predicted God’s judgment upon their waywardness and unfaithfulness, and they were often locked up, beaten, ridiculed and chased into hiding (take Elijah as an example).

On the other hand when the prophet Jonah (the one of the Big Fish) went to the non-Jewish Ninevites and called them to repent in order to avoid God’s judgment on them, they did in fact repent. They wept and mourned, and God saw that and turned away from the punishment He had planned.

And the big point of Jonah’s story was that whilst the Jews were persecuting prophets, thinking that God would never do anything bad to them, the people they considered to be beyond mercy were receiving mercy because of their heartfelt repentance.

Conclusion

David Silvester may have been theologically incorrect to assert a firm link between the disastrous Southern England flooding of 2013/14 and God’s anger at same-sex marriage. However, he was not wrong to point out the wrongness of same-sex marriage, and homosexuality in general. He was not wrong to call for repentance. And He was not wrong to point to God as The All-Powerful Creator and Judge. For the gospel to be understood, these kinds of things need to be said.

As Christians we should be praying that God will turn hearts from ridicule to repentance, because He can do that as well. And in the meantime, we should stand with David Silvester and continue to proclaim the good news of salvation from God’s wrath, through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

The risk of offending people

Whose Rules Rule? - Part Twelve

Should we try to avoid offending people?

This is the last part of this series and I would be surprised if I haven't offended anyone by what I've been saying over the past few months. As I've said throughout the series, talking about morality can be unpopular in a culture that is based on the ultimate final authority of self. A detached discussion is almost impossible, since we are moral beings, when most people see themselves as ultimately in control of what defines right and wrong in their own lives.

And yet this is something that Christians are rightly very sensitive about. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:32, "Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God," meaning give no offense to anyone. Jesus said, "Judge not, that you be not judged." (Matthew 7:1) We know we have good news to share with people, we want to share it, and offending people causes them to shut their ears and refuse to listen to it. We don't want to judge people, because we know that we too are sinners and are only saved through God's grace in Christ. To try to remain at peace with those around us, so that we may have opportunity to share the good news of the grace of God in Christ with them, is a very laudable aim.

So I want to make two points. First, I want both Christians and modern non-religious people to understand that simply talking about morality, saying that something is wrong, immoral, unrighteous, or sinful, is not in itself being judgmental. A judgmental attitude involves portraying ourselves as better than someone else, looking down on them. Romans 14:10 makes this clear: "Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God." Paul equates passing judgment on someone with despising them, and his reason for saying that it's wrong is that we are all equally deserving of judgment. That ties in with something I talked about in parts 7 and 8.

That's why I have spent such a long time trying to get across that the difference between Christian morality and non-religious morality needs to be understood. Non-religious people understand discussions about morality within their own frame of reference, and that is that all morality is relative and guided by our personal preferences. Christian morality, however, does not fit into that. We have an objective basis for our moral code.

So simply saying something is wrong is not being judgmental. Saying something is wrong in a way that despises other sinners and puts ourselves in a superior position is being judgmental, and is not speaking in the way Jesus would want us to. So we need to learn a compassionate way of speaking about morality, one that makes it clear that we are equally under the law and equally sinners, and that the reason for our talking about morality is in order to lead them into the way of salvation. We want to see them saved, we want them to have eternal joy and life, we want them to find true fulfilment. But they will not get that without recognising and repenting of their sin.

And neither can we say we are better because we have repented and turned to Jesus in faith. Faith is itself a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8,9). We are, without the work of God within our hearts, dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-7). Jesus himself said that we must be "born again" (John 3:3) in order to see the kingdom of God - in other words something must happen to us that we cannot initiate ourselves. Our salvation, as Christians, is dependent entirely on God's grace.

If the people we speak to will listen carefully and graciously, then they may at least understand this point, even if they don't come to accept God's authority in all things including morality. On the other hand, it may lead them to take even greater offense.

You see - and this is my second point - even when people see clearly that we don't judge people automatically by making moral statements about right and wrong, the Christian message may still be offensive to them. Paul talks elsewhere about, "the offense of the cross" (Galatians 5:11).

Why would the wooden cross that was used to kill the Lord Jesus Christ be offensive? Because it demonstrates the justice of God, the kind of wrath He pours out on disobedience. It demonstrates that no one can see themselves as automatically "in" with Him, but they must go through His Son, Jesus Christ. The cross demands repentance, it demands we put our faith in someone who is genuinely better than us, genuinely greater than us. He is perfect, and yet He suffered death for our sake. But we don't want to be told what to do, who to have faith in. We don't want to submit to anyone. We love our sins, our sinful personal preferences. Repentance is an utterly repugnant idea to us.

