Tag: Sin

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Hope in the face of death

More than 3 million people from more than 200 countries have died from Covid-19. These people come from every strata of society and every age group. Most deaths have been of elderly people but that doesn’t diminish the significance their deaths. None of us can escape the reality of death for ourselves and also for our loved ones. In 1750 Thomas Gray wrote his poem “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard” reflecting on those buried in the churchyard, “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, and all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, awaits alike th’ inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

The Bible teaches that death is the consequence of Adam’s disobedience at the beginning of history, which affected the whole human race. In his letter to Christians in Rome the Apostle Paul wrote, “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned. For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many.” Underlying the diversity seen in the different peoples of the world two things are common to us all – we all sin and we all die.

But the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, brought hope to people of all nations. The Apostle John wrote, “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.” The Apostle Paul explained the significance of God’s gracious intervention in Jesus, “The result of God’s gracious gift is very different from the result of one man’s sin. For Adam’s sin led to condemnation, but God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins. For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one man, Jesus Christ.”

Because of Jesus, Christians are able to face death with confidence. They believe his promise, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” Writing to Timothy, a fellow Christian leader, the Apostle Paul wrote, “This grace has now been revealed through the appearing of our Saviour, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

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If anyone is without sin

Personal attacks on individuals through social media have become a common feature of modern life. People who express what may be perfectly legitimate opinions find themselves being condemned on social media by strangers. Or they may receive hundreds of abusive emails, some making serious threats to personally attack them or their families. Those who make these attacks claim the moral high ground and seem oblivious to their own faults. In such situations the words of Jesus come to mind, “If anyone is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone.”

Jesus spoke these words when he was at the Temple in Jerusalem. While he was teaching the people, some religious leaders pushed through the crowd dragging with them a woman whom they had caught committing adultery. It was at the Feast of Tabernacles when the nation remembered how God had provided for them during the 40 years they had spent in the wilderness on their way to Canaan. During the feast some people lived in temporary shelters, called tabernacles, and the woman and the man may have been among them.

In their deep antagonism against Jesus the religious leaders were using the woman as a test case to find a reason for accusing him. They declared before all the people that the woman had been caught in the act of adultery and, according to the law of Moses deserved to die, although this penalty had not been carried for centuries. Then they asked Jesus, “Now what do you say?” If he did not condemn the woman, they would accuse him of false teaching.

Jesus looked them in the eye and said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” To the amazement of the woman one by one all the men began to go away. Jesus asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no-one condemned you?” She replied, “No-one sir.” Jesus declared, “Then neither do I condemn you, go now and leave your life of sin.”

It is a wonderful thing to know that God doesn’t condemn us. All of us have sinned, sometimes grievously, as this woman had. We are all guilty in God’s sight and have no right to expect his mercy. But God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Jesus is the Lamb of God who, by his death on the cross, took away the sin of the world.

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The light shines in darkness

Are you one of those people who really looks forward to Christmas? It’s a special time as the Christmas celebrations brighten up the long dark days of winter. It’s a joy to gather our family and friends together to spend quality time with each other. But, because of Covid-19, Christmas 2020 will be different. Although some restrictions have been eased large family gatherings are not permitted. People are getting ready for a “digital” Christmas.

Yet the wonderful thing about Christmas is that, whatever our circumstances, the Person who is at the centre of it all can fill our lives with joy and peace and hope. Jesus Christ was born in a lowly stable in busy Bethlehem in the middle of winter. Hardly anyone noticed as his teenage mother gave birth to her first-born son, but the birth of Jesus shone light into a dark world and that same light still shines into the darkness that sometimes invades our lives. Phillips Brooks’ carol “O little town of Bethlehem” says, “Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

The world into which Jesus was born was evil and dangerous. Not long after he was born, King Herod tried to kill him and wickedly ordered that all the little boys aged two years or under in Bethlehem and its vicinity should be slaughtered. Many mothers were broken hearted at the loss of their babies and little children. The young Jesus only escaped the slaughter because Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt for safety, taking him with them, and remained there until Herod died.

