While this webpage will not assist in locating wandering socks, missing homework or errant car keys, it will provide you with the clues and incentive to search for the answers to your questions.  We are starting off with some questions that we have all expressed at some time, but maybe never had a forum to ask. If you have a question that you would like to see addressed, please send it HERE or e-mail to NewMacharQandA@aol.com. It will be forwarded to Rev Douglas McNab and his insightful response will be anonymously posted below.

Question 1: The Bible tells us that we should not hate or have ill will towards our enemy, but we should love them and pray for them. It also tells us that a transgression of God's commandments by thought or biological response is as much of a transgression as willfully breaking a commandment. How do we change our hearts and minds to "love our enemy" or to respect your mother and father if the relationship is too badly broken? If fantasies of someone other than your spouse, constitutes adultery, how can we abort such thinking? If asking God for guidance and help is not sufficient to stop an under-the-breath curse when kicking a toe or denting a car in traffic, what can we physically do to change and amend our attitudes and actions so we are not violating God's laws?

Answer:  We do not change our hearts: God changes them. Indeed he gives us a new heart. [See below Ezekiel 36:25 - 27]. Biblically the heart is the seat of the will as well as the emotions. As Jesus Christ states it is what comes out of the heart that makes a person unclean [See below Matthew 15:16 - 20]. Thus not only our actions but our thoughts are governed by the 'heart'. We do not have the strength on our own to bring about change in our hearts. We need the power of God working through the Holy Spirit to enable us to change from hating to loving, from cursing to not cursing, from lusting to loving, from promiscuity to faithfulness. When a person accepts Jesus Christ as his, or her, personal Saviour and Lord, God places a new, clean heart within that person. The 'old man' has gone the 'new man' has come. BUT we have to allow God freedom to work in our hearts. He does not force his will upon us. Jesus Christ tells us to, "Be perfect . . . as your heavenly Father is perfect." [See below Matthew 5:48] We have to work at this. It will not happen automatically nor against our will. Nor will it happen overnight nor within a short period of time: it is a lifetime goal.

Text References:
Ezekiel 36:25 - 27: “25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
Matthew 15:16 - 20: 16 “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. 17 “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? 18 But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. 19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. 20 These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”
Matthew 5:48:  48 “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
                                                                     

Question 2: The Bible tells us that "anyone who murders will be subject to judgment." (See below Matthew 5:21) If a murderer is judged by his peers and serves his time in prison, AND asks for forgiveness in becoming a Christian, will he still be "subject to judgment"?  We are told that our transgressions are wiped away and forgotten by accepting Christ as our Lord and Saviour, so would this include the murderer who truly repents? And do those who truly accept Jesus at the moment before their death receive immunity from judgment?

Answer:We have to be careful here about the difference between 'judgment' and 'condemnation'. Everyone will stand before the judgment of God, and we shall be called upon to give an account for our actions and words. BUT every person who has accepted Jesus Christ as his, or her, personal Saviour and Lord will not be condemned [see below Romans 8:1] This is because God the Father will see us standing before him not in our own righteousness but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We are 'in Christ'. As such God the Father will treat us as he does his Son. Jesus Christ is sinless, we are treated as if we are sinless: we are justified (just-as-if we had never sinned). This does not mean that we have not sinned. Nor does it mean that God does not realise we have sinned. It is simply that God the Father sees us standing before him in his own righteousness, the righteousness he has given to us in and through Jesus Christ [see below 2 Corinthians 5:21]. The sin of the whole human race has been paid for in and through the death of God in Jesus Christ on the cross at Calvary. BUT we have to accept this great gift, thus receiving eternal life with God in and through faith in Jesus Christ. When we do so we become heirs to the great promise in Jude that one day Jesus Christ will present us before God's glorious presence without fault and with great joy [see below Jude 24 - 25]. This applies to anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as his, or her, personal Saviour and Lord, regardless of when during his, or her, life on earth that he, or she, accepts Jesus Christ and his work on his, or her, behalf. For the promise to those who make last minute conversions see below Matthew 20:1 - 16.

Text References:
Matthew 5:21: 21 You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’
Romans 8:1:  1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
2 Corinthians 5:21: 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God
Jude 24-25: 24 To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— 25 to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
Matthew 20:1-16: The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
 1 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
3 “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4 He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ 5 So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. 6 About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
7 “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
9 “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. 10 So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
13 “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
16 “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Question 3: The Bible tells us that God created us for Himself; for His pleasure and glory. That God created us with the capacity to know Him, love Him and obey Him forever so  that we have a deep and wonderful relationship with Him today, tomorrow and throughout eternity. Why is it not egotistical that God created man to worship Him? And if the plan was to have such a relationship with Him for eternity, why was Adam given a soul and free will to break that relationship? If Adam was truly repentant for his disobedience to God, why was the sin not erased rather than being passed on from generation to generation of man?
 
Answer: Human beings are the pinnacle of God's creation. Yes, we are creatures of God and part of his wonderful Creation. Yes, we do not become God's children until we accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. [cf. John 1:12 - 13] BUT all human beings, and only human beings, have been made in the image and likeness of God. [cf. Genesis 1:26 - 27] Part of the image of God that we have been given is free will. God, far from being egotistical, allows us to choose whether or not we want to love him; whether or not we want to enter into an intimate, wonderful and profound loving relationship with him. Without such free will it would be impossible to love, impossible to worship, because true love and true worship have to be freely given: they cannot be forced. When, however, human beings glimpse the glory and wonder of God they become awe-struck, and worship is the natural response to such a revelation.
    To accuse God of being egotistical is not to know him. The perfect, sinless God who is love cannot, by his own character, be egotistical. Being egotistical is a human failing, a sin that has been introduced into humanity by human beings' desire to be God: to be God in the sense of being in charge of everything, especially our own lives.
    The first sin was not eating an apple - there is no Scriptural reference to an apple. Nor was it eating of any fruit. [So 5 fruit and veg. a day is O.K.!!] The first sin boils down to human beings doubting the love and goodness of God. They rebelled because of a lack of trust in God. Maybe God was keeping something back from them, something more wonderful than they had already received. There was a desire to see for themselves and decide for themselves. Such lack of trust, such rebellion, was to spell disaster for the human race. Now sin had entered the world. Entered the world by human beings' own actions. Now the human race had decided to cut itself off from the loving will of God. From that point the human race was to become more and more depraved, more and more open to sinning: quite incapable of living a sinless life. Thus cutting itself off from God. Sin was now real and had to be faced, confessed, repented of: not simply be erased as if re-starting a computer game that had gone badly wrong.
    BUT God being love was already planning the redemption of the human race: indeed the redemption of Creation. In love God provided clothing for Adam and Eve as they were evicted from the Garden of Eden. In love God chose the Israelites to be his adopted children. In love God gave his chosen people Laws by which to live their lives, to help them temporarily atone for their sins; and Laws and prophets pointing them towards the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, who would ultimately, definitively and eternally eradicate not sin, but the penalty of sin, namely death, for any human being who desires to return to God in and through Jesus Christ.
    Only in Jesus Christ can human beings truly love and worship God. Only in Jesus Christ can human beings be free from the penalty of sin (and one day from the presence of sin). Only in Jesus Christ can human beings have an eternal, intimate, awesome, loving relationship with the one who is love: namely God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God.