The Day I Became a Christian

In this video, I want to share with you some personal memories and to draw some theological conclusions from them in the light of what I now know.

And uh, just a couple of days ago, I was in my loft above me, and I came across some old boxes with lots of documents which I put up there a long time ago. And I came across this little booklet which I want to show you. And here it is. Tiny thing, just grace. And this little booklet, um, I had um a long, long time ago, and it was very important and it signifies and documents the day I became a Christian. And just opening up here, and I'll just show you um here on this page here my commitment to God um where I profess my belief in Christianity and I resolve to be a good Christian, of course. And it's signed by myself and the date—there we go—the 11th of November 1987. That's a long time ago. And I remember it was a Wednesday because we we met for Bible studies in my local Baptist church on a Wednesday evening. And so that's when when I said that prayer as a good evangelical, I became a born-again Christian. I became a very conservative evangelical fundamentalist Calvinist uh Christian and a member of my Baptist church. You didn't just become a member by going along; you have to be elected or welcomed into uh the fellowship there, and I was a member of that church, of course. And uh, so this this was to see this again after all these years, and I thought I was looking through it and looking at the kind of things that I used to believe, and I'm not going to go through the whole thing—you'll be glad—but I I just want to focus on uh one particular belief which I clearly assented to and is very standard amongst evangelical Christians, and is this idea that God is perfectly just and he must punish sin. I'm not making this up, by the way. It actually says that—other side—God is perfectly just, so he must punish sin. And it says here, if he were to overlook our sin because of his love, he would no longer be just. His law is perfect, and his sentence has been passed. And then it quotes some bits from the Old Testament. He does not leave the guilty unpunished. I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. Uh, man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment. And then it says, if God were to withhold his love because of our sin, he would still be perfectly just. But God has brought his love and his justice together in the most fantastic way. And then it talks about God becoming a man in Jesus. And Jesus is God, it thinks. And then he came to pay the penalty for your sin. This is what we celebrate at Easter time. God did the same uh for you. Christ died for us while we were still sinners. And this is how we are reconciled with God. This is how uh we become right with God. And you can receive the gift of eternal life if you have faith to believe. Um, and and so on. And then I, as I say, I prayed that prayer that night, and I signed it as a as a a documentary witness and evidence that I become a Christian, and all these years later I uh discovered it uh upstairs in the loft in that empty place. So I'm going to keep it as a memento of my life.

But you know, there is something that really—I no longer agree with this, of course—and I just want to explore why, and it's partly or mainly because of Jesus Christ actually and what he taught and the continuity uh and the uh the continuity between what he taught and what Islam teaches, which is how Islam I came to discover is is also a true path to God. Now I'll explain what I mean by all this.

So there are two uh concepts uh that are fundamental to my change. One is forgiveness, and the other is atonement. And when I read the gospels, you can do this yourself. Look at Mark's gospel or Luke's gospel; you'll notice that Jesus teaches about the forgiveness of God, the free forgiveness of God. And he teaches this repeatedly. It's not unconditional forgiveness, however; it is conditional on one thing, and that is sincere repentance of sin. You have to turn away from your sin. You have to ask God's forgiveness, and then God is forgiving and merciful and loving and will forgive you of your sins. This is a very key point in Jesus' message, repeated many, many times. But Christianity, particularly with people like Paul who never actually met Jesus, and later Christians, didn't teach this. And this is something that's not really uh understood by most Christians or even many scholars don't notice this, but it's there. It's the elephant in the room. Paul, for example, in his letters taught the atonement. Atonement. And we'll look at what atonement is in a second. But these are two separate things. And I believed as a Christian that Christianity and Jesus was about atonement. But in fact, his teaching is about forgiveness. And that's also what Islam teaches. And I'll come to that also in a second.

So what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is where no price is attached. There's no penalty. You simply let it go. You forgive someone. You forgive someone their offense against you. There's sin again. Someone's hurt me. I forgive them. I let it go. I don't demand restitution. I don't demand financial compensation. There's no penalty to be paid. I forgive them. Okay, this is a very human example. Of course, atonement refers to something quite different, as a separate concept. It refers to a payment that is being made. And in the Greco-Roman world 2,000 years ago, uh the idea of atoning sacrifice was extremely common. And Christianity is no different from these other cults in the Greco-Roman world. They all believed in sacrifice to appease a god, to obtain atonement from God, uh or what they think of forgiveness from God. But forgiveness and atonement are different concepts.