Thankfully, when Christmas focuses on Jesus it is can never be diminished or cancelled. In fact, the wonderful message about Jesus speaks powerfully into the darkest places of our lives. Seven hundred years before his birth the prophet Isaiah wrote, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Phillips Brooks’ carol closes with a prayer, “O holy Child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Immanuel.”

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Remembering VE Day

This weekend there will be an international celebration of the 75th Anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day. On 8 May 1945 there was a great joy when the Allied Forces announced the surrender of Germany; World War II in Europe was over. More than a million people celebrated in the streets, including the young princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. In a radio address to the nation, Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, “My dear friends, this is your hour. We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.”

A Service of Thanksgiving was held in Westminster Abbey gratefully acknowledging that God had heard the many prayers offered through the dark years of the war. The service opened with these words, “The Lord has done great things for us, which ought to be remembered. Let us, therefore, offer high praise and thanksgiving to the God of all mercies for the success which he has granted to us and to our Allies: for the faith which has upheld us through years of danger and suffering: for the skill of our leaders and the valour and steadfastness of sailors, soldiers and airmen: for the hope that we are about to enter upon a righteous and abiding peace: for the holy memory and high example of that great company of men and women, known and unknown, whose faith and courage God has inspired and used.”

The planned VE Day celebrations will be severely curtailed because of the coronavirus restrictions. Today the peoples of the world are involved in a different kind of deadly conflict. We are under threat from an unseen enemy and many have already died. The courage and skill of medical teams and carers have been an inspiration to us all. Victory over the virus is still in the future as great efforts are made to develop an effective vaccine.

At Easter we remembered the greatest victory ever accomplished when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, confronted our greatest enemies of sin and death. Human sinfulness causes untold misery and suffering and every day many face the last enemy, death. By his death on the cross Jesus paid the penalty our sins deserve. His death was a great victory. Before he died, he said, “It is finished!” His resurrection on the third day showed he had broken the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality. As we pray for those seriously ill with coronavirus, and those who have lost loved ones, we can rejoice in the hope Jesus gives; “for those who die believing die safely through his love.”

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That Great Day

This is the time of year when students receive their A level and GCSE exam results. It is an anxious time! Some are elated as they achieve the grades they need to move on to university or sixth form. Others are very disappointed when they fail to achieve the necessary grades.

It is a crucial time in the life of each student. Success opens the way for the future; failure seems to cast a shadow, although this is by no means always the case. In the past many who have not achieved the grades they needed to go to university have gone on to do very well in their chosen careers.

In preparing students for exams teachers always encourage them to work hard in order to achieve the best possible grades. Not all students take the advice and some hope that by a combination of natural talent and good luck they will get through. Often, however, the exams reveal their lack of preparation and poor results follow.

In many aspects of our lives we face assessment. Many employees have some form of appraisal which indicates their performance and effectiveness in their job. It is good to be appreciated and praised, but not easy to take constructive criticism which identifies areas of weakness and poor performance.

The Bible teaches that at the end of our lives we must all appear before God to be judged. This judgment will be totally fair and will be based on how we have kept God’s laws. There is no escape from God’s justice. Tyrants and evil people may seem to get away with their evil deeds, but God will call every one of them to account and they will be justly punished. History provides many examples of unspeakable wickedness. It is a great comfort to know that those who have done these things are called to account by God, who knows all things.

But the certainty of God’s judgment is a solemn thing for us all. None of us has kept God’s laws. All of us have sinned and have fallen short of what God requires. On that great day we will all need someone to stand with us to be our Advocate and Saviour. When he was dying, David Dickson, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, said, “I have taken all my good deeds and all my bad deeds, and cast them in a heap before the Lord, and fled from both, to the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him I have sweet peace!”

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We went there to save lives

The recent historical drama television series “Chernobyl” tells the story of the nuclear plant disaster which happened on 26 April 1986. It was the world’s worst nuclear accident. The Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin Atomic Power Station, near the town of Chernobyl in modern Ukraine, experienced what the authorities called a “minor accident.” The reactor experienced a catastrophic core meltdown, exploded and parts of the nuclear fuel were released into the atmosphere.

