Explain Like I'm Five

The theological answer, as I learned it, is most clearly spelled out in James 2:14-26, often referenced through the phrase "faith without works is dead". The short version is: faith in Jesus will save you, not good deeds. However, if you have faith in Jesus, then that faith will manifest itself through good deeds. If someone proclaims their faith but doesn't act lovingly, then they don't actually have faith and won't be saved. So a Christian should be a good person not because being good will save them, but because being good is a result of genuine faith.

Seems to me this is a protestant thing, i grew up Catholic and repentance was a major part of it. You don't change and become a better person? Then no absolution for you.

TLDR: He doesn't forgive anyone who sins, he forgives those who repent. Repent not meaning "feeling sorry" as many seem to explain, but actually meaning "to turn away" which means changing fundamentally as a human being. From a bad person to a good person.

Someone who doesn't change and act good most of the time isn't repentant, so isn't forgiven. So basically, you prove it with your actions and how you live your life, not with just words only. By this measurement, Republican "Christians" aren't repentant and so aren't forgiven.

Not a Christian anymore, but I used to be for a very long time. Sidebar: "You will know a tree by it's fruit" AKA you'll know what kind of person someone is by what they do. Anyone who's even skimmed the bible (especially the new testament) would easily understand that most conservative "christians" aren't Christian at all, but rather like the Pharisees (phony religious types) that Jesus constantly argued with and condemned.

Other note: Sikhs actually live the way Christian claim to. I could easily make a "hard to swallow pill" meme which said: "Sikhs are better Christians than actual Christians are."

Romans 6:1 "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"

This is typically the best reasoning behind the idea of eternal forgiveness. You can rack up points on your sin bill. But it's contrary to the overall goal of someone who is following the teachings of Jesus and Paul.

I was raised in a very religious environment. And while it's taken me many years to rid myself of the scars that caused me emotionally. I still have answers from time to time. And if it helps someone be a better person, I'm happy to share what I know.

Questioning an aspect of a belief structure is important for personal growth. And I hope that some of the comments here help you get what you need.

Catholic here. Despite God's forgiveness, Jesus never said salvation is guaranteed. As he said, "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven". And that's just for the rich. There are other passages that emphasize the difficulty of gaining eternal life in Heaven, " the way is narrow", "you must take up your cross", and so on. Christ's death and resurrection made salvation possible in the first place. We couldn't even have a hope of it without His help. He also gave us the way that we must follow to gain salvation now that it's possible: belief in God and Christ, and following His commandments, given through the Church.

To put it in another way, we all have a relationship with God. That relationship was damaged through original sin in a way we could not repair on our own. God still has always loved us, but without Christ's sacrifice, He could not forgive our betrayal through sin and therefore we remained separated from Him. Once Christ bore the burden of our sin and overcame it, that repaired humanity's relationship with God overall and God is willing to forgive any sin, past or present, that we commit against Him. As long as we do not commit a serious sin, that relationship will stay intact. Two people in a relationship may do little things that annoy or lightly anger the other person, but we've all got stuff that aren't "deal-breakers" with each other. But a serious sin done with full knowledge and of one's own free will, which in the Catholic Church we call a mortal sin, is a "deal-breaker" that once again severs our own personal relationship with God and threatens our salvation. It's basically a betrayal of God's love. God has these rules and morality and such because He loves us so much He wants the absolute best for humanity and the world. Sin does damage to that, and mortal sin does damage to that in a big way. God is always willing to forgive, but in order for that to happen we have to show that we are sorry for breaking that relationship and promise/resolve that we will do our best to try not to do it again. We have to reconcile with God just as two people in a strained or broken relationship have to reconcile with each other. In the Catholic Church, we believe that reconciliation happens in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where we confess what we did to a priest, who is in the person of Jesus at that time, and make that resolution to not sin again. The priest then offers a penance as a way to basically "make it up" to God, or as a theologian I heard once say, "clean up the glass and repair the window we broke", and the good relationship with God is restored. Basically, yeah, God is always willing to forgive if we ask for it... But that doesn't mean we still can't break that relationship. I'd always be willing to forgive a best friend if they were to betray me, but if they actually did that, I'd still be mad, and if they don't respond to my calls offering that forgiveness, well, there's not much more I can do to fix the relationship with my friend at that point if they don't want to be forgiven.

