Frequently Asked Questions

He Is The Savior We Need 

Writing in the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury famously wrote Cur Deus Homo?, Latin for “Why a God-Man?” In answering this question, Anselm details why it is necessary that the Savior be both fully God and fully man in order to fulfill his mission in saving his people. In this article, I intend to briefly encapsulate who Jesus is, as a man, as God, and as the Savior.

First, the Scripture makes it clear that the Son of God existed in eternity past and is co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. John 1:1-3 states of the Word (the Son / Jesus), “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” This article is not intended to be an apologetic on the full deity of the Son of God, but a good article which details the New Testament teaching on the deity of Christ is here: The deity of Christ: Did every New Testament author believe it? | carm.org

Second, Jesus was a real historical man with a true human soul, born a little over 2,000 years ago in the city of Bethlehem. The Son of God, though existing from eternity past, added to his divine person a second nature, human nature, thus being fully God and fully man. He was born miraculously by the virgin Mary, as prophesied in the Old Testament. The book of Hebrews makes it clear that “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17). As a man, he is able to sympathize with our own weaknesses: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). This aspect of being “without sin” is critical, because it leads to the final answer of “Who Is Jesus?,” namely that he is a perfect Savior.

Jesus had to be fully God in order to live a life free of sin, free from the guilt and fallen nature all others inherit from Adam. He also had to be born truly man in order to be able to live a temporal life and die. But why did he have to live a life and die? Because that is the work of the Savior: First, to live the life of complete obedience that we have not lived, that his righteousness would be accounted to us, by simple faith (trust) in him. Second, to die the death that we deserve for our sins, though he did not deserve it himself. Suffering in the believer’s place, he endured the wrath that was due to us, satisfying God’s demand for justice. “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Romans 3:21-25). Finally, this work of the Savior was complete in his rising from the dead, as the forerunner of all those who have faith in him. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:20-22).

So who is Jesus? He is the Savior we need. He is fully God and fully man. As such, he was able to live in the place of his disobedient people and die on their behalf. God provides these benefits to all who repent of their sin and trust in Christ, apart from their own works: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).

Can faith in God be reasonable? Is He really there and is this His universe? These are the bedrock questions of human existence. The answers to these questions set the course of one’s life. If God doesn’t exist, there is no external source of hope, no external source of morality, and no ultimate meaning. But if God does exist, then life has purpose, direction, and soul-satisfying fulfillment.

Here at Forestgate, we believe not only that God is real, but that He has revealed himself so that He can be known. This is a bold claim. But if you’re a skeptic, what reasons can we offer to show you why we believe this?

We’re so glad you asked. Questioning one’s faith is crucial, deepening our understanding and building confidence in a biblical worldview. Given today’s cultural messages that emphasize the supposed infallibility of evolutionary theory, the foolishness of religious people, and the dominance of a secular view point, it may be surprising to discover the flimsiness of atheist arguments and the robust evidence there is for rational and well-grounded belief. Here are just a few thoughts to consider on why you can be confident in the reality of God.

Evolutionary theory both fails to explain our world and inescapably leads to harmful conclusions. The theory of evolution, or natural selection, explains all life as the result of genetic mutations across billions of years. Charles Darwin proposed that every species of life we can now observe resulted from nature selecting the best mutations. In other words, all life began from a single-celled organism and over vast stretches of time, this became swallows and giant squid, honey bees and elephants, great white sharks and humans. But there is a fundamental and devastating defect in Darwin’s theory: the fossil record thoroughly rejects it.

Think about the chart we all saw in our biology textbooks on how a monkey gradually becomes a human being, walking more upright with each successive species variation. If Darwin’s theory is true, the fossil record should be crowded with multiple variations in between the species of monkey and human. There have been many well-publicized discoveries and claims about finding the “missing link,” but these have been debunked. These disproved finds include Java Man in 1891, Nebraska Man in 1922, Nutcracker Man in 1959, and Lucy in 1974. Besides this gap between man and monkey, the fossil record should be overflowing with transitional forms in between all the species. But the uncomfortable truth for evolutionists is that there are very few fossils they can refer to as transitional, and more importantly, those examples are unable to demonstrate any sequence from one species to the next.

Due to its assumption that only the best mutations continue to propagate themselves — “survival of the fittest” — Darwin’s theory logically leads to racism and genocide. This view is present even in the title of Darwin’s book. Most authors prefer to not acknowledge this ugliness and typically refer to the book as simply The Origen of Species. The full title is in fact The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin made his racial theories explicit in a later book, The Descent of Man, where he affirmed that, “The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races through the world.”

Darwinism offered an intellectual justification to racial segregation in the southern United States, genocide against Australian Aborigines, Cecil Rhode’s conception of Anglo-Saxon supremacy used to brutally colonize Africa, and Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. If God isn’t real, the only other coherent option to understanding our universe is Darwinism, which is both fatally flawed in evidence and fatal to the human race itself.

