People sometimes ask: why can't God just forgive sin? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross for us?

My answer to this would be that there are two kinds of forgiveness, one of which is a lot more 'powerful' than the other, and God needed to use this second, more powerful kind of forgiveness. Moreover, giving this kind of forgiveness required Jesus to die on the cross.

How so?

Imagine a thief who keeps stealing some guy's stuff - let's say John's stuff. John is so nice that whenever the thief steals from him, he forgives the thief. But the thief never changes his behaviour. John can forgive the thief all he wants, but it doesn't stop the thieve from stealing. Forgiving the thief doesn't make the thief a better person.

John's kind of forgiveness could be called the first kind.

The story shows that John's kind of forgiveness doesn't do that much. John's forgiveness won't make the thief stop stealing, it will only prevent John from seeking justice and might also relieve some emotional tension from his anger. John's kind of forgiveness won't change the thief's behaviour.

If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then God's forgiveness won't change people's behaviour. If God's forgiveness is like John's forgiveness then we'll act in heaven the way we do on earth. This could lead to heaven having such things as people really disliking one another, splits between different groups, cliques, and so on. Not really a great picture of heaven.

The Christian idea is that to solve humanity's problems, God needed a more powerful 'second' kind of forgiveness - one that changes behaviour. That's the kind of forgiveness you need to really deal with humanity's issues.

See Col 2:13: "You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins."

The Bible says that when God forgave us He managed to change our behaviour as part of the forgiveness. Our sinful nature was 'cut away' by God's forgiveness, although we will still fight against it until Jesus comes (Gal 5:17).

Imagine John forgiving the thief with such 'power' (somehow) that the thief decided never to steal again! That would be similar to the second kind of forgiveness.

So how does it work?

The Bible says that the mechanism for God's more powerful kind of forgiveness must involve Jesus dying for us (Matt 26:39). I'm not too clear on the details of how it works, but I suspect it involves some kind of exchange between sinners and Jesus. 1 Peter 2:24 says, "He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed", in Romans 6:6, "our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ", and in Gal 2:20, "It is no longer [my old sinful self] that lives, but Christ lives in me".
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One of the problems that people can have with Christianity is that what is considered sin sometimes doesn't resonate on an emotional level. So, for example, sins can be things like murder, rape, and assault, but people often include within sin many minor things, such as wasting one's time, being silly, liking certain kinds of music, etc which don't feel particularly wrong or evil.

There is a problem with sins that do not feel very wrong (or wrong at all). This problem is that a Christian, in that situation, sort of has to force themselves to repent and to act like something is wrong, but they themselves do not actually feel it is really hurting anyone and so they cannot really make themselves feel, rather than think, it is wrong.

I believe this could be an influence that motivates Christians to give up their faith, because people get tired of saying things are evil or sinful when they don't actually feel those acts hurt anyone.

Here are some interesting verses written in Psalm 119 about this issue:

18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
27 Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works.
33 Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end.

34 Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart.
73 Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.
125 I am your servant; give me discernment that I may understand your statutes.

The psalmist prays specifically for understanding of God's laws, to see why they are right or how they make sense. So the psalmist is praying not to follow God's law out of an iron sense of obligation, but to follow it because they can say, 'I can actually agree with that command, I can see how that makes sense and is the right thing to do'. Then they can feel the rightness or wrongness of a command because it makes sense.

So it seems that it's important to be able to rationally see how something is a sin if you say it is a sin, and for many people that means tracing it to some kind of harm - self-harm, harm of others, or harm of God.

So one conclusion is that some things we consider sins may actually not be sins, and we are being too hard on ourselves, because we cannot trace it back to a rational basis. A verse that relates to this is from 1 Corinthians 4:6, where people in the church had been adding to what the Bible said:

"Now, brothers and sisters, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, “Do not go beyond what is written.” Then you will not be puffed up in being a follower of one of us over against the other."

Another conclusion is that we can trace it to a rational basis after thinking about it a lot, and this will help us do it joyously rather than from inexplicable guilt, e.g. "I can see now how that action might be harmful in some way and why I shouldn't do it".
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A while ago I had a conversation with a Chinese friend who is not a Christian about Christianity, and one thing she felt was that Christianity seems to be a mainly Western religion, and we discussed whether most people in heaven will be Westerners. Western people throughout history seem to have had the best chance to hear the gospel and therefore perhaps an implication is that God prefers Westerners?

There are various ways that one could take to answer this point. For instance, in Revelation 7:9 God emphasises His inclusiveness:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

But I think it is interesting to reflect on how the future may be very different to the past. It's possible that by the time Jesus returns, Christianity will have become a much more significant presence in the East and South of the world compared to its North and West. Some statistics on its growth in the East-South from here say:

"In 1900, Europe and North America accounted for about 85 percent of the world's Christians. By 2050, that number will have shrunk to about 25 percent.

During the same period, he said the number of Christians in Africa have, well, skyrocketed seems too tame a word. In 1900, there were 10 million; in 2000, 363 million. By 2015, Jenkins expects 500 million. And, by 2050, he predicted that Africa would become the first continent to have 1 billion Christians. Put another way: One of every three Christians in the world will be African - and that's not counting the Africans who will have moved to the United States or Europe."

…"But by 2025, as Europe continues down the road of secularism, "Africa and Latin America will be jostling each other for (that) title," Jenkins said."

And from here:

"By 1949, out of an estimated population of 450 million, there were just over 500,000 baptized Protestant Christians. Anonymous internet columnist Spengler speculated in 2007 that Christianity could "become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now."
The current number of Christians in China is disputed. The most recent official census enumerated 4 million Roman Catholics and 10 million ‎Protestants. However, independent estimates have ranged from 40 million to 130 million Christians."

As this is happening, Christianity is suffering in the West. When people from non-Western cultures come to the West they sometimes assume that everyone is Christian or that the West is essentially a Christian society. This impression is way off base, although somewhat less off base with America which is quite a religious society. The West is now a post-Christian culture where church attendance and rates of serious Christian belief is dropping overall. From here:

"Ireland is not an exception. Every major religion except Islam is declining in Western Europe, according to the Center for the Study on Global Christianity at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. The drop is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than 10% in some areas."

So I would say that there is evidence that the proportion of non-Westerners versus Westerners who are Christian is steadily growing, so much so that some commentators say that Christianity will become a mainly non-Western religion within our lifetimes.

A second important point on this is that it's only recently in human history that there have been billions of people living at any one time. See this chart.

In 1000 AD there were 275 million people alive, in 1650 - 500 million, in 1800 - 1 billion, at 1930 - 2 billion, which has skyrocketed to 7 billion now, with 9 billion people expected to be alive in 2025.

This matters because, to use a thought experiment, if 90% of Christians are Western in AD 1000 when there are 275 million people in the world, but 60% of Christians are non-Western in AD 2100 when there are 9+ billion people in the world, then which group has more Christians when you compare the two times? Obviously, the non-Western group would have more Christians by a massive margin, even though 60% is less impressive than 90%.

This indicates that if the population of the world keeps getting larger, and Christianity completes the shift from a very Western-associated religion to a South or Eastern-associated religion, then more non-Westerners will have been Christian in history. Evidence from demographic changes can support this general view.

So, in conclusion, it doesn't matter what the proportion of non-Western versus Western Christians are because, according to the Bible, God 'does not show favouritism' (Romans 2:11). And someone from every ethnic/cultural/linguistic group will go to heaven (Rev 7:9). But I think you can reasonably believe that at the end of history Christianity will not be considered a mainly Western religion.
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