I come from a protestant tradition that says you can't ever be good enough to be saved. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life and acted as a substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf to make us righteous before God. All the work of salvation is done through Christ. If salvation required anything other than faith to save ourselves (e.g. being good), then his death and resurrection would be meaningless. So once we are made righteous by God through faith, God begins the work of sanctification (being made holy and more Christlike). We don't believe this will fully happen in this life but is a process that we go through as we walk with God.

TLDR: It isn't about doing good things to be saved but rather we're saved and slowly begin to orient our lives around doing good things.

You won't be forgiven no matter what. If you carry on sinning, there is no more forgiveness. The only thing you can expect is to be thrown into outer darkness forever where you will be mourning and regretting your decision.

Put it this way: you drove drunk and killed someone. You've been given the death penalty by the judge. But a person called Jesus steps in and says "I'll take his place. Let him go free".

Would you ever drink drive again after someone died in your place to give you a second chance? Surely not! You would be sober, very grateful and even yet to help other people not make the same mistake.

It's the same with sin. Jesus paid a HEAVY price to redeem you. Don't spit in his face by carrying on with the same sins. Instead be grateful and find out how you should live instead.

Read the 10 commandments in Exodus 20. And also read the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) to see how Jesus further explains and practices these.

The goal is to become holy like Jesus

Hope that helps.

IIRC the trick is to get your forgiveness after the last dick move, but before you die. If you mess up the timing, eternal damnation so it’s safer to be good.

Oh snaps! A Christian question I'm qualified to answer! I'm not sure this will be five year old appropriate, because the cross is a difficult topic for theologians, but I'll do my best. This will be an oversimplification.

A lot of people think the people think the cross and forgiveness are about going to have a heaven when you die, but that's not really correct. The eternal life is more of a side effect.

The cross and resurrection are an invitation to partner together with God in the rescue of creation. Which means bringing the world back to the place God originally intended before humanity sinned.

In practical terms, it is the possibility of living like Jesus and treating others how he did. This way of living is so radical and transformative that not even death can overcome it.

In Jesus's time, there were three different sects of Judaism.

One of them, the Sadducees, allegedly believed there was no life after death and that God didn't care at all about what people did or didn't do.

Their answer to your question of following the law is perhaps the most interesting.

They believed that what was put forth as laws were a gift to humanity and that following them inherently led to a better life in the here and now.

While I don't personally see all of the laws put forward as beneficial, there are certainly instances where that makes a lot of sense.

For example, look at the full version of one of the commandments:

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.

• Exodus 20:12

Would following a commandment to take care of your parents in their old age ('honor' here comes from the word for burden) benefit you by setting an example such that when you are old that you too would be taken care of?

This was almost like social security in antiquity, much like the Sabbath was one of the first labor laws preventing working anyone more than 6 days in a row.

There's something called the overjustification effect, where when you introduce external reward systems for something intrinsically rewarding people over focus on the external and forget the internal benefits. I think a number of religions have serious issues with that.

There's even a certain irony in Job, named 'persecuted' in Hebrew because even though he lived a good life he experienced suffering which it explains by the intervention of Satan, today in the most common language among believers being the exact same word as "to do a task with the expectation of a reward."

Maybe we're too focused on the rewards.

I'm atheist, but I've been interested in religion in general for quite some time.

From what I know, it's that you have to genuinely have remorse for the bad things you've done and then Jesus will forgive you. It your remorse is fake, Jesus won't forgive.

Its like disappointing your mother (or anyone else who loves you unconditionally). Even if you know she’ll forgive you, you want to good by your mother if not for the simple fact that you love each other.

You don't...not really. It's like a child leaving their parents house - you "can" now do whatever you want: good luck with that.:-)

Another take: the whole "being good" part is Santa Claus, not Jesus. The whole "acting in a well-behaved manner" is more what parents tell their kids that Jesus wanted (oh uh...yeah, it's JESUS that wanted you to be quiet in your room at 8pm, totally), while what Jesus actually said essentially translates to: fuck hypocrites, imma leave you behind when I'm in charge beotches!

