Apologetics 101: The uniqueness of Christianity — Michael Penfold

Sin, Adam, and Christ’s Obedience

Romans chapter 5 and we're going to read verse 12. Wherefore as by one man, now Paul is writing about the first man Adam, one man, by him sin entered into the world and death by sin as a result of sin and so death passed upon all men for all have sinned.

The same concept is repeated in verse 19. For by one man's disobedience, that's Adam, many were made sinners. So by the obedience of one, that's Jesus Christ, shall many be made righteous. And when that verse talks about the obedience of Jesus Christ, it's not talking about the fact that he lived a sinless life, it's talking about one particular instance.

It's talking about his death on the cross. So let's go back up to verse 6 and read about that. Romans 5 verse 6. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Verse 8.

But God commendeth his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. I think that'll do for our reading this evening and we hope to be out of here by nine o 'clock.

So what we've been trying to do this week, we've been focusing on exposing and undoing 400 years of very damaging so-called Enlightenment thinking. And on Monday we looked at the subject of does truth exist?

And we came up with a resounding yes. Truth comes from God. Truth is absolute. Truth is knowable. And everything opposed to truth is false. Tuesday night we looked at does God exist? Not now does truth exist, but does God exist?

And we got another resounding yes by looking at the existence of the universe and the nature of the universe. All of these give clear voice and testimony to the existence of God. Wednesday night we looked at the subject of creation evolution.

What is responsible for us? And we found that Darwin's theory of evolution comes up short. It cannot do what it says on the tin. Whereas the design in nature lets us see that there must have been a God who made it the way it is and made us.

Then last night we looked at the subject of is the Bible the Word of God? And then we discovered that God has not only revealed himself in his creation, what we call general revelation, but he has revealed himself in a book, the Bible.

And this book proves itself to be God's Word. So you can see God's fingerprints in the universe and you know God made it. When you read the Bible you can see God's fingerprints in this book and so you can discover who the author is from the contents.

This therefore being the final authority. Now those four nights have laid a foundation for what we're going to do tonight. There's a reason why this is last, because we've been building towards this night.

If I start on night one and preach to you salvation through Jesus Christ and you don't believe God exists or you think we evolved from a warm pond millions of years ago or you don't believe the Bible is the Word of God, it'll just go straight over your head and won't mean anything to you.

The Uniqueness of Christianity and the Meaning of Worldview

So we sought to try and build a foundation and now we come to the top stone. The question tonight is the uniqueness of Christianity. Is Christianity unique? Now when I talk about Christianity you might be sitting there saying, which version of Christianity?

You know some people object as well, there's all these different churches. Now I'm not worried about different churches tonight, I'm talking about the core gospel concept in the Bible. You might be sitting there saying well Christianity's caused a lot of wars in the world and all those kind of things.

There's an awful lot of bad stuff been done in the name of Christianity, we know that. We're not talking about that, we're talking about the core message in this book. I often say to people, people say to me when we're out in the streets they say you know Christianity has done this and Christianity and I say forget about what Christianity's done, have you got any problems with the Lord Jesus Christ?

Silence. A lot of people do some things in his name which should never be done in his name. So we're talking about the core message of Christianity. Now let me explain how I'm going to approach this tonight.

I'm going to introduce a concept called a worldview. Everybody in this hall tonight has a worldview. A worldview is perhaps best explained by by the idea of a pair of glasses. The fancy name for it is a meta-narrative.

In other words it's the big picture and everybody in the world really has a worldview whether they've even thought about it or not. When you wake up in the morning and go out into the world you go there with a set of beliefs in your head you have a way in which you view the world, you have a way in which you view yourself, a way in which you view reality and it all depends what glasses you're wearing, not literal glasses, it depends what philosophical glasses you're wearing, what scientific glasses, what theological glasses.

I have a completely different worldview to most people in England because I wear a completely different pair of glasses. This is my pair of glasses here. I look at the world through this book. I see the world through biblical eyes and I have a very different view to someone who sees the world through Darwin's origin of species.

You see the point I'm making? We went on a Sunday school outing some years ago in a blazing hot summer's day and when we got back to the Gospel Hall we all got off the bus and somebody had left a baseball cap in the bus.