We hope that people will accept our message, but we should not expect everyone to do so. Paul said of his own ministry, "For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life." (2 Corinthians 2:15-16) In other words, if God is working light and life within a person, He will use our words to save them. But if not, our words will be to them an offensive, deathly stench that will only push them further away.

Therefore, we should not tone down our message simply because people are offended. When people are offended we need to understand that they are feeling threatened by the very core truth of the gospel - that we are responsible to God and we have failed Him and deserve His wrath. That is actually a good thing. Without seeing that, no one would be able to understand the need for faith and repentance.

To put it another way, following the parable I gave last time, if I were to offend people by warning them that they are going the wrong way on a countryside walk, and are heading towards a cliff edge and towards certain doom, what should concern me most? The fact that those people are annoyed with me? Or the fact that they are continuing towards the edge of the cliff? What would I do? Stop talking about the fact they're going the wrong way, because they want me to shut up? Or keep talking, finding any way possible to get them to realise that they are in danger?

So I hope we are all, by now, challenged to keep talking about morality, to base our moral statements/arguments firmly on what is in God's Word, to use the opportunity to expose the bankruptcy of non-religious foundations of thinking, to recognise where the offense we cause is because of the truth, and to love the gospel and love our Saviour all the more.

To Jesus Christ be all the glory. Amen.

All may come! All may be saved!

Whose Rules Rule? - Part Nine

We learnt last time that the equality of human beings within a Christian worldview involves not only being created as special by God, in His image, but certain other things that are universally true of human beings. As human beings we are universally tainted by sin - we have a sinful nature. Our natural inclination is to sin and to be self-centred, rather than God-centred. And as universally sinful we are all headed towards a Judgment Day that will not go well for us, and we would all be sent to Hell without some intervention. The fact that we all die is one sign of that truth. Physical death in human beings would not have happened except as a consequence of sin. But we face the prospect of something much worse than death.

The good news is that Jesus Christ, God's own Son visible 2,000 years ago as a human being, died to take away sin and take away wrath. His death was the punishment for the sins of all those who believe in Him. He took our place. He suffered not just the physical agony of the crucifixion, preceded by the beatings, lashings, ridicule and betrayal. He suffered the separation from God that we deserve - on the cross He cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) That was a reference to a psalm of the old scriptures, but it reflected what He was going through on the cross. He was put out of God's presence, away from everything good. In a very real way, He suffered hell for us.

But He didn't suffer hell forever, as we would. He rose from the dead, with a perfected body, to show that He has conquered sin and death and Hell. Instead of those bad things, we can look forward to also rising from the dead and having a perfected body. And on that day we will also see a perfected creation, what the Bible calls "the New Heaven and New Earth" (Revelation 21; see also 2 Peter 3:13).

And Jesus did that all for us, for whoever will put their trust in Him.

The offer is universal, to every single human being on the planet. We are all equally graciously offered eternal life, forgiveness of our sins, renewed access to God (the source of all good) forever.

Going back to Romans chapter 5, verses 6-11, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

"Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

And later in verses 18-19, "just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous."

We are all sinners, we all deserve God's wrath, and we are all offered forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus Christ. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

The way that we get access to this free gift of eternal life is simply through repentance and faith (see Acts 3:19 and 16:31, for example).

Faith is believing not just the facts about Jesus, not just believing that the Bible is true. Faith is trusting in the person, Jesus Christ, that He has done the necessary work so that you can look forward to receiving the promised forgiveness and eternal life.

Repentance means you stop doing sinful things. It means you stop acting like you are the final authority, and you acknowledge that God is the final authority and you submit to His authority. You stop doing things because of your self-centred desires, and start doing things because you want to do what God wants.

Sometimes I feel like we ought to be specific occasionally. So, for instance, repentance means that if you are an abortionist, you give up your job killing babies. If you are a prostitute, you stop selling sex. If you engage in homosexual sex, you do so no longer. If you are sleeping with a person you are not married to, you stop. If you are violently aggressive, you become peaceful. If you are involved in fraud, you stop and be honest. If you are greedy and selfish, you start to be selfless and open. And I could go on…

Repentance means acknowledging the sins of the past as sins, and resolving never to return to them.