I mean that seriously though - like to pick just one example:

If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar;
(1 John 4:20)

So hating gays is...a choice one could make I suppose, but if you say you are a follower of Christ at the same time, then Jesus calls such people "liars".

The real question is: if Jesus says one thing, but a particular church/pastor/priest/pedo says something else, which one defines the "religion"? Just like everything else in the world, truth gets mixed in with fiction, and sold as a package to control the masses - e.g. Orwell's Animal Farm, like overthrowing The Man was a good thing, but then who they picked to replace him... urg:-(.

Please dont give them a logical reason to be shittier than they already are

Imagine Jesus as a director of a company that accepts all sincere applicants. The director assumes responsibility for all the mistakes his employees make, but he doesn't assume responsibility for people who only claim to be employees. People who purposely commit crimes get fired and applications by people who apply with the purpose of commiting crimes get rejected for not being sincere. (That's not to say someone who once was fired can't reapply if they're actually sincere about it, but since God sees into people's hearts and minds, you can't trick him.)

My general understanding is that you're forgiven if you choose to accept Jesus. (Note that I am not christian, but was raised as such.) You are not required to accept salvation. Actions, by themselves, mean nothing; you can be a fantastic, moral person, and work all of your life to help other people, and without accepting Jesus you're still damned. OTOH, if you have truly accepted Jesus, then ipso facto you're going to work tirelessly to help people; actions are a natural consequence of the belief. Therefore, someone that acts contrary to the teaching of Jesus is not saved, because they do not have true belief.

For a real world example, Jimmy Carter would be a person that you could say would be saved (...if any of this was real); his effort demonstrates the faith he claims. OTOH, looking at all of the televangelists, you could quite reasonably say that their daily lives contradict the teachings of Jesus, and therefore no professed belief can ever result in their salvation.

That's the fun part! It depends on which branch of Christianity you believe in. Some think it's only faith, some the baptism/saved, and some good works.

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries - Hebrews 10:26-27

The simple answer is that the "you have to be good" Christians are not the same people as the "Jesus forgives no matter what" Christians. Beliefs and doctrines vary wildly throughout Christianity, and different Christians often believe contradictory things. This isn't helped by the fact that the Bible itself, being a collection of many books by many authors, contains contradictory viewpoints. This allows believers to focus on the elements they like and ignore the ones they don't.

Christians aren't a monolith. There isn't a single right answer here. Everyone practices religion in their own way. You'd have to ask this to Christians on a personal level.

You have to be truly sorry for your sins and make an honest attempt at not doing them again. That being said if you sneak in a really sincere confession right before death, then by the book, you should go to heaven. This is a loooot like Christians last rights, the sacraments they use on the dying.

Fun fact anyone can preform last rights for a Christian should they request it. Reason being that people don't always get to choose when they need their last rights so holy men may or may not be around.

I am no longer a Christian, I came from a super fundamentalist bent of Christianity. The idea of choosing to not sin even if you know your sins are forgiven has to do with love.

"For God so loved the world he gave his only son for our sins" etc

So the pastor tells us that we know we are a real Christian who is really saved by our "good fruits", that is, the good things we choose to do and the bad things we choose not to do. So by choosing not to sin, you're proving to yourself that God is real and that God really saved you, because, as everyone knows, it's impossible to be for even a moment anything but absolutely selfish without God's help.

Most Christians aren't that Calvinist though. That was the church I grew up in.

Because Jesus is not (only) love -- but justice. In other words, there -IS- a line diving those who are sinners and those who are trying their best not to commit sins.

"So Jesus isn't pure love at all!"

It is. The problem is not in Him, but in us who deny His teachings and/or do not take His word seriously/in its fullest. Jesus respects our freedom, and treat us the way we want to live our life. Therefore, the "line" is, in other words... our freedom given by God.

Depends on the sect of Christianity. Some do acknowledge that you can accept Jesus on your death bed after being a murderer all your life and be saved as long as you're sincere. Other's not so much. It's hard to give you one answer simply because there is no one answer across all of Christianity.

Becoming a Christian isn't about having to be good in order to avoid punishment, it is instead about being given the freedom to do the good you would like to do but find yourself not able to do.

