Relationship With God Through Jesus Is Christianity- Not A Religion
Give me Jesus, He promises eternal life on His own merit, not my works.
If you want a sin-free eternity with God, then you should know that Christianity and religion are not compatible travel companions.
Religion was made for the old man, the flesh. A place keeper of sorts. Christ came to create the new man.
If you must wait for a judgement day to see if you make it into heaven, then you are in a religion. Talk to Dad. Jesus doesn’t want that kind of torment for His family.
This video features John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, internationally renowned speaker and author of several books on the interface of science, philosophy and religion.
The story of his marriage, near the end, is very good.
The transcript, with some time stamps, is copied and pasted below the video if you prefer to read it.
In a society where we have access to many religions — how do we decide which (0:04) one to follow — well I only know one way of deciding which of anything to believe is on the basis of evidence. You see there’s a confusion about faith. Many people have accepted Dawkins’ definition of faith as believing where there’s no evidence. That’s nonsense.
Faith is an ordinary word it’s not just a religious word it’s an ordinary word, it means trust and usually I suspect that all of you don’t trust either facts or people without having evidence or you’re a bit silly. Your bank manager won’t trust you with a loan unless you provide evidence of collateral, isn’t that true?
( 0:49) We all know what evidence-based faith is, but somehow the word has been spread around by Dawkins and Co that faith is a vice because it’s believing for there’s no evidence that’s nonsense that is blind faith and it’s very dangerous it’s Blind faith.
Christianity is evidence-based. Listen to this, John at the end of his gospel says Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book, but these are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of God and that believing you may have life in his name. In other words here’s the evidence on which faith is based.
(1:48) Now how do you decide between religions?
Well, there are several ways. Very briefly just think of the three major monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
When it comes to Christ, my Jewish friends, and I have many of them, believe that Christ died and did not rise.
I as a Christian believed he died and rose.
My Muslim friends believe he didn’t die. Those three things cannot be simultaneously true, and therefore I simply invite people to investigate the evidence.
One of the most seminal experiences of my life was sitting on the ground in the bright sunshine at Trinity College Cambridge listening to one of the world’s top lawyers, actually an expert in Islamic law but a Christian, and he was a credence counsel amongst many other things. Sir Norman Anderson. I think his book is still obtainable and he got up and says I want to do a forensic investigation of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and the place was absolutely packed.
I’ll never forget it because that was the beginning of understanding that there is a rational forensic defense of this and we have to make up our own minds.
But there’s another method of approach, and it’s this. You see, of every worldview in religion. I ask several questions. And when it comes to religions, (3:33) I ask what is the shape of the religion, how is relationship with God determined?
So let’s just confine ourselves for the sake of illustration to God-fearing religions, not religions that don’t really believe in God and so on but God-fearing religions like the three I’ve mentioned.
What I discovered by the constant questioning of people is that there’s a general pattern- that there’s some sort of initiation right, perhaps performed on a child perhaps performed on an adult, and the person is on the way.
And as a descriptor to depict the way, I often use — and I often draw this -I draw a little door you and a wavy line this is the way it goes up and down, and then there’s a gate another big door at the far end, and I draw the scales of justice there and at the other side of that gate is Nirvana, heaven, or what-have-you paradise.
Then I say as you’re on the way, various people that teach you and help you and so on can’t guarantee your acceptance into heaven or whatever is at the end. Why? Because you have to go through the final assessment, a judgement and why is that? Because the principle of the religion is merit.
So you have to hope that with all the teaching you’ve got at all experience your good deeds will outweigh your bad deeds and you’d be accepted. And I find that by and large most people say that’s exactly what we believe. And I say it’s exactly not what I believe and they say of course you do you’re a Christian. You believe as well as I do that good works are important. Yes, I say, I believe they’re important, but they’re not the basis of acceptance.
And they say but how can that possibly be? Well, I say you think of that wavy line, and you’re on that wavy line, and you cannot by definition be sure of acceptance. It’s like Birmingham University, you get the day of judgment. You do your A-levels wonderfully, you’re in, and then there are nice professors like me teaching you, but I can’t guarantee you get a degree, why? Because you have to get through finals.
That’s the day of judgment folks isn’t it? And many of you remember it. That is what the vast majority of people think religion is and then I drop a little bomb into their minds, and I say but that isn’t Christianity. (6:34)
In religion, acceptance comes at the end on the basis of an assessment of merit, well if that’s religion,
Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship and acceptance comes at the beginning.
That’s radical, and you know I believe in our country and in my original country many people have rejected Christianity. Why,? Because they never understood this.
They don’t realize that Christianity is not a merit-based religion because Christ came into our world and he told us that if we listened to him and accepted his word and believed in him as the Savior the Son of God we would have at that moment eternal life and we would not come into judgment that’s utterly radical so the acceptance comes at the beginning!
And so ladies and gentlemen; I don’t give lectures like this and discussions like this to earn God’s forgiveness; I do them because I’ve got it.
That’s radical, and you’ll understand that, let me run this in with a little illustration. You’ve heard about my wife?
Well over fifty years ago I saw this vision in Cambridge, so I decided I’d like to marry (8:22) her so I came to her one day, and I had a little present wrapped up for her, it was a cookbook. So I said I’d like to marry you Sally now the condition would be this: let’s look at page 147 it’s apple cake and here are the laws for making apple cake thou shalt take some what’s flour thou -shall take somewhat sugar and there you are. Not here’s the way it’s gonna be if you keep these laws for the next forty years I think about accepting you. If you don’t, you can go back to your mother.
But look- why are you laughing that is what many of you sitting here think about God and you would never insult a fellow human being by basing a relationship on merit- you wouldn’t.
And so my marriage it’s been good why, because my wife is not cooking in order to gain my acceptance. She likes cooking because she’s got it and the wonderful thing about Christianity is precisely that, it’s not religion in that sense, it’s a relationship.