I thought oh we need to find out who this is so I picked it up and sort of stood out in the car park and there's just you know maybe 70 or 80 people all milling about and I held it up and says right who who's is this orange baseball cap and I wasn't getting much response.

I said who come on who's is this this is somebody's left this orange baseball cap on the bus and there's quite a few people kind of looking at me as if are you feeling all right and eventually somebody had the boldness to say Michael it's not orange it's pink and I looked at it I said it's not pink it's orange.

Do you know what the problem was? I had sunglasses on and when I took them off it was pink but when I had the sunglasses on it looked orange. Now that's a little bit like your world view the way you view the world you see it one way I see it another but what is the real way?

Now the issue of worldview is very very important how you see the world is very very important we say why because ideas have consequences. Tell me what a man or a woman believes and I will tell you how they will live.

It all depends what you believe and not only does it affect how you live according to this book what you believe affects where you spend eternity what could be more important than that so the issue of worldview the issue of the way you see the world is critically important so the bottom line is this it's absolutely essential that your worldview is true.

You see what I'm saying? You need the right pair of glasses you need to be sure that you are correct. You say well how can anybody be correct you should have been here on Monday this is why we've done it this way.

You need to be sure your worldview is correct. Do you remember on Monday we looked at the law of non-contradiction? This is a basic law of truth and logic that God has built into the universe it flows from his very nature the law of non-contradiction.

The law of non-contradiction says that A cannot be the same as non-A at the same time and in the same sense. If this man here asked me are you married and I say yes and then this lady two seconds later asked me are you married and I say no I have broken the law of non-contradiction they cannot both be true.

You remember the story I told of rabbit when Winnie the Pooh went to his house and Winnie the Pooh knocked on the door and rabbit said no one's home. That's breaking the law of contradiction because you cannot say you're not home and yet be at home at the same time and in the same sense.

What this means is that if the Christian worldview is true the atheistic worldview must be false. If the Christian worldview is true Islam must be false. If the Christian worldview is true the Freudian worldview is false.

We could go on with a very long list I can assure you. You say well why is that the case? That is the case because these worldviews are all very different. Some people think oh all religions are basically the same.

They're not. They may be superficially the same but they are fundamentally different. For example in the Quran it says that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God and that he did not die on the cross. If you want the references just Google them.

If one holy book which is apparently supposed to have come down word-for-word verbatim from the angel Gabriel says Jesus is not the Son of God and he did not die on the cross and here's another book which claims to be by inspiration of God that says Jesus did die on the cross and he is the Son of God they cannot both be true.

Hence the whole concept of multi-faith is really a typical British fudge because they cannot both be faiths. One of them has to be wrong. Which is it? Now this is pretty critical because that's a billion people over there or maybe more and that's how many billion over there.

These are big big issues if they are what they claim to be. Now let me just move on a little bit. A worldview is a kind of a story in a sense. We tell ourselves these stories and you grow up believing the story that usually your mum and dad tell you until you get to a certain age and then you have to make up your mind do I really believe this story or don't I?

One of the features of our day is that children are being brought up in Christian families and going to Christian churches and this is happening all over the West and as soon as they hit university they stop going to church they stop going to meetings they stop reading their Bible they stop praying they give up all the commitment that they had to Jesus and they're gone disappeared.

It's something like a 75 fall away rate. Why is that happening? Partly it's happening because this is not taught. People do not understand these worldviews. They do not understand why they believe what they believe.

They do not understand and have not been taught. That's why I'm delighted to be here. That's why I'm delighted that you're interested in this topic. So a story has a beginning and a middle and an end.

A past, a present and a future and each story part in your worldview throws up what's nowadays called an existential question. A story about my existence. So every worldview is a three-part story. It has an origin story to it.

It has a present story to it and it has a future story to it. So the question about the origin is the where question. Where do I come from? So what do you believe? Let's say you're a Marxist or a communist or a capitalist or you're religious or you're an atheist or you're some your new age.

I mean you could have there's so many worldviews now it's this it's hard to keep track of them but whatever your worldview is you have an origin story. Where did I come from? You also have a not just a where question you have a what question.