Most people have the experience of having standards for themselves they don't live up to. Jesus was the perfect person you want to be but can't be, and died to give you the opportunity to know God like He did/does so you can actually start to become that person.

You're right that he forgives no matter what. That's because he loves no matter what. Image you saw a child living on the streets alone, and you wanted to adopt them. You then pay hundreds of thousands in adoption fees, supplies, etc. In order to bring them into your family because you care about them and love them so much. It wouldn't matter how many times they continued to act out, their behavior was not the point. Rescuing them from a cold dark world was the point. And the more time they spend in your loving family, the less and less they will feel the need to act out because they learn that it isn't necessary anymore. No more stealing, your food is free. No more fighting, dad looks our for me now. No more getting sick for weeks, doctors visit the next day.

“Come to me, all of you who are struggling and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28‭-‬30

“Therefore, I tell you, don’t worry about your life — what you will eat or drink; or about your body — what you will wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds flying about! They neither plant nor harvest, nor do they gather food into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you worth more than they are? Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to his life? “And why be anxious about clothing? Think about the fields of wild irises, and how they grow. They neither work nor spin thread, yet I tell you that not even Shlomo in all his glory was clothed as beautifully as one of these. If this is how God clothes grass in the field — which is here today and gone tomorrow, thrown in an oven — won’t he much more clothe you? What little trust you have! “So don’t be anxious, asking, ‘What will we eat?,’ ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘How will we be clothed?’ For it is the pagans who set their hearts on all these things. Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. But seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Don’t worry about tomorrow — tomorrow will worry about itself! Today has enough worry already! Matthew 6:25‭-‬34

And eternal life is this: to know you, the one true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus the Messiah. John 17:3

Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your wrongdoing? Romans 2:4

This is rather like asking Asians why they all eat white rice when brown rice is healthier.

Not all Christians believe either one of those things. And for those that do, the answer is generally that trying to follow God and be obedient to His will is a sacrifice of gratitude to Him for His sacrifice of salvation.

Raised Catholic, not my jam. But as I understand it, if you go to confession without being truly sorry and having a sincere intent not to sin again, it doesn’t work. So if you’re going in with the attitude that confession is basically insurance against hell and you can just use it to get everything fixed up at the end of your life, but you’re also knowingly neglecting your soul and have the intention deep inside to be a jerk and keep sinning, God’s gonna be like “sorry, we don’t cover that” and deny your claim.

It varies significantly between denominations, I know that much. Guaranteed salvation is protestant-specific, at the very least, and isn't even held by all denominations within.

The point of the new. Testament , meaning the new pact was to free up Jewish believers from the very strict rules and requirements of worship to attain gods good graces. The whole idea of forgiveness was mainly aimed to free you up to actually do some of the good things required to achieve what you might be praying for, rather than just sit in temple and hope for the best by gods will alone.

On a core doctrinal level for Catholicism, Christians should strive to emulate Jesus as best you could to help build the kingdom of heaven in this world already, rather than just wait for the after life. They are also bound to obey the laws and be good citizens. It really all boils down to don't be a dick.

The promise of forgiveness was aimed, in historical context, at loosening the strict requirements of Judaism and also to allow for non believers that lived good lives to be considered saved, to allow Christians simpler coexistence than it might have been..

Obviously you will rarely if ever find anyone living like that in actuality.

It's all about how you arrive at the pearly gates. You could live a sinful life of you truly redeem yourself on your dying bed; accept Jesus and free yourself of your sinful ways.

The strategy of living sinfully with last minute redemption comes with two big drawbacks. First, death could come for you at any moment - you won't necessarily have time to prepare. Second, your conviction in time of dying needs to be sincere. It would be hard to fake, and most sinners probably wouldn't even know where to start. That's why it's all but impossible for rich people to get to heaven - their minds are twisted towards justification of their inaction, and their chance of redemption is close to zero.

That's my understanding anyway, I'm an atheist from a Protestant country living in a Catholic one.

Raised Catholic. Don't believe in hell. Lost my mom recently so i hope there's a heaven. If there is i assume it would be accepting of all. I try not to do things that hurt people because i don't like to see people hurt.