Why did God forgive our sins?

Hi caldron68, You are the only one dodging anything."They" were not talking about anything.Jesus was talking to his disciples about their daily walk in life.So since you are such a great theologian explain what word in the sentence in Matthew 7:14 that says or infers heaven.Matthew 7:14 does say:Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leads to (abundant) life.It does not say or infer everlasting or eternal life.Matthew 7:13 does say:Enter ye in at the strait gate. Talking to His disciples telling them who are already born again, having possession of eternal life.For wide is the gate. Real easy to get through this gate.And broad is the way. Lots of ways to mess up.Many will go in at this gate. Most will mess up.And lest I forget it says this way ledeth to destruction.I see many posters here at EvC that put forth people who claim to be christians as reasons for not believing in God. Most so called christians are people who have never been saved.But sad to say that many of those being held up as bad examples are people who have made shipwreck of their life and testimony for Christ.Paul admonished Timothy to hold faith in a good conscience because some had put away concerning faith and had made shipwreck. I Tim. 1:19. Problem is you are the one doing the dodging.There is no option of heaven or hell offered to anyone In Matthew 7:13, 14.Again which words say heaven or hell?Which words infer heaven or hell?Leadeth to life does not refer to heaven or eternal (everlasting) life.Leadeth to destruction does not refer to hell or eternal punishment. When you destroy something it could not be eternal punishment.But if I was to start running around with several women in my church having affairs with them I would certainly destroy any creditability I had as far as teaching God's Word is concerned. So if Jesus was speaking to His disciples that does not matter it applied to everyone.I am going to have to cut this response short and get busy and I don't know when I can resume if you are correct.I just found this in the Bible that I must go do in case you are right.Genesis 6:14 says: "Make thee an ark of gopher wood. That is going to be a massive job and I have no idea what gopher wood is.It is really going to be difficult to build this ark because:Genesis 12:1 says: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land I will shew thee".In the meantime I must offer my son as a sacrifice to God.Genesis 22:2 says: "Take now thy son, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of".On second thought maybe I should listen to Jesus words in: And classify you as one of those false prophets I have been warned about. Why do I have to support my assertion with scripture when I can support it with facts and figures. You would tell me the scripture is a myth anyway.But on the other hand you have presented zero "0" evidence to support your assertion.Matthew 7:13-14 does not support your position as it is not talking about heaven and hell and you have not even attempted to prove that it does.You have asserted many times that it does. But your assertions are exactly that. Your assertions.The facts and the math prove that there are more going to heaven every minute than there is going to hell.Do you refute that there are 88 abortions performed every minute?Do you refute that there are 30 children under the age of 6 that starve to death every minute?Do you refute that the death rate is 104.666 per minute?Do you refute that Jesus is speaking to his disciples in Matthew 7:13, 14?Do you refute that the Greek word translated life in Matthew 7:14 means abundant life?Do you refute the Greek word translated destruction in Matthew 7:13, means utter destruction?Do refute these facts if so please present your evidence or refutation now.Or will you just dismiss them with "so what", "I know what I believe so don't bother me with the facts".Because if you are right I got a lot of work to do and I am already 69 years old and I do not expect to live as long as Noah did.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi caldron68, Well if I was standing in line that would mean I was waiting for something. Since this is the Great White Throne Judgment the only thing someone would be waiting on is judgment.At that time I will have already been judged and rewarded. I will have spent a 1000 years ruling and reigning with Christ.Therefore my appearance is not to wait on anything but to be a witness to the events taking place and face my accusers.When you come to this point you will see me and you will know who I am and that we had these exchanges and God the Son will say to you, "You have no excuse". The point is well taken and is an absolute fact.The problem is you have degrees of sin. (Murder is worse than lying).God has no degrees of what is good and what is evil. The little white lie is evil. Just as Murder is evil. To God there is no difference.It is either good or evil there are no shades of gray with God. Why?Because you assert it to be so.I will let you in on a little secret, there will be no human in heaven that deserves to be there.The only way anyone gets there is by the "grace" of God.Grace = unmerited favor.God made the rule.To go to heaven you must be born again. You are born again by the Spirit of God when you receive Jesus Christ as your personal savior.You don't want to play by God's rule, that is OK by me.Just remember He also set the penalty for breaking His rule.It is man's choice.He can play by God's rule or suffer the consequences.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Bertot, You did notice I did ignore the post.It is just hard to ignore all of their off handed comments. I am not sure it is meant as a distraction.I think it goes a little deeper than that. It seems there aim is to make fun of God and anyone who believe in Him or the Bible.As you know onifre is a comic and we give him much material to get on stage and spew all over the place to the devils crowd and get lots of laughs.Straggler on the other hand seems to have a personal war going on and is lashing out at anything that is God or God related.But I think you are correct when you assume they do not want to discuss what the Bible or God says and therefore want to change the subject.People who do not read or listen to the Word of God do not come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. So if you don't want to believe in God you better not read the Bible or listen at anyone who proclaims it. You must discredit the Bible and anyone associated with it. If not you may come under conviction and (heaven forbid} accept Christ as personal savior.I can tell them God loves them and that he paid their sin debt and that God forgives our sins because of the sacrifice made at calvary and they will ask me for evidence. I say you have to have faith.
They retort it is all just a myth anyway.But when I ask where the universe came from that was at T=10^-43 I am told, "It just is", or "We don't know". I ask for evidence, but there is none. I am told I must take somebody's word that it just is. In other words I am to trust somebody elses judgment.They do not understand that their view of how things happened sounds just as stupid to me and my view of how things happened sounds to them.God loves us anyway in spite of us and our disobedience.That is why He promised eternal life to whosoever will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and put their trust in Him.He promises to forgive all our sins and cast them into the sea of forgetfulness because as Isaiah said: The agony suffered at calvary satisfied God for the sins of man and that is the reason He forgives our sins.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

