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24 The Holy Spirit Read Ezekiel 36:25-27 As we have seen, Christianity isn’t about believing the right things and keeping certain rules. When we put our trust in Jesus, he gives us his Holy Spirit to live in us (Ephesians 1:13) - and the Holy Spirit does stuff! “I assure you, no-one can...

23 Baptism Read Acts 2:37-41 In New Testament times, everyone who became a Christian was immediately baptised by being immersed in water. This was in obedience to Jesus’ instruction after his resurrection (Matthew 28:18-20). Baptism is an act of submission and obedience (because Jesus has...

22 Counting the cost Read Luke 14:25-33 Following Jesus has never been an easy option. In the first century, the only people who carried crosses (verse 27) were condemned criminals going out to their execution. And in some countries today, being a Christian can put your life in danger. In...

21 Forgiveness Read 1 John 1:5-10 Christianity is the only religion that offers complete forgiveness of all our sins - past, present and future. God can’t condone sin without contradicting His justice; and he can’t simply ignore our sins because they offend him so deeply. But if we belong...

20 Faith Read Galatians 2:15,16 Popular religion thinks that you have to be a ‘good’ person in order to receive God’s favour. So people assume that Christianity is mainly about living a good life (by keeping the Ten Commandments, or obeying the Sermon on the Mount) in order to please God...

19 Repentance Read Romans 10:9,10 Repentance is more than just feeling and saying sorry for the wrong things that I’ve done. It’s a turning around - a complete change of attitude towards God, towards myself, and towards other people. And having turned around, I start looking and moving in...

What about them? Whether there was an individual Adam or not, we are all descended from an original (very small) group of humans who were endowed by God with His image. If "Adam" was one member of that small group, we are still all descended from him. Last year we visited a remote village in...

You can indeed condense it all into a single paragraph - but that only gives the bare facts, no explanation.

There is a false dichotomy here. "Literal" doesn't necessarily equate to "true". Plenty of non-literal things are true - Jesus' parables, for example. Not every part of the Bible has to be interpreted literally. Revelation, for example, is "apocalyptic" literature - which was never intended to...

18 Jesus’ ascension Read Acts 1:1-11 Since a victim of crucifixion fell under the curse of being “hung on a tree” (Deuteronomy 21:22,23), this manner of death should have disqualified Jesus of Nazareth from any claim to be the long-awaited “King of the Jews”. But God had the last word, and...

17 Jesus’ resurrection Read John 20 Jesus’ body was prepared for burial in the traditional Jewish manner: wrapped tightly in strips of cloth, laden with valuable spices. It was then put in an otherwise empty rock tomb, with a heavy stone rolled over the entrance to keep out grave-robbers...

16 Jesus’ death Read Isaiah 53 Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest friends, condemned to death on false charges by the Sanhedrin (the Jewish Council) and executed by the Romans. The Gospels give us the facts of the story in great detail, and are especially concerned to point out that...

Dear Margaret I think the first thing you should do is take a step back and relax (not easy, I know). Your grand-niece sounds like a fairly normal unbeliever, and not especially sinful. A lot of the things you comment on are not even anti-Christian. Many devout Christian women have short...

15 Jesus’ mission Read Luke 4:16-21, 18:31-33 Why did Jesus come? His own understanding of his mission is partly laid out in the sermon he preached in his home town of Nazareth. He was the King promised by the prophet Isaiah, and he had come for the marginalised, the ‘nobodies’ of the...

14 Jesus is God Read John 14:1-11 One objection to the Christian faith is that “Jesus himself never claimed to be God” - implying that this was an idea dreamed up by his followers many hundreds of years later. And yet many of Jesus’ statements about himself are startlingly egocentric...

13 Jesus’ miracles Read Luke 7:18-23 Jesus soon acquired a mass following - not only because of his teaching, but also because he performed miracles. Most of these were miracles of healing. Many people claim to be “faith healers”, of course; but Jesus’ success rate was so phenomenal that he...

12 Jesus’ teaching Read Matthew 5:21-48 Jesus first came to public attention as a travelling preacher. But his approach was very different to the professional rabbis of the time. He put forward his own personal interpretation of the Jewish Law - and he demanded an extraordinarily high...

11 The consequences of sin Read Ephesians 5:3-6 God’s original intention for the human race was that we should not die, but live in his presence and enjoy fellowship with him for ever. But when the first humans sinned, they lost their automatic right to immortality. And all their...

10 Who’s in charge of your life? Read Job 21:7-15 Cnut (Canute) was king of England for 20 years during the early 11th century. It is said that, egged on by his flattering courtiers, he once placed his throne on a beach and commanded the tide not to come in. Of course, the sea took no...

9 What drives you? Read Romans 1:20-23 About 37% of people in England and Wales claim to have “no religion” - but if the true God is pushed out of our lives, something else inevitably takes his place. You may not recognise or acknowledge it as a ‘god’, but in our personal scale of...