What went wrong? Why is there suffering in the world? What's the problem? Why can't we fix it? And then you also have not only a where question where did we come from and a what's wrong question you also have a how question.

How do we fix it? How do we get to an end goal? What should we be aiming for? Now that's to be expected that it would go in that. So I mean have you read a novel lately? Unless you like dystopian literature your novel will begin by setting the scene who the characters are where they live and what they're doing then there'll be a crisis and that's when you can't put the novel down because you want to see what happens next and at the end everybody lives happily ever after.

That's how films work, that's how books work, that's how plays work. I wonder why that is? Well that's the way we think. It's sort of pre-programmed into us that there's a beginning and there's a middle and there's an end.

So what you need to do with your worldview is test the beginning and test the middle and test the end. Test it against the where question. Test it against the what question. Test it against the how question.

Comparing Atheism, Marxism, Islam, and Buddhism

Now what I'm going to do in a second is I'm going to put up a chart on the screen. Now it may be too small print but don't panic we'll work through it. And down the left-hand side I'm going to put some views.

Atheism, Marxism, Islam and Buddhism. I've got four and we're going to have biblical Christianity at the bottom and then we're going to have three columns. Past, present and future. I'm just going to walk you through these worldviews so you can see.

You can see for yourself. You can test what you believe. You can test what the Bible says against these worldview columns. So let's do the first one. Atheism. We've been talking about atheism quite a lot this week and underneath the umbrella of atheism we've got all sorts of things.

Darwinism and relativism and secularism and all the kind of isms that they're out. Hedonism and postmodernism. They're all really under this big umbrella of atheism. What's their story when it comes to the where question?

Does their worldview add up? Have they got the right pair of glasses on? You know what they say? Everything came from nothing by accident. Life came from non-life. Mind came from mindless processes. You believe that?

Well you have to not only ask the where question you have to answer the what question. What's wrong with the world? Talk to an atheist who understands atheism. You say to him what's wrong with the world?

He says that is a stupid question. There isn't anything wrong with the world. We are just DNA. We crawled out of a pond of slime millions of years ago and here we are. We happen to have won the race to survive and we have the biggest brain.

Other than that there is no reason for anything. As Mr. Dawkins says, I think the quote is there, there is no good, there is no evil, there is nothing but blind pitiless indifference. But you say I'm an atheist and I don't believe that.

That's because you're not a consistent atheist. Atheism is so bleak. Atheism is so pitiful and pitiless that most people who say they're atheists can't carry it through to its logical conclusion. So they get rid of God and say I'm an atheist but they hang on to goodness which comes from God and truth which comes from God and reason which comes from God and meaning which comes from God.

But they have nothing to get that meaning and that life and that goodness from except DNA. DNA doesn't have any meaning. DNA just is. The neurons firing in your brain, that's all they think it is. They don't even think you have free will.

You think you came here tonight because you wanted to come here tonight. Do you know the reason you came here tonight? Because the neurons in your brain fired at random and you're here. That's atheism.

There is nothing wrong with the world. It's just the way it is. What's the future story of the atheism world view? There is no future. Heat death. The Sun is going to burn up and every Sun in every galaxy in the universe will burn up and it will all be as if it never was and you might as well be thought of as on the same level as a blade of grass.

What does it matter? You are nothing. Nothing you've ever said or done or thought, no one you've ever loved, no tear you've ever shed has the remotest scintilla of meaning. You are nothing. That's atheism.

That is atheism. You believe that? That's the story. That's the worldview of Richard Dawkins and a whole lot of others beside. Well there's other worldviews. There's the Marxism worldview. If Jeremy Corbyn was here tonight he could tell you all about that and John McDonnell and a few others.

What's their story of origin? Well their story of origin is very similar. They would all be along those lines. Darwinian evolution. It all came here. It's just material stuff. There's no God. What's wrong with the world?

Is it sin? Is it evil in the human heart? Oh no no nothing like that. It's inequality. There's a class struggle as there is a class struggle in nature. Survival for the fittest. So since we are animals there's a survival struggle between the rich and the poor and some people have private property the rascals and that's not proper and what should happen is the state should come along and what's the solution?