It was you that started down the path of absolute morality again. It is you who has been unable to defend this quite evidently impractical and nonsensical position again.Whether the scriptures are internally consistent or not has little bearing on whether or not the idea that a God that already knows everything sends down his "son" to cleanse us of sins that he knows we will continue to perpetrate regardless of this "sacrifice".

What is the evidence that you are real and have posted a reply to my question? By the evidence you leave behind.The same is true of Jesus. The evidence that Jesus is real is that God saves those who come to Him through the blood of Jesus, and gives to us the gift of His Holy Spirit. You may not think this is real evidence, but truth is truth whether you believe it or not.It's not information about the Bible that brings one into God's salvation, truth and reality. One can have lots of information about the Bible. Even devils believe and tremble (James 2:19). It's entering into God's truth by faith, then God discloses Himself to you (John 14:23).BlessingsEdited by John 10:10, : added reference

It is not. With no real malice involved you need to understand that I sometimes feel that talking to you guys is like talking to flat Earthers. How would you react to someone who vehemently insisted that the Earth was flat? Exasperation and some piss taking are almost inevitable in the face of such absurdity. Lashing out? I would call it questioning evident ridiculousness. Your sensitivity to questioning, criticism and even ridicule of your baseless beliefs are your problem. Not mine. "God says"......????????
Surely this is the point that Onfire and I are making. The bible is only what "God says" if you assume that God actually said any of it. Quite an assumption!! People who assume that the bible is the word of God can have all the conviction in the world but that no more makes it the word of God than it makes The Lord of The Rings the word of Gandalf. I have an enormous problem with a dependence on faith in all spheres. Not just Christianity. The truth can always be questioned. Those who claim otherwise are invariably hiding their ignorance, stupidity or desire to deceive. Religion is the ultimate in self justifying nonsense. Have faith. Don't question. Then you will be rewarded.It is easy to see why those peddling a lie would resort to such an argument.
It is a lot less obvious why an omnipotent, omniscient being would hold unevidenced faith in his existence in such high regard. That in which you have faith is as equally unevidenced and uncorroborated as many of those things that you would also call 'myths'. 'Myths' that many others have equally as much faith in the veracity of as you do the bible. I reject equally all such unevidenced myths. Not just yours. So don't take it personally. The very antithesis of science is to require that you believe because you are told to believe. The evidence leads the way. Not authority. The published evidence for current theories is available to all. Including you.Scientifically accepted theories of cosmological evolution rely on prediction and verification as do all accepted scientific paradigms. Verified prediction of new physical phenomenon rather than after the event subjective interpretations. The ultimate in objective, tested, scientific evidence. Such is the nature of scientific investigation.If you can create a theory that genuinely and accurately predicts new physical phenomenon and allows the calculation of known entities to the same or a greater degree of accuracy than the current theories then your theory will be taken seriously and will eventually supercede the existing and currently accepted answers. The history of science is full of such examples.However simply asserting, as you frequently do, that you find the answers derived from current scientific theories unsatisfying is not an objective or valid argument against them. One requires faith.
The other requires understanding.
My objections to faith have been explained. What are your objections to objective, prediction based, evidentially supported and tested understanding?
I would suggest that 99% of the time you are happy to accept the conclusions that the scientific method leads to. Only when it contradicts your unevidenced faith based dogma do you have a problem with the conclusions of evidence and prediction based investigation. Hmmmm God loves us.....But not enough to avoid condemning the vast majority of us to the ultimate fate of an eternal lake of fire. Apparently. Why trust and faith? Why are these the test? Why not reveal himself to us fully and indisputably and then let us exert our fully informed freewill as to whether or not to follow him? Informed freewill rather than obsfucation, secrecy, vagueness and contradictory evidence?Why? Does he really love us and forgive our sins? Or does he punish us with eternal damantion in a lake of fire for what apparently is the unforgivable sin of disbelief?Ultimate love and forgiveness in conjunction with the ultimate in punishment? Is that not wholly contradictory?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