The human concept of morality is clear evidence of God, and without God, there is no such thing as morality. Why do nearly all of us speak in terms of right and wrong, just and unjust? How is it that those categories even exist in every human culture? If there is no God, there is no logical basis for having these categories of thought. We should only be striving to survive, and using any means to achieve that end. Right or wrong would be irrelevant since any means would be acceptable insofar as they support that all-important end, our own survival. But since we all think in this manner, it is a rather clear manifestation that there is indeed a Creator who imbued us with that nature.

The concept of right and wrong — morality — is impossible to sustain without a real, infinite, and personal God. Without God, right and wrong are only perceptions. It may seem wrong to you that someone stole your car, but to him it seemed right because he needed the money. Multiply this one example across the range of possibilities in a society, and it becomes clear that no society can function without an external sense of morality. Some may say that our laws function as our own self-derived external morality. Would that same person insist that it was morally acceptable for Stalin to kill millions of his own people since it was the law of that nation? On what moral basis would that person argue that a certain nation’s laws are moral while another nation’s are immoral? Without God, we are only left with our individual instincts.

It was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who proclaimed, “God is dead,” and yet his life serves as a warning for those who would attempt to actually live according to that principle. He ended up insane and died in an asylum. For Nietzsche understood that if there is no God, then the ideas of purpose, beauty, love, and morality are baseless. Life without these concepts is meaningless.

The human search for meaning indicates that there is One who gives us meaning. Another trait found across humanity is the search for meaning. This common feature cannot be explained by any evolutionary process. The ability for us to ponder our own existence, to wonder why we are here on this planet at this specific time, and to seek that which brings meaning into our lives are absolutely at odds with the notion that we are products of blind chance. Rather, these human tendencies are the expression of our given nature, that One with eternal purpose created those in His image so that they too would seek and have purpose.

C.S. Lewis captures this peculiar aspect of our condition by explaining, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” We can come back from the best vacation but there is still a lack of complete rest. We can experience success or meaningful familial relationships, but yet we find within ourselves the sense that we are still missing something.

This plight is not new. Augustine of Hippo, writing around 400 AD, confessed that “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” The restlessness we all sense is on purpose — it is a guidepost for us, telling us to seek meaning in the only One that can fully provide a rationale for our existence and our purpose.

There is much more to say about the reality of God. If this has caught your interest, if this has sparked questions with which perhaps you’ve never wrestled, please know that Forestgate is a safe place to explore this topic without any pressure. Any of our leaders would love the opportunity to sit down and engage with any questions you have.

Can I Be Forgiven?

Yes. God, through his son, Jesus Christ, is faithful to forgive us of our sins. This is the central idea and, perhaps, the most radical difference between Christianity and any other world religion. In nearly every other religion, the central tenant of their faith is yes, we have sinned, and the only way to get out from under the punishment for that sin is to do something to make it better. Christianity says that, on the contrary, we’ve sinned against an eternal God which requires eternal punishment. We, under our own power, could never do enough to be forgiven. 

OK, but do I really need forgiveness?

Of course, we all know we’ve sinned. And we know in our heart of hearts sin deserves punishment. People have to pay for the bad things they’ve done. We’ve all done something for which we need forgiveness. Without diving too deep, according to the Bible (and to our honest self-assessment) sin can be something we did, something we said, or even something we thought.

1 John 1:8 says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Yeah, but how do I know He will forgive us?

The sentence just before the above quoted scripture, 1 John 1:7b says, “…the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Then, the sentence after the first quote, 1 John 1:9 reads, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We know God will forgive us, and we see the framework in which He does through the scripture: belief in the Son and confession of sin. 

So, how does forgiveness work?

God sent his son, Jesus, to live a perfect life on this earth. He deserved no punishment upon his death. But what God did was what Christians call the gospel, or good news. John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Here’s what happened. God transferred the sin of all those who believe in Christ onto Christ. He suffered and died physically, but more than that he suffered cosmically for our sin. He who had never not known fellowship from God was ripped away from God. In turn, God transferred Jesus’s perfection on to us. We who are so separated from God through our sin are instantly and eternally brought into union with Him. It’s how God could remain just and punish the sin of the world, and maintain his mercy for those who would believe on his son.

What Does forgiveness mean?

Forgiveness does not mean the freedom to sin more that more mercy may abound. No, forgiveness is the promise of progressive and eternal freedom from sin. Once we believe in Christ and confess our sins, the work of sanctification begins. It’s important to understand that being saved requires no work on our part. But sanctification is working with God to be more like Jesus. That happens in full when we die.

So, can I be forgiven? Yes! Praise God!

Do you need to understand all this better? Do you need to figure out who God is and who you are in His sight? Feel free to reach out to the pastoral staff here at Forestgate. Or come to church and check it out in person. We’d love to have you!