What's the end? What do they want to get into Downing Street to do? This is not a political lecture by the way. This is just telling you what Marxism is. They want a revolution. A revolution where the state owns everything and spreads it all out redistributes it and we have this utopian classless society.

That's the story of, that's the worldview of Marxism. The only problem is it doesn't work. It's been tried. They keep saying well it's never really been tried. It's been tried all right. It's been tried in country after country after country after country.

It doesn't work. Now I'm not saying capitalism comes down from heaven with bells and whistles. I'm not saying that at all. We'll explain that later but Marxism's story is a worldview all of its own. I submit to you it has failed.

Islam. Islam says God created the world so far so good but then when he created man and woman he didn't make them in his image. The link between God and his creation is different to what it says in the Bible.

What's wrong with the world according to Islam? What's wrong with me? Well if there's anything wrong with me it's that I've done a few bad things. I've said a few bad words. I've been angry. I've been unforgiving.

I've been proud but as long as I confess that to God that's fine and if on the day of judgment I've done more good things and bad things I'll be fine. Try to keep the five pillars. Make sure you're a good Muslim.

Go to Mecca once in your life and you'll probably be alright in the end. Jesus isn't the Son of God. He didn't die on the cross. That's Islam. What about Buddhism? Buddhism and a sort of New Age Hinduistic kind of Eastern philosophy it's very mushy and difficult to get your hands on but if you were to sort of tease it out of someone they would say that we emerged many moons ago and eons ago out of the Great One.

This spiritual essence and the problem is we're trapped in this cycle of rebirths. We keep coming back and back and back and what we need to do is build up enough karma and through meditation and other things then we get out of this cycle of rebirths and we reunite with the divine essence and we become one with the universe again.

Nirvana. Interesting. These are the worldviews. The worldviews that are believed by billions and billions of your fellow travelers to eternity. Now the Bible has a worldview. This book which we showed last night is the Word of God.

This book that has been inspired by God. This book presents a worldview. That is to say it's not just an isolated book with a few chapters about King David and a few chapters about Goliath and a few bits and bobs about Paul going around Asia Minor and the odd prophecy here and there.

No, no, no. This is a story. A coherent whole story with a beginning, with a middle and with an end. Oh yes it meanders from here to there and there are different nations and there are different peoples and there are different eras and there are high points and low points but the story flows on inexorably according to a preordained plan because God had a plan and made promises of that plan before even the world began.

Creation, the Origin of the Worldview, and the Entrance of Sin

Now we've already looked at the beginning box. It's very important we begin at the beginning you know. If people would go back to the beginning it would solve a lot of the arguments that atheists and others come up with.

There was a man in the New Testament called Paul. He wrote the verses we've just read. One day he went to Athens. I tell you I wouldn't want to preach in Athens in those days full of these characters like Socrates and Plato.

Not that they were alive at that time but their types. Very clever philosophical types and Paul gets up to them and he's got to preach the gospel. Where does he start? You can read it for yourself in Acts chapter 17.

These are the first words that come out of his mouth. God who made the world. Why does he go back that far? Why not just go back to Bethlehem where Jesus was born? Well you see if you go right back to the beginning you're beginning to pick up on the story because it is one whole story and it begins with God creating a perfect world.

One of the biggest objections I constantly come across in gospel work is if God is a loving God why has he made the world such a mess? Why did God create the world where it's full of disaster and full of disease and full of... and I have to say to people he didn't.

He didn't. Now on an evolutionary history you've got nature red in tooth and claw, you've got millions of years ago dinosaurs ripping into each other. The Bible says that at the beginning God created a perfect world, a perfect environment, a perfect climate, perfect people.

You say oh come on do you really believe that? It's in this book. This is the Word of God. We showed that last night. In the original creation there was no death, no disease, no disorder, no disaster.

It was a perfect world and when God finished he had a look at it and he says behold it's very good. That's not a poem. That is the comment of God on his creation. I know we can't imagine that but that's what the Bible says.

God made a perfect world. Then what he did was this. He created out of the dust a man called Adam and for him he created a wife and he put them on that world to populate that world and to be in fellowship with him.

That's the Bible worldview of the beginning. That's the story that begins with where. Where did we come from? That's where we came from. Now we need to fill in the next box. What goes in the next box?

