Preaching about God's forgiveness /atheist friendly/

I keep repeating myself a question “why do we need God anyway?“ I know it is a school-based, almost child-like question among christians, but I think that in real application in practical life, the answer remains often just an non-applied value.

Here are some examples. Many students know this time of exam at universities, we can't do anything else than watch through two series of favourite TV series per day and we feel that guilt, we hear “the time was wasted“ and it keeps us from studying, we need to calm down...so we begin with another series. Entirely different story: recently I found out, that when you're hurting people, you feel that guilt, it makes you nervous, you can't sleep and the only thing you can do to relax your mint is to direct your self-hatred to other people and go on in the circle. Last example, quite rare, but I heard it more than once: A teenage almost adult boy likes girls a lot. After several wild nights he feels empty and incomplete, because he acts like a jerk, he feels the guilt, he can't sleep and he can turn it off only with another sex, which will clear his head for next few hours, but in the morning everything starts over.

So... what do all these have in common? The guilt. How to handle it, how to turn if off? We are close to the answer to question “why do we need God?“. To be forgiven! Everything else is just a patch – it will silent the guilt for a while, but it does not cure. And don't act like you have it all worked-out, that you don't have a guilt to get rid of. Few years ago I talked to one of my ex-teachers, he was so nice and so devoted. We got to the topic of forgiveness and he said “some things in my life cannot be forgiven“ and he talked about him self. Non-believer! We may drown the guilt by good deeds, but still – it is just a patch for a wound. When you pure clean water into the dirty water, the result is still dirty water.

I am no doctor, but I feel that when my knee is broken, the patch will not heal me. It will help a little bit, but the real healing is always from within. We feel that healing comes by itself, the body will cure itself, but it won't. When an open wound, first platelets gather around and make a scap (read: a patch) as a temporary substitue for missing part of the body, for example a skin. Notice the word “substitute“. Later, the curement comes, the body tissue must be reproduced – the only way your body does that is that it looks into the manual (read: DNA) to see what are the building blocks. The body will find out from DNA what and when needs to be grown to have all things complete. (experts will forgive mistakes in terms)

Sometimes we are so naive and think we know exactly what is the missing piece of our spiritual tissue and that we know what it should be replaced with, but in real it's still just a patch, a cheap substitute. Sometimes we think the time will heal this, but in real it is like with the broken knee: with time the pain isn't so hard, but everytime you hit something, it hurts like hell. Shortly: you need to find a real cure.

When hurt, you need to be as smart as your well-designed body and look into your manual (read: bible). Your diagnose is clear: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God“ (Romans 3:23). So now we're getting somewhere. What is a prognosis? “the wages of sin is death“ (Romans 6:23). Read further in your manual – the treatment is simple (but not easy) desinfection: “they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-- he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.“ (Romans 6:24-26).

Thereforen not a patch but regular treatment causes complete health. Important information: as you know, one and only use of the cure (read: the sinner's prayer) does NOT cure your future wounds. With each failure Christ is needed in order to use the cure. The cure is still the same, unlimited exporation time: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.“ (Hebrews 13:8). Use regularly.

This is the answer to a basic question. We, christian, should have this all worked out. Yet – for some reason the forgiveness is not enough for us, we don't feel good enough to be forgiven, we forget that it is FOR FREE (Romans 3:23) and NOT DESERVED (Romans 5:8). There are people, who think that Jesus went on the cross for all people in the world except them. Some people are tempted to believe that. Sometimes even author himself. Pray for those people.