But it's also much more than specific lists of dos and don'ts. Repentance is about recognising that God is above all, and we should obey Him, and trust Him, and if that means giving up something that He says is sinful then we do it happily. Repentance means we no longer usurp God's authority in our own lives. We no longer act as if we are the final authority when it comes to right and wrong in our thoughts, words and deeds. We acknowledge God's final authority. And that is a fundamental shift in worldview. I hope that has become clear over the nine parts of this series so far.

Hence when Christians speak about morality, calling for purity and repentance, we do so from a standpoint of equality, not supposed superiority. We are not only equally created, but equally sinners, equally wrath-deserving and equally called to repentance and faith, equally offered forgiveness and eternal life.

Our view of ourselves should give us a humble attitude when we stand for God's morality, and maintain that abortion is wrong, pornography is wrong, etc, because we know that we are not superior in God's sight.

It is Jesus Christ alone who makes the difference.

The road to hell is wide

Whose Rules Rule? - Part Eight

To recap, I've been talking for a few months about morality and it's place in Christian thought. I've compared Christian rational foundations with non-religious foundations. Non-religious philosophies, I've argued, have no rational basis for morality. They want to say some things are right and some things are wrong. They even sometimes treat Christians as if we are evil because we transgress their rule that no-one is allowed to question their authority! But because they have only themselves to turn to for authority, because their fundamental belief is that humans are no more special than rocks, apes, dolphins or roses, because they can't define anything objectively, their rules reduce to arbitrary preferences that they try to enforce on everyone else.

In the last couple of articles I've tried to show the foundations that Christians have for morality in more detail. Our responsibility is to God, because He created human beings to have a special relationship with Him. We are created equal. But because of the sin of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, every descendent has been tainted with self-centred, God-rejecting, sinfulness. And out of that sinful, self-centred heart comes immorality and sin. Human beings are equally sinners.

The consequences for sin are the same for every human being too.

Since all sin is an expression of a rejection of God's authority, He is perfectly justified to be filled with wrath and anger and indignation. The Bible warns us that we will all one day face God's judgment, and our sinful rejection of God's authority will be punished forever. Frankly, we deserve Hell.

People baulk at the idea of Hell, but if we only understood the nature and perfection of God we would see that it is the only punishment possible. God is perfect, and the source of everything good - love, joy, peace, perfection. To be cut off from God is to be cut off from the source of everything good, and therefore to suffer everything bad for the rest of eternity. Those who reject God's authority, because they would rather go their own way, want to enjoy the good things that come from God - beauty, love, joy, peace, power - but they refuse to submit to Him. God only allows that situation temporarily in "this life" - up to 80 years or so nowadays. When the Judgment Day comes, those who reject God's authority, evidenced by their sin (using the good things God has made and given to them for their own selfish ends, rather than for the purpose He gave them), will be given what their actions deserve - to be cut off from God forever, and therefore sent to an eternity without access to anything good, sent to Hell.

"It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment…" (Hebrews 9:27)

"For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience." (Ephesians 5:5-6)

"… following the course of this world… among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind..." (Ephesians 2:2-4)

We may not all be equally sinful, but we are equally sinners and therefore equally deserve God's wrath and the eternal punishment in Hell that comes with that.

I'm going to publish the next chapter soon, but I do want to give you chance to dwell on this for a little while. In fact, if you are reading this retrospectively (in other words, you are picking up the series after the series has been completely published) then I'd encourage you to pause here and reflect.

This is not popular stuff, but it is reality. It's not just idle talk, it's not simply for lecture theatres, pulpits and blogs. It's not simply "very interesting stuff". It's about our eternal destiny. It's what will really happen in history because of what our real actions have been based on. And that's why it's important, as Christians, that we don't shirk from talking about it, unpleasant though it is.

I once talked to one of my housemates at university about the gospel, and tried to do so as sensitively as possible. At one stage, though, he asked me outright, "so you believe I'm heading to hell?" I said quietly, "Yes, I do." And he walked out of the room, and didn't speak to me again… ever. He avoided me until the end of the summer term, and that was his final year. I have not seen him or heard from him since that day in 1991.