Now I want to share with you some fascinating words from this uh scholar. There he is—John Hick. Now he he sadly passed away now, but he was a world-renowned philosopher of religion and theologian and he was an ordained Methodist minister. He was from Britain. Uh, he lived, taught in the states for many years. Very distinguished professor. And in his book, *The Metaphor of God Incarnate*, which I recommend, and he's writing as a Christian philosopher, a Christian theologian, he says something very interesting on page uh on this chapter, chapter 12, salvation as human transformation. And he gets to the heart as an expert on Christian theology. He gets to the heart of what Christianity teaches. And he also understands that's quite different from Jesus's message that we read even in the gospels we have. This extraordinary thing is overlooked by so many people. Um, but this guy gets it. Uh, and I want to share with you what he says. He says, "The basic fault of the traditional understandings of salvation within Christianity is that they they have no room for divine forgiveness." I mean, what—how can he say this? How can Christianity have no room for divine forgiveness? He explains how. "For a forgiveness that has to be bought by the bearing of a just punishment or the or the giving of an adequate satisfaction, in other words, paying a debt, atonement, or the offering of a sufficient sacrifice is not forgiveness, but merely an acknowledgment that the debt has been paid in full." Now, he's right here. As said before, forgiveness and atonement are two separate things. Christians find it very hard to grasp this basic point. It's not because they're stupid. I'm not saying that. I spoke to lots of intelligent Christians, but in their mind, these ideas of forgiveness are so fused together that they don't get it. And they don't see that Jesus teaching something quite different from say what Paul teaches or later Christian theologians. But he does. This is remarkable. Anyway, to continue. "But in the recorded teaching of Jesus, there is in contrast genuine divine forgiveness for those who are truly penitent. In other words, who repent and vividly conscious of their utter unworthiness. In the Lord's prayer, we are taught to address God directly as our heavenly father and to ask for forgiveness of our sins, expecting to receive this. The only condition being that we in turn forgive one another."

So let me just read to you uh the Lord's prayer. This is Gospel of Matthew, of course—the sermon on the mount, chapter 6, verse 9-13. "Pray like this," says Jesus. "Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need. And forgive us our sins as we as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don't let us yield to temptation but rescue us from the evil one." Now is verse 12. "And forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us." So here is the paradigmatic prayer that we are supposed to pray if we're followers of Jesus in the 2,000 years ago. Uh, it's a petition for forgiveness, and as um John Hick says, the only condition being that we in turn forgive one another. Then he says, "There is no suggestion of the need for a mediator between ourselves and God." So Jesus is not positioning himself as Paul claims to be the mediator between God and man. No. No. You go straight to God, says Jesus. "Or there's no suggestion of an atoning death to enable God to forgive." That's missing. It's missing from the teaching of Jesus, although it's not missing from Christianity, as I keep on saying. Again, he says, "In the parable of the prodigal son"—this is in Luke's gospel, chapter 15. So it's a parable. It's not meant to be taken literally. It's a story, a fictitious story told to to teach spiritual truths. "The father, when he sees his repentant son returning home, does not say, as he should have done if he was a good Christian, 'Because I am a just as well as a loving father, I cannot forgive him until someone has been duly punished for his sins.'" Remember that's exactly what this leaflet says. God is just. He must punish sins. That's what uh my little booklet says that I must believe, and that's what I did believe. But as John Hick rightly says, Jesus doesn't say, "Because I am a just and loving father, I cannot forgive him until someone's been punished for his sins. Otherwise, Jesus in our place." No. "Rather, he had compassion," this is what the parable says. "And ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said unto him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and make make merry—have a party—for this son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.'" End quote. That's Luke 15:20-24. Notice this is forgiveness of sins. The father doesn't demand a sacrifice. He doesn't demand uh an atonement at all. And so John here continues, "And again in the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector," same gospel, Luke 18, "the tax collector who is like the bad guy because he's the guy in the story who collects taxes on behalf of the Romans. He's a traitor to the Jewish people. So the tax collector, the bad guy, stands far off," this is in the temple. "And would not even lift his eyes to heaven, it says, but beat his chest saying, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' And Jesus says, 'I tell you, this man went down to his house justified before God.'" Now I always ask Christians at this point, and again, it's not a trick question. Why was that man justified? This terrible guy who collected uh taxes for the occupying power. Very similar situation today in many ways. And Jesus—and they don't they don't know—they never know the answer. Again, just extraordinary story, really. They never get it because what Jesus says, "Whoever humbles himself will be exalted, and whoever exalts himself will be humbled." That's what Jesus says in Luke chapter 18. So in humbling ourselves before our creator, submitting to our creator, which is the very definition of a Muslim, by the way—literally what a Muslim is, is one who submits to God, humbling himself before his creator—we are justified before God. There's no mention of an atonement at all. Um, and again, yet again, says John Hick, "there is his insistence that he came to bring sinners to a penitent acceptance of God's mercy. Go and learn what this means. 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.'" It's a quote from Matthew 9:13.