The effects of the disaster were felt over a wide area. In the first days after the accident 31 people were confirmed to have died from radiation sickness. In the years since the disaster there has been a significant increase in the number of people suffering from cancer. Some 100,000 people from the towns of Chernobyl and Pripyat were evacuated. People will probably never live in Pripyat again. As the wind carried the gigantic plume over Europe radioactive particles contaminated wide areas. In Britain bans were placed on the sale of sheep in Cumbria, Scotland and Wales. In some areas the restrictions remained in place until 2012. Mikhail Gorbachev said that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was the real reason for the collapse of the Soviet Union as people lost confidence in the authorities.

As the extent of the catastrophe became clear, more than 16,000 policemen and military personnel were deployed to extinguish the fire, remove the radioactive debris and enclose the ruin in a protective shell of steel and concrete. About 400 miners were brought in to dig a tunnel underneath the power plant to contain the contaminated material. As many as one in four miners may have died from cancer or radiation sickness. In the end, the core of the reactor cooled, and the tunnel wasn’t needed. All the people who tried to contain the Chernobyl disaster risked their lives that other might live. One miner, Vladimir Naumov said, “Who else but us? Me and my fellow worked were brought up that way. Not that we went there to die, we went there to save lives.”

At the heart of the Christian message is the good news that God, through his Son, Jesus, has intervened to save us from disaster. The great problem we all have is our sinful hearts. We live in rebellion against God and are powerless to change. We need someone to save us from the eternal consequences of our sin. One hymn writer wrote, “Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God, he to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood.”

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Remembering D-Day

The Normandy Landings began on 6 June 1944, known as D-Day. They were the largest seaborne invasion in history. On D-Day a flotilla of ships took 130,000 Allied soldiers over the English Channel to Normandy, they were joined by 24,000 airborne troops. Within a week more than 325,000 Allied soldiers had landed in Normandy and by the end of the month the number had risen to 850,000. They sustained very heavy casualties; 10,000 on D-Day itself and over 200,000 in the whole Battle of Normandy. The German army also sustained heavy losses.

Many brave young men perished on the beaches of Normandy. Some were killed within minutes of landing. My father-in-law, who was 27 years old, was one of the Allied soldiers who landed on D-Day. He survived but he saw many of his friends and fellow-soldiers die. When he returned home after the war, he didn’t talk about it for 60 years until his grandson and great-grandson visited Normandy and told him where they had gone. Many of the soldiers who returned from the Battle of Normandy were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but this wasn’t recognised, and they received no help.

D-Day was a decisive moment in the progress of the Allied campaign. The success of D-Day ensured that within a year the war in Europe would be over. On VE Day, 8 May 1945, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allies. There was a very heavy cost in winning the victory. It is important that we remember those who paid the ultimate sacrifice when they gave their lives to secure the freedoms we still enjoy.

Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He is the supreme example of someone who laid down his life that others might live. When he died on the cross, he won the decisive victory over sin, death and hell. By his sufferings he took to himself the punishment we deserve so that we might be forgiven and be free from fear and condemnation. When he rose from the dead, he gave us a living hope. His ultimate victory lies in the future when he will return in glory and power and the kingdoms of this world will become his kingdom and he will reign forever. He taught his disciples to always keep his ultimate victory in mind and to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.”

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Forgive us our debts

Student debt is a massive problem. Young people who go to university or college in Britain are given loans to help pay their tuition fees and living costs. Every year £16 billion is loaned to students. The value of outstanding loans is more than £105 billion. The Government forecasts the value of outstanding student loans will rise to £450 billion in the next 30 years. The average debt of a recent cohort of students, who have completed their courses, is £32,000. It is estimated that only 30% of current full-time graduates who take out loans will repay them in full.

In America the problem is even greater and has become an issue in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. The total U.S. student loan debt is more than $1.3 trillion and affects 44 million people. The average loan balance is $37,000 and increases every year because of interest charges. Today many Americans in their 20s, 30s and 40s consider themselves fortunate if their job pays them enough to make their student loan repayments. Some former students refer to their loans as a “debt sentence” which they will carry throughout their whole life.