In the film The Day After Tomorrow, one scene always strikes me. The film is a disaster movie, about how a particular combination of weather events conspire to bring about extreme weather across the whole world, leaving half the USA under snow and ice. Dennis Quaid plays the heroic scientist (Jack Hall) who predicts the events, and then has to go and find his son, Sam, who is trapped in the ice in New York. Having managed a brief conversation on the phone with his father, Sam knows that the best chance for the group of survivors he is huddled with in the New York Public Library is to stay indoors. If they go outside they may get caught in the huge freezing cyclones that are moving over the world, and they will freeze to death in seconds. At one stage the survivors in the library get impatient and talk of moving on to find better shelter. Sam pleads with them not to, telling them what his father has told him. He knows that by going outside they will die, and he tries to warn them. Some of the group simply ignore Sam, some argue with him and tell him to be quiet. Even when he explains that his dad is a climatologist and knows what is happening, and that he has just spoken to him, they still refuse to listen. All except a couple of the group go outside. Jack discovers their frozen bodies as he treks north through the snow to try to rescue Sam and his friends.

It strikes me that this is like the way Christians are treated when we try to warn about hell, eternal punishment. What we are doing is warning, because we have been told by our Father, that a big storm is coming - a Day of Judgment. Yet we are ignored, marginalised, mocked and sometimes shouted down for doing so.

The worst outcome can be avoided by listening to the Son. Jesus.

If you are not a Christian, don't, whatever you do, exit this series at this point. There is good news to come.

Riots in England 2011 - thinking about the reaction

A lot of articles have been written trying to come to terms with the recent riots and looting in England (August 2011). Most people I spoke to while it was going on were asking "Why?" 

In fact, just stating the fact that the incidents occurred in England says a lot. Nothing of note happened in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. So there were no sectarian undertones involved. There may initially have been a hint of racial disgruntlement, but this was actually expressed peacefully and was not part of the violence. The attacks were mainly on property, rather than people. People who got hurt were almost invariably protecting property. No organisation, as far as I can tell, played any part in encouraging or organising violence. 

But why? Few of those involved can really give a reason or purpose that anyone else can understand or believe. Many people have attempted explanations based on political agendas. Some point to the withdrawal of community services because of cost cutting, and the social exclusion of the lower classes. Others point to the dismantling of the fabric of society (e.g. the attack on the traditional family) by the "liberal intelligentsia" and the previous socialist government. Others cite the "entitlement culture" which encourages people to feel they should expect to be provided for, whether they work hard or not.

We've heard the offenders spoken of as "feral rats". I've heard people I know rant about them, saying they should be packed off to Afghanistan to see what it's like at the sharp end. Some have ranted that they should be lined up and shot, or that they don't deserve any place in our society.

So there has been widespread condemnation of the rioters and thieves, and a whole lot of finger pointing as we try to understand the reasons. And on top of that there was criticism of the police for not preventing it all.

The Prime Minister spoke of pockets of society being, "not just broken, but sick." In the Daily Mail article by columnist Melanie Phillips (11 August 2011, www.dailymail.co.uk), she begins her lengthy analysis by saying that these events were the, "all-too-predictable outcome of a three-decade liberal experiment which tore up virtually every basic social value." She goes on later to say that, "What has been fuelling all this is not poverty, as has so predictably been claimed, but moral collapse… We are not merely up against feral children, but feral parents." 

She brings her article to a close by saying that, "Repairing this terrible damage also means, dare I say it, a return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality… When church leaders stop prattling like soft-headed social workers and start preaching, once again, the moral concepts that underlie our civilisation, and when our political leaders decide to oppose the culture war that has been waged against that civilisation rather than supinely acquiescing in its destruction, then - and only then - will we start to get to grips with this terrible problem."

And lest I be misunderstood in what I am about to say, I believe that Melanie Phillips has some very perceptive observations. I too have been concerned through the New Labour years at the attempt to break down the family, but I think if we're honest the rot started a lot further back than 1997. And it wasn't 1979 either, when the socialists say that we all became materialist through the work of the Thatcher government. It was probably also further back than the "permissive society" that boomed in the 1960s (before I was born). 

I also think it is right to track down lawbreakers and see that they face justice - that should go without saying. People who do wrong things should be punished for their wrongdoing.

So what is my take on it all… for what it's worth!?

I tried to think of where Jesus might have focussed his attention. Did He condemn the rioters, fraudsters and thieves of His day? Did He condemn the lone-parent families, the prostitutes and the drunks? Who were His harshest words reserved for?