Now maybe you're thinking, well, this is uh very odd because maybe Judaism uh did teach atonement uh as a necessary condition of forgiveness. So sacrifice was absolutely always essential. Well, let's see what the experts say. This understanding of God's mercy and forgiveness coined by John Hick was fully in accord with contemporary Jewish understanding. Professor E.P. Sanders, the great American Jesus scholar, in his authoritative work on Jesus's Jewish background says that quote, "The forgiveness of repentant sinners is a major motif in virtually all the Jewish material which is still available from this period." Okay. So forgiveness of sins, repentance is is key in Judaism, and it continues today in the prayers on the day of atonement. For Judaism sees human nature as basically good and yet also with an evil inclination that has continually to be resisted. However, God is aware of our finitude and weakness and is always ready to forgive the truly penitent. In other words, someone who genuinely, sincerely repents. And then uh John Hick says something very interesting as a Christian theologian. He says, "This in Islam there is an essentially similar view." So Islam teaches the same as what Jesus taught, as what Judaism taught. God is always spoken of in the Quran, he says, as our God the gracious and merciful. God knows our weakness and forgives those who in the self-surrender of faith—again, that's the definition of a Muslim—bow before the compassionate Lord of the universe. And he concludes, "This sense of divine mercy is indeed found throughout the world's theistic faiths, with our Christian belief in the need for an atoning human death standing out as exceptional"—in other words, it's unique—it's unique. That's John Hick, *The Metaphor of God Incarnate*.

So what what about the forgiveness of sins in Islam? And is it more like what Christianity teaches, or is it more like what Jesus himself, even in the New Testament, is recorded again and again as teaching? This is absolutely fascinating question, and few people actually talk about it. So who is in direct continuity with Jesus? Is it are is it the Muslims or the Christians? Well, what's interesting in the Quran, it says this. "Say, 'O My servants who have transgressed against themselves by sinning, do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed Allah forgives all sins. Indeed, it is He—He is the forgiving, the merciful.'" That's Quran 39:53. And one of the the most frequently mentioned names of God in the Quran is the most forgiving and the most merciful. So Islam's doctrine of sin and forgiveness is very balanced. It takes sin very seriously, but offers immense hope in divine mercy. The door of repentance remains open until death or the day of judgment. And as uh it says also in the Quran, "Your Lord has prescribed upon Himself mercy." Quran 6:54. So it strikes me, honestly, does that Islam represents the continuity of the authentic teaching of Jesus, the inial, the gospel that even our New Testament records he went around preaching in Galilee and in Jerusalem, and that Christianity represents something different. And how what is this difference? I've boiled it down to something. It's not my own insight; I've read it elsewhere. But a very simple way of expressing the difference is this. The gospel of Jesus is the gospel of the forgiveness and mercy of God. The gospel of Jesus, the gospel about Jesus, this is the gospel found on the lips of Paul and later Christians, is a religion about Jesus and about his atoning sacrifice for our sins. So that's a fundamental difference. And which religion follows the teaching of Jesus today? It has to be said, in all honesty, it is Islam, because if you look at its teaching on forgiveness, on mercy, on sin and repentance, and the hope for eternal life and paradise in the next life, is is what Jesus is taught—Jesus taught in the gospels, and scholars uh know this—that there is forgiveness. This is a fundamental point I'm making. Forgiveness and atonement are two separate things. Jesus taught forgiveness. Islam teaches forgiveness and mercy on repentance, of course. But Paul and later Christians taught atonement—that you need a human sacrifice. Someone who uh pays the penalty—pays the penalty for our sin by paying it for us on our behalf. And this is not forgiveness. Paying debts is not forgiveness. Okay.

And also this question uh finally about uh justice. God is perfectly just, so he must punish sin. How is it just, one may also ask, to punish an innocent human being? Someone who is sinless according to Christianity and Islam. How is it just to punish him and not the guilty person? That's not justice. That's injustice. It's a violation of basic justice. You can't punish someone else for your sin. They they say in response to this sometimes, "Oh, well, Jesus did it out of love." Well, it—that doesn't change anything. If the motive, if you believe that Jesus did do this, doing it for that motive doesn't change the basic moral equation that an innocent person is still being punished. That's not justice. Obviously, it's very unjust. And no court in the world would ever let someone go to prison because someone else took the punishment if it was a just court. So it breaks down even on its own terms. The claim of this booklet breaks down as it's perfectly unjust to punish an innocent person. But the good news is—the good news that I was not taught here—the good news is actually found on the lips of Jesus, upon whom be peace, and in the teachings of the Quran and in the authentic teaching that we now in hadith from the prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace, who followed Jesus' teaching, and all that the prophets, in fact, all taught the same basic message that we uh are reconciled to God through repentance, by turning to him, and God in his mercy, inshallah, will forgive us because he is a loving and forgiving God. Now he may not choose to forgive us if we remain hard of heart. If we remain stubborn in our independence from him and ungrateful. If we are ungrateful and showing ingratitude for all the blessings that he has given us. Um, then the danger is that we will enter into hellfire. But the Quran says this in many, many places, and interestingly, so do the gospels that we have today. Matthew, Mark, and Luke particularly have Jesus speaking like this on many occasions.

So yeah, I just wanted to share with you. So that was the time that I became a Christian uh on the 11th of November, Wednesday, 1987. And I still have this little booklet um which I will keep u—because why not? It's uh an interesting uh and the the copies uh the first, second, and third edition, the latest edition, 150,000 copies were distributed in Dutch, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, all these English, all these languages, but not, I notice, Arabic um or any other non-European language. Um, oh, it's published by—that was Evangelism Explosion. Um, and yeah, I remember them now. They uh were very active um when I was a Christian. I don't know if they still exist today. Who knows?