The recent action of billionaire technology investor Robert F Smith has brought great joy to one class of students at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Morehouse College was established soon after the American Civil War to provide education for black male students. Martin Luther King Jnr. was a student at Morehouse. When he was at the College to receive an honorary doctorate, Robert Smith told the students in the class of 2019 that he would pay their student loans. More than 400 students will benefit from this gift which will cost tens of millions of dollars. The College President said the gift will give the students “the liberty to follow their dreams.”

The biggest problem we all face is not financial debt but the debt we owe to God because of our sins. Every day this debt grows, and we can never repay it. The greatest act of love and generosity in the whole of human history was when Jesus, God’s Son, gave his life to pay the debt of our sins. Every day millions of people pray to God, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” When we confess our sins to God, and experience his forgiveness, he sets us free to live a new life in fellowship with him; the life for which we were created.

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The day Jesus died

This week Christians will remember the death and resurrection of their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. On Good Friday they will especially remember his death. During his 3-year ministry Jesus had brought great blessing to many people through his teaching and his miracles. He made blind people to see, deaf people to hear, dumb people to speak. He healed lepers, cast out evil spirits and raised back to life people who had died. Wherever he went great crowds flocked to hear him and to be healed. Just 5 days before he died, Jesus was acclaimed by thousands of people as he entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey. But he was also hated by the religious leaders and even the people turned against him and demanded that he be crucified.

The death of Jesus was a great injustice. He was a good man, the best man who has ever lived. Pilate, the Roman Governor who condemned him, said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.” One of the criminals who died alongside him said, “We are being punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.” A Roman centurion who supervised the crucifixion said, “Surely this was a righteous man.”

The death of Jesus was also a great demonstration of God’s love. The Apostle Paul said, “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Religions teach us what we must do if we are to find acceptance with God. Our salvation depends on what we do. But Christianity tells us what God has done for us. We cannot stop sinning. Every day of our lives we break God’s moral law and are, therefore, guilty before him. Yet, amazingly, Jesus, God’s Son, died to take away our sins.

So Good Friday really is good because on that day we remember the best of all men who loved us so much that he died for us so that we might experience God’s forgiveness. The Apostle Paul wrote, “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So, we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”

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Remembering the Great Escape

Last weekend a service of remembrance was held in Poland to mark the 75th anniversary of The Great Escape. Stalag Luft III opened in Spring 1942 and was used to hold captured air forces personnel. At its height it held 10,000 prisoners of war, covered 59 acres and had 5 miles of perimeter fencing. About 600 prisoners helped dig the three tunnels which were given the names Tom, Dick and Harry.

On the night of 24-25 March 1944 two hundred men were waiting in line to escape but the alarm was raised before most could enter tunnel Harry. Seventy-six men escaped through the tunnel which was 336 feet long and 28 feet deep. Within three days seventy-three of them were recaptured by the Germans and fifty were executed on Hitler’s orders. The camp was liberated in January 1945 by Russian forces.

Flying Officer Marcel Zillessen was last in the queue. His father was German, and Marcus had studied at the University of Berlin, so he spoke German fluently. He played a key role in planning the escape as he gained the confidence of some guards and so obtained valuable items such as paper, pens and ink to help forge travel documents for the escapees. Later he survived the Long March in 1945 and died in 1999 aged 81.

His son, Tim, visited the former site of Stalag Luft III for the first time ahead of the 75th anniversary of The Great Escape. Speaking of his father Tim said, “Much changed after the war in the sense that it freed his mind. He was no longer materialistic and didn’t worry about the things that we would today. It must have been overwhelming for him at the end to be able to walk away a free man and alive.”

Freedom is very precious. The prisoners at Stalag Luft III made great efforts to win their freedom and some died in the attempt. Those who survived really valued freedom and life itself. Although we live in what has sometimes been called “The Free World” many people are anything but free. Ours is a materialistic society and we do worry about many things. Some are prisoners to debt. Others are addicted to drink and drugs, to gambling and pornography. Jesus came to set us free from the sins that bind us and to give us true life. He said, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”