The conclusion I came to was that Jesus reserved His harshest words for the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious traditionalists, who thought they were above everyone else because they kept the law. They looked down on the tax collectors (fraudsters), prostitutes, the adulterous, the irreligious. They would have been the ones wringing their hands over the collapse of the moral fabric of society. They were morally upright and perfectionist down into the fine detail.

But why did Jesus condemn them? Why did He call them "whitewashed tombs" (Matthew 23:27)? 

Basically it was because they thought they were better than everyone else. They thought that their morality and uprightness made them more acceptable to God than the ordinary Jew, and certainly a cut above the tax collector and sinner. They followed the letter of God's law, and even embellished it, but they did not understand what God's law was all about.

And that's what I think we see today too. We see non-religious Pharisees, the respectable middle-classes, the Daily Mail readers… those who spit blood as they talk about lone parents on benefits, immigrants, youths outside Tesco Express, the language of young people today. We think we are so much better than the looter, the rioter, the inarticulate gangster ("init bruv"!), the heroin addict, the binge drinker, the uneducated. In contrast we are respectable, we are upright, we give to charities, we are on the school PTA, we discipline our children, say 'please' and 'thank you', we don't have too many children and we are polite to our neighbours.

I think it would be just as much a shock now as it was then for the Pharisees to hear Jesus call us sinners, as much sinners as the rioter. Perhaps Melanie Phillips might be shocked (although I don't know her, so I shouldn't personalise my point) to be called a sinner alongside the looter and the liberals and Harriet Harman.

The truth is that Jesus calls us all to repent of our sin, and to turn to Him. If we "return to the energetic transmission of Biblical morality" - and we should - it should be to serve the energetic transmission of the good news of salvation for all sinners. Truly Biblical morality, of the kind that Jesus preached, is the kind that calls us all sinners, all under the judgment of God, and all heading for Hell. But the Christian gospel is the good news that all are called to repentance and faith, and all are offered eternal life through Jesus' death and resurrection.

And I could leave it there. But I think this opens a bit of a can of worms. You see, whilst the Jewish Pharisees of Jesus' day at least believed in God and knew what sin was, we middle-class Pharisees of the 21st Century do not even comprehend the word sin. We do not see why God shouldn't accept us. In our own eyes we are not bad people. I remember many years ago bringing an unbelieving friend along to a Sunday morning church service at which Lindsay Brown (of IFES and Lausanne) was speaking. Lindsay spoke very strongly of the need for repentance. My friend was extremely offended and fumed quietly afterwards that he had no need to repent because he had done nothing wrong. Many of us these days think like that.

So I'm going to spend a few more articles reflecting on Christian belief about sin and morality, how we should talk about it as Christians, and how it contrasts rationally with the non-religious worldviews of 21st Century Britain. I hope and pray that it will be useful.

Reflections on What it Will Be Like Meeting God on Judgment Day

When we think about dying and meeting God we should be afraid, afraid enough to think how we can prepare for that day. We will all die one day, and when we do we will meet our Maker! An atheist may say they don't believe they will have any conscious experience after death, and therefore they have nothing to be afraid of. But God has told us that we will all face Him after the end of our life in this world. We can choose whether we believe that or not, but that will not affect the truth of the situation. And the prospect of meeting the Creator, the Lawmaker, the Judge, the All-Powerful, the Ruler of Everything, should make us nervous.

I had an experience recently that made me think about this. It's not an experience I really wanted to talk about. I would rather forget about it, to be honest. But for the sake of a helpful illustration I will share! If someone finds this helpful then perhaps it will make a bad experience a bit more bearable!!

I had a claim for "Jobseekers Allowance" (a UK state benefit for the unemployed) turned down in 2009 when I had been out of work for eight months. I thought that was jolly unfair and so I appealed against the decision. I thought nothing more of it, since I finally found an interim management contract, and then fell ill. It was not worth chasing. But then a few of months ago I got a letter acknowledging my appeal and inviting me to a tribunal to hear the case. The hearing was several weeks ago, at the end of 2010.

I went along to the hearing having done a little preparation, but not armed with enough evidence to back up my case. I completely underestimated the formality and seriousness of the occasion. And I was utterly humiliated!

The case was heard by a "judge". Ok, not a real judge, but an independent lawyer with authority to judge in the tribunal. I walked into the room alone and sat at a desk facing the judge's bench, which was raised up on a platform. He spoke with a confident, posh accent - like the judges in the TV courtroom dramas.