There are many men each with equally strong faith in many contradictory things.For this reason faith can be no measure of truthfulness.On what basis do you suggest that a third party discern between the truthfulness of two contradictory but equally believed positions?On what basis do you procalim that faith and truth bear any relation to one another?

On the basis of the words Jesus declared in John 14:23. Jesus declares that if anyone loves Him and keeps His word, He will love him and will disclose Himself to him.Only those who love Jesus, keep His word, and to whom Jesus has disclosed Himself can discern the truthfulness of faith that brings God's salvation.Blessings

You can visit me. I can show you my computer. I can show you this is indeed my account here. I can show you the message I typed. Basically, yes. Also, as I've pointed out, when we meet, you will be able to see, hear and touch me. Would you mind pointing out what evidence Jesus himself left behind? I have heard of none. Would you mind backing that up with evidence? This is mere speculation on your part. It assumes it's true, to then declare it to be true. That's not how it works. Again, you can visit me, you can touch me, you can see my computer, I can show you my account. What physical evidence did Jesus leave behind? Yes. And truth can only be determined by examining the evidence. Now, please show me this evidence. I'd say that if there is supporting evidence for things the bible claims, the statements that it made regarding those things are vindicated. If, however, there is no evidence whatsoever, there is no way for us to determine if it is true. It can be taken on faith, but it cannot be claimed to be true to any degree. Correct. However, only supporting evidence for the things the bible claims can vindicate it. Again, I have a few problems with this statement.1) There's no evidence there are any devils.
2) There's no evidence devils tremble, even if they do exist.
3) I'm pretty sure there are religions that claim devils don't tremble, why should we believe you, but not them? So, you first have to accept it to be real, then you will accept it to be real..... Right. Call it nitpicking, but there's just a little flaw in there. You see, there are other religions too. Now if we accept them to be true, then they become true. Why should we accept your religion as true, yet not all the others. This will require supporting evidence. So, if you are to win me over, please present it. Thank you.

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I hunt for the truth

We keep bumping into the same problem here. Basically, you're saying:
"it's just so".
And then you end the discussion. Now, if I were to say:
"But it isn't so".
How then would we proceed? To convince someone else you are indeed correct, you need to show them your supporting evidence. Not keep repeating the same thing over and over.

