How much evidence would it take?

        On Monday, March 11^th, I was using the internet to do a search on Google. When I went to their website, what should pop up but a memorial to Douglas Adams, the writer of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and of several Doctor Who sci-fi episodes. I clicked on the link and was taken to Adams’ biography, where I learned that he had died in Santa Barbara in 2001 at the age of 49. I also learned that he called himself a “radical atheist”.

        One of his more notable attacks on Christianity and particularly on the fine-tuning of the universe, was in the sardonic depiction of a “sentient puddle”! As I read I could start to feel Satan’s niggling finger of doubt scratching at my mind. I also remembered Bertrand Russell’s comment that if God asked, “Why didn’t you believe in Me?” Russell would reply, “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!”

        At our Wednesday evening Bible study, an atheist was mentioned who had started a “church” because he liked all the feeling of community. (From March 9, 2013 National Post article about Korey Peters and his Secular Church in Calgary: “I loved the ceremony...but I just couldn’t stomach the faith.”)

        I started to wonder what, if anything, I could say to any of these three. Then it came to me—fulfilled prophecy! There are hundreds of prophecies from the Old Testament, all undoubtedly written before Christ. And the vast majority have already been fulfilled in Him. This is far removed from “faith”—this is reason and logic, something my three disbelievers could easily have investigated. This was the very approach that Jesus took on the road to Emmaus: “He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.” Luke 24:27.

        I was very thankful to the Lord for showing me this, and even more grateful when I opened the March 2013 Christian Missions in Many Lands magazine and looked at the editorial. Gordon Franz re-stated some of what I’ve just told you, and added the other great fact that the apostles preached—Jesus is risen! Again, this is not so much faith as simply believing the reports of those who saw him dead and the hundreds who saw him resurrected.

        Of course, the element of faith is very great—in fact, it is the final, deciding factor in our salvation. Once we understand who Jesus is we must repent and commit ourselves to Him unreservedly—“By grace you are saved through faith.”                                                                                                                                     Ì 

The Holiness of God...

...compared with the sinfulness of humanity: —         There is something in God’s being that can have nothing to do with sin. Paul tells us that “God does not lie.” Titus 1:2.  Dare we say that if God sinned, the Godhead would be destroyed? This means that He must separate Himself from and punish sin wherever He finds it. The question then arises, “How much punishment is enough?”

        Suppose God were to say, “I’ll give them the worst there is for a year.” Would that be enough? Would ten years be enough? Would a thousand years be enough? If any of these were enough, then we suggest that Christ would never have died because each person could pay their own penalty. But He did die! This means that our debt of sin was infinite and only an infinite Saviour could pay that debt. It also means that if we don’t accept the Saviour, our debt remains infinite, and our punishment must be eternal.

        We can write two “equations” that might help. If sin is applied against us and we have no help, the result can only be infinite punishment:

(1) Us × Sin(infinite) = Us (infinite punishment)

 

If we let Christ bear our sin, He cancels it out and we can be free and forgiven:

(2) Us  ×  Sin (infinite)   =  Us (now forgiven)

                Christ (infinite)

        So there are two sides to the death of Christ. One shows the greatness of our debt—infinite; and the other shows the greatness of His love—also infinite.  Ì