What went wrong? Look around you. There are about 40 wars being fought in the world. There are 102 people dying every minute. A woman dies of abuse by a relative every day in Great Britain. Disease on every hand, disaster on every hand.

Pick up the newspaper. It's depressing. We're all slowly dying. We're all getting sick. What went wrong? What's the Bible explanation for what went wrong? Well we read two words in Romans chapter 5 verse 12.

Sin entered. That's the Bible explanation on the storyline of history for why we are where we are. Sin entered. Very simple but dramatic statement. By one man. Sin entered. You know there's been some dramatic entrances in this world's history.

It was a dramatic day in September the 1st 1939 when Germany entered Poland. It was a dramatic day on 9 -11 when two aeroplanes entered the Twin Towers. But the worst catastrophe in all of history was when sin entered this planet.

You say how did it happen? You remember I said that God made Adam and Eve to have fellowship with him? He's the creator. They are the creatures. The relationship was God is a necessary being. They are contingent beings.

God is because he is. They are because they're made. Which means they're responsible to God. They are dependent upon God. They're not autonomous beings who are there to do as they please. They're answerable to their maker.

That's how God set it up. What was their response? To the love and the care and the providence that he'd showered upon them. Well God put them to the test. Gave them one command not to eat of a certain tree.

And if God is a God of truth then the archenemy of God the devil is a well the Bible calls him the father of lies. He came into that situation he said to them what atheism says to you effectively. The first three words out of the devil's mouth in the in the Bible were this.

Has God said? Has God said? Is there really a God in heaven who makes rules? Is there really a creator? Was there really a garden of Eden? Was there really an Adam and Eve? Has God said? Can you trust this book?

Is it the words of God? Has God said? And well one thing led to another and Adam and Eve decided well let me put it to you this way. Maybe you think of Adam and Eve taking the fruit from the tree as a fable.

Or even if you think of it as something true you kind of think that was a bit severe for just taking an apple off a tree. I want to explain to you what's behind the taking of the it wasn't even called an apple but taking the fruit off a tree.

The big deal is not how much the fruit was worth or anything like that. The big deal was the massive shift of allegiances that took place at that moment. Because what Satan said to Adam and Eve effectively was this.

Look at you look at you poor benighted human beings in this garden. God up in heaven he's trying to spoil your fun. He's not allowing you to do this and he's not allowing you to do that. He's keeping back knowledge from you.

He's keeping back status from you. You don't need to listen to him. You don't need to wait on him for what to do every day. Why don't you just plot your own course? Why don't you just exert your own will?

Why don't you take things into your own hands? Instead of being dependent creatures you have to wait for God. Just be autonomous. Follow your heart. Create your own reality. Set your own rules. See that's what's really going on.

And when Adam reached out and Eve reached out and took that fruit what they were basically saying was forget God we're gonna do our own thing. And in doing so they turned aside from God as the object of supreme delight and they rebelled against God as the supreme authority in their life.

And what happened was this something which theologians call the fall. F-A-double-L. The fall. They fell from grace. They fell from innocence. And the results were absolutely catastrophic. There were global results.

There were personal results. There were eternal results. Now the global results were things like this. Thorns and thistles. Disease. Tsunamis. Pestilences. All the sort of natural disasters. They didn't exist before the fall.

They are, the Bible talks about the whole creation being under a curse because of sin. But not only global effects but personal effects. Adam and Eve died spiritually. They were cut off in their relationship from God.

Verse 19 says they were constituted sinners. Now one of the reasons I call this the uniqueness of Christianity is because what I'm telling you now no other religion believes it and you understand what I'm saying.

Your doctor doesn't believe it. Your psychologist doesn't believe it. Most people even going to go to church don't believe it. This is the doctrine of original sin. Islam doesn't believe it. Hinduism doesn't believe it.

Freud doesn't believe it. Darwin doesn't believe it. The doctrine of original sin is saying that when Adam sinned in the garden he was the head and source of the whole human race. He represented what I would have done had I been there.

And because he sinned his disobedience meant he passed that on to all of us. And we have within us from birth a lawless principle exactly as Adam did in the moment that he sinned. We are fallen creatures.