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I hunt for the truth

Because we can logically deduce, based on a plethera of emperical evidence, that there is a live human being on the other side of this forum typing on a computer countering your discussion points. Artificial intelligence has not yet consistently passed the Turing test and does not have the "thinking" power and programming complexity to consistently trick human beings into thinking they are talking to a real human being vice a computer especially to the degree of interaction on a discussion forum. With that said who other evidence could you provide that would indicate you are not talking to a real person?Now, how does this reflect our views on the written "word of God". The Bible like many other religious books of antiquity is subject to verbal transmission errors (long chain of people who verbally passed down stories from generation to generation as in the case of the Genesis account), written transmission errors (copies of copies of written accounts i.e. Moses to early Jewish scholars, etc), translation errors (from Hebrew to Greek, Aramaic to Greek, etc), misinterpretation and even downright fabrication and post-composition alteration (both adding to and removing from original documents) by early Jewish and Christian scholars, ecumenical councils, etc. There is no way to know exactly how much of the Bible was written by its original authors and certainly no objective method to determine if it truely is the inspired word of a supernatural omniscient being. One can only make this assumption not by using emperical evidence but solely using unsubstantiated blind faith and subjective personal experiences.If you can prove otherwise please create a new topic and we can discuss this there.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Hi Straggler, One of the biggest mistakes people make about the Bible is God said every word in the Bible and every word pertains to them. God is not partial. He condemned everyone to the lake of fire because the first man willfully disobeyed and ate the fruit.Then He provided a way man could avoid that fate.Is it God's fault many are too blind to see.Or just too stubborn to admit they are not the supreme authority. Man is not cast into the lake of fire because of the sin of disbelief.Man is not cast into the lake of fire because of his sin period.Man when he enters this world is an eternal being because he is created in the image/likeness of God.Because the first man disobeyed God all are condemned to the lake of fire.No one has to do anything to go to the lake of fire other than be born and reach the point that the man did in the garden when he ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When he reaches that point he becomes responsible for his destination.Man can then choose to change his destination from the lake of fire to heaven if he wants too.God did his part by offering a free full pardon the rest is up to man.Jesus gave the church the responsibility to spread the GoodNews.The church has failed but that is not God's fault, it is man's fault.Does God love us? Yes He died for us.Does He forgive us our sins. Yes, He already has.The only problem is each individual has to receive the free full pardon.When a person does that they are born again.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Well I for one am not making that mistake. I think it deeply unlikely that God said anything at all written in the bible.How do you decide which bits you think he did say and which he did not? So God loves us and wants us to join him in heaven. But has condemned most of us to burning in hell for eternity instead. That makes sense. Oh that's OK then. If God creates the apple, the serpent, the very concepts of sin and evil, man and freewill then to suggest that he is devoid of all responsibility for mans fallen fate is quite a severe abandonment of responsibility. Oh. Especially if you happen to be omniscient and know all of this at the point of creating each of the aforementoned phenomenon.How about just not creating the serpent? Could God not make the default position heaven rather than hell?
Could not God make the default position oblivion reserving hell for the really wicked and heaven for the truly good?A God of infinite love and forgiveness who has consigend the vast majority of people to be discarded in a loveless eternal damnation "lake of fire" for crimes they themselves did not commit. Crimes that were an inevitable result of Gods combination of creations (snakes, apples, man etc. etc.) in the first place.Honestly what an amazing heap of contradictory nonsense.

And the follower of Islam that has equal faith in something totally contradictory to that which you have faith in?Why is your faith more 'truthful' than his?While faith can be held in equally contradictory positions it is obvious that faith can be no indicator of veracity.

Guys, it has been a while since I first posted the question "Why did God forgive our sins" and I must say that I was very surprised at all the comments. But, I must tell you that I find it amusing that some of you quote the bible as if you personally verified its truth. Point is that you are relying on "stories" passed down through generations, then put into writing. The truth is based on your "faith". I once to had "faith" when I believed in Santa. After all, my parents told me there was a Santa and I saw pictures of him, read about him AND even saw the "real" Santa in the Mall. I also, recall having a fight with a guy, who was supposed to be my friend, who told me that there was no Santa. I gave him a bloody nose! Kind of like when I talk to people who believe in a God... They want to give a bloody nose too.Consider this: The Old Testament speaks of a vindictive God who seems to enjoy killing man and/or his children. And he does all kinds of very bad things: Sodom & Gomorra, the great flood, the parting of the Red Sea and drowning all those Egyptian soldiers, etc.. I wonder if God ever thought of the innocent children he also killed or left without parents because he decided that the parents sinned. What a guy!!! No wonder why he is referred to as the “Father” . .Some father! Then the New Testament comes along and the old evil God somehow disappeared. Use some common sense! The Jews came up with the idea of a one God and, guess what, their one god theory was taken up by the Christians and the Jews were left behind . . God forbid that the Christians would accept Jews as part of their flock . So, they made up a story that the Jews rejected the “True God” and would someday be destroyed, by God, unless at the time of his coming they accepted him.. Give me a break!