He chided me for not bringing enough evidence, made me feel very small and reduced all my arguments to mumbling. I had set up my affairs in a particular way, and had not ordered them correctly in a way that would allow me to claim benefits. The fact that I had reached the point of selling a car, cashing in mortgage endowment policies and maxing out credit cards was of no interest. The fact that I had not asked advice from someone who could have given me good advice was of no consequence (even though I had asked advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau!). I had tripped over the letter of the law, I should have known better and my appeal was a waste of everyone's time. And since I had earned a fair amount of money before my lengthy spell out of work I was made to feel bad for even applying for benefits in the first place.

I wished I had taken the whole thing more seriously, but it was too late. I wished I had been better prepared, but it was too late. I wished I had brought an advisor or a representative with me, but it was too late. (Actually, to be perfectly honest, I wished that I had just given up on the claim in 2009 and not bothered with the appeal!)

My point is not the rights or wrongs of my case. My point is that the experience of sitting in front of an unsympathetic judge, on my own, with no advocate, no advisor, in a quiet room on a grey Tuesday afternoon, and receiving what I felt was a "telling off", was extremely unpleasant. I would rather forget about it.

Without Christ, when we face God, the Judge of all People, we too would go before Him alone. We would feel exposed. We would realise how unprepared we are. We would kick ourselves because it would be too late to do anything about it. We would kick ourselves for not taking this court more seriously. All our arguments and complaints against Him would be reduced to mumbling. We would not be able to exonerate ourselves. God's courtroom would be infinitely more forbidding and scary than the mini-courtroom I sat in. God would not have to say very much before our arguments would crumble, and we would realise that we should have known. And instead of being free to walk out of the hearing into the bleak streets of Reading, with only an ear-bashing and a failed appeal, we would go straight to face eternal punishment.

Many of us know this deep within ourselves, and we fear it. How will God, who sees everything, look upon our impurities, our selfishness, our greed, our sins? Can we really comfort ourselves with not being as bad as the worst? We're not Myra Hindley, Saddam Hussain or Adolf Hitler, but is that good enough? Everyone does things that are wrong, but is that a good enough excuse? Who will help us after we die to make our case before God, the Creator, the Judge? 

If we dwell long enough on the subject of our death, we realise that it will be a lonely journey. Can we really believe it will be a journey into darkness and nothing? Or will it be a lonely journey into the presence of the One whom we have spent our lives trying to avoid? And if we have spent our lives trying to avoid Him, how angry will He be? Who will help us then?

There is only one person who can help us. And only one way we can avoid this humiliation. That is Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 1:8-2:2) (NB. "Propitiation" is where God's judgment upon us because of our sin is turned aside by Jesus standing in our place, taking our punishment upon himself.)

Jesus is our advocate with God the Father. Jesus stands for us in the courtroom of God if we have faith in Him and repent of our sins. He speaks in our defence. God could justly punish every human being with eternal damnation for our rejection of His rule in our lives. And yet because Jesus, the perfect Son of God, came as a human being on earth, and took the punishment that should have been handed to His people, by dying on the cross and suffering separation from His Father, God can look at us in that courtroom and acquit us. And we will be acquitted, not because God simply sweeps our sins and wrongdoing under the carpet, but because His justice has already been satisfied by Jesus' death. All the wrath of God that we deserve was brought down on the head of the Son of God.

And God, through Christ, offers that forgiveness, to everyone if they will only turn, acknowledging their sin against Him, trusting in Jesus.

The bad news of life without Christ is death without Christ - a lonely journey to a courtroom where wrath with be full, wrath will be forever and wrath will be just.

The good news of life with Christ is eternal life after death with Christ - a life accompanied by the best friend and advocate anyone ever had, freedom to enjoy the new perfect creation that God will bring in to replace this passing universe at the end of time, a life never having to come in to the courtroom of God because Jesus has been there on our behalf.

Some more verses:

"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8)

"Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him." (John 3:36)

If you are not a Christian, understand that this is serious and true, and this is the reason why your Christian friends want to convert you so much!! Your urgent attention will not be wasted for all eternity.

For Christians these thoughts should fill us again with gratitude and worship, that we should be forgiven and redeemed even though we deserve wrath. And we should be filled with compassion and concern for our friends and family members who don't yet believe the good news, leading us to urgent prayer and taking every opportunity, with humility and grace, to share this salvation with them.

May none of us have to face the courtroom of God, but instead, through Jesus Christ the Saviour of the world, may we look forward to eternal life and friendship with God.