Do you believe that? That's the Bible worldview. That's what the Bible teaches. Sin wrought a constitutional change of unholiness in the human heart. And every man and woman and boy and girl on planet earth has an innate corrupting principle in their flesh which transmits itself to the next generation.

So your problem and my problem is not I've done a few bad things. My problem is I'm a sinner by nature and alienated from God. Now let me illustrate it. I don't know whether your wife or your mother or your sister does any baking but perhaps I wouldn't be any good at the baking but I like to nothing better than some fresh bread or a fresh cake of some kind.

So you have this tin you pour in the constituents and up it rises and so on. Maybe one day you drop that tin and there's a big dent in the side. You push it around a bit and you think I don't want to have to buy another one I'll just keep using it.

But there's a small dent there. What's going to happen is this. Ever after because that cake tin fell every cake that comes out of that tin is going to have that mark of the fall in it. Because that's the shape of the tin it will be the shape of all the cakes and all the loaves that come out of it.

It fell it was dented and everything that comes from it will bear the marks of it. Now that's just a very faint illustration that what happened at the beginning. Adam and Eve sin and the Bible says in verse 19 by one man's disobedience many that's all of us were constituted sinners.

Evidence for Original Sin and Humanity’s Need

Now here's my question to you. Do you think that's true? Do you think you could prove that? Is there anything that we could actually look at and say you know that makes sense? Can we take away the question mark in that middle box and say yeah that's that's actually true.

Well let me give you some ideas. Have you ever noticed that human beings on the one hand can do the most amazing things. The most altruistic amazing acts of devotion and sacrifice. Running into a burning building.

Diving in to save someone they've never met. They drown the person gets saved. Giving away a kidney. The most amazing things are done by human beings. Benevolent, philanthropic things and yet on the other hand human beings are capable of the most horrendous, shocking, gut-wrenching crimes against humanity.

I wouldn't even mention some of them tonight. You're all adults you know what I'm talking about. How is that possible? What explanation fits that? That human beings seem to be capable of doing wonderful things and yet they're also capable of doing desperate things.

That fits exactly what the Bible says. The Bible says we were made in the image of God but the Bible says that image has been tarnished and marred and we've fallen into sin. It fits perfectly. Altruism does not fit with the evolution story.

Evolution story is survival of the fittest. I do what suits me that gives me the biggest advantage and lets me have the most offspring. Altruism which is I lay down my life for others at a cost to myself doesn't fit with the evolution story.

It fits with the Bible story. Here's another evidence for original sin. Have you got kids? Have you got kids? You don't believe in original sin. You have kids. Once that child gets about three, four weeks old it has already worked out that the best way to get what it wants done is to scream the entire house down and it knows it can do it.

It yells and it screams, it fakes that it's upset when it's not, it cries when it's got nothing to cry about, it whimpers, it kicks, it screams, it throws its arms about. Where did it learn to do that from?

Is there a school somewhere where babies go to learn how to be bad? No, you see, it's inbuilt. It's in there. Selfishness is in the very heart of the youngest child. That fits the Bible worldview. I'll tell you something else.

Man is not improving. Women are not improving. Oh, but you say what about science and what about medicine and what about the internet? Yes, all that technology is wonderful but the heart of men and women hasn't changed, not a bit.

Go back all those thousands of years, they were fighting each other and beating each other up and getting divorced and battering things and going to jail. They're doing exactly the same thing now. You say what's that got to do with your point?

My point is that we're all born sinners and every generation is the same, same problems. There's never been a generation that didn't need prisons. There's never been a generation that didn't need law courts.

It's always the same. There's not a single exception and I'll tell you something else, 10 out of 10 people die. You see, the Bible said here, death came by sin. The evolutionary theory says, oh death is just part of life.

The Bible says no, death is an intruder. If you've ever been at a deathbed, you know that's true. The human frame hangs on and hangs on and hangs on as if this isn't right. Death is an intruder. Why should DNA die?

Why shouldn't it just keep on copying itself? Why is there in built into us this principle of death? It fits the Bible story, my friends. I believe the Bible story is true because the Bible says so but I see evidence all around.