Our Bible studies through Romans sometimes hurtle through chapters, sometimes linger on verses. Last night, we looked at Romans 5:12: “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned…”

The Christian doctrine of original sin is fundamental to the Gospel – if there is no sin, there is no need for a Saviour, no need for salvation. The doctrine of original sin, including the theological term ‘the total depravity of man’ (meaning that sin has tainted every aspect of humanity, rather than all people being horribly wicked in every action they do), is expounded clearly in Romans 5 but is rooted in the Genesis 3 narrative of the Fall of man.

2009 saw the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and 150 years since his ‘Origin of Species’ was published, which heralded a change in belief away from creationism (the belief that God created the heavens and earth as narrated in Genesis) towards evolution. Evolution teaches that life ‘evolved’ from nothing (there are various theories as to how this happened, including the ‘Big Bang’ theory) and that God was not involved; in fact, many evolutionists don’t believe in God at all.

Does this matter? Do you have to believe in creation to be a Christian? There are so many theories out there, even amongst Christians… surely you just go with the theory you think is the most suitable?

It’s obvious that there are many, many views on this topic and Christians definitely disagree on the subject, but it does matter what we believe, since the whole of Paul’s argument in this section of Romans is dependent on the comparison between Adam, the first man, and Christ: how the one brought sin and death into the world through his disobedience and how Christ brought salvation and redemption to the world through His obedience. If we simply evolved from nothing and Adam did not really exist, but is simply an allegory, we are in trouble when we come to Romans 5.

At the risk of stirring controversy, let me say that I believe in creationism and am deeply concerned about the way evolution is taught as fact in schools and is portrayed as fact in society, often with a corresponding denigration of Christianity. I may not have all the scientific answers (if you are interested in the topic, I would commend the ministry of Creation Ministries International to you and advise you to read widely from the material they produce at http://creation.com/), but I do believe that if you take away the doctrine of God’s creation of mankind through the one man, Adam, you are running the risk of removing so much truth that you are left with a watered down Gospel that has little impact on the world at all.

Paul teaches in Romans 5:12 that sin came into the world through one man. Adam sinned primarily because he disobeyed a direct command of God, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Sin always involves a choice: we choose to obey God’s direct command or we choose to go our own way, seeking our own pleasure, believing that we know best.

The consequence of Adam’s sin was that mankind is now infected with sin. Sin is like pollution – often unseen, far-reaching, contaminating, damaging. The penalty of sin, Paul teaches, is death – the separation of the body from the spirit (James 2:26), a death that encompasses physical decay but also spiritual separation and alienation from God (Eph 2:1-2, Is 59:2). Adam’s actions mean that not one aspect of humanity is unaffected; sin is now in our DNA, so to speak. The harmony and pefection of the Garden of Eden have been lost.

Sin, therefore, is serious. It’s so serious that it took God’s rescue plan to sort out this problem – we were unable to sort it ourselves, since sin is part of our nature now. It’s very easy to be blind to our own sins (clearly seeing other people’s!) and we need to heed the warnings of Scripture about the deceptive and pervasive nature of sin and not tolerate it in our lives. We must always be aware, however, that it’s not just a case of the specific sins we commit, but of the sinful nature itself. The battle is far deeper than we often like to admit.

Thankfully, that’s not the end of the story! More to follow!

Jesus came to earth to complete a mission: Luke 19:10 tells us that “the Son of Man has come to seek and save that which was lost.”

Mark took us through various superheroes, starting with the film ‘Mission Impossible’ and how Tom Cruise has shown us a hero who saved people against amazing odds. We looked at Superman, and how he saved both people and the planets before moving on to Flash Gordon, who was dubbed ‘the Saviour of the Universe’.

Superheroes often do supernatural things and we love to believe in heroes. Nonetheless, we need to remember that the mission of salvation which God planned long ago was impossible for any human to complete. God chose us (Eph 1:3-5) and has been seeking us out; just as Superman rescued Lois Lane because of his love for her, it is God’s love which has prompted His great rescue plan. John 3:16-17 reminds us that it is God’s love which has motivated Him and that all can come and be saved. Jesus makes the impossible mission possible; we are rescued from the penalty of sin and death and can be part of God’s family. What a Saviour!

Tony & Gary devised a number of fiendish missions for us to tackle. Starting with the relatively easy task of discovering a number of miracles of Jesus in the Bible (a miracle being defined as “a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of a divine agent”), we then had to complete five impossible missions, which thankfully were actually achievable (though not without considerable time and effort!)

The first mission was to score 50 points at this game, which proved easier said than done:

The second mission was a variation on the egg and spoon race!

The third mission involved basketball and some people found this very easy! (So much so we have no photographic evidence of this one!)

The fourth mission involved completing a maze:

The fifth mission involved a race and hopping, jumping and leap-frogging! It was a good job we had young people on the teams!

Despite exhausting us from all this activity, we also learned some amazing things through this. When we consider all the miracles that Jesus did (healing the official’s son, healing a blind man, healing a deaf and mute man, healing a paralytic, healing a leper, raising Jairus’s daughter back to life, catching fish, feeding thousands, calming the storm, walking on water and healing a man with a withered hand or a woman suffering from years of bleeding), we see something of His amazing power and compassionate ministry. Truly, the Son of God completed many ‘impossible’ tasks; amazingly He also told us “whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:12)

The theme of the family service was ‘Mission Impossible’ and as part of the service, we had to dance to ‘Chicken Impossible’, a mad version of the film’s theme tune where we had to dance around like chickens. This was the final, won by Gillian.

These are some photos from setting up for last night’s family service.

Setting out cones for one of the missions:

The birthday boy shown multi-tasking (drumming and sorting out the music for a mission at the same time…)

Getting ready to go!

Intrigued? You’ll have to wait to find out more…

Birthday boy on the birthday box (complete with hat, which he’d tried to hide earlier…)

Stephen preached this morning on worrying, asking and receiving.

Matthew 6:25-34 gives us Jesus’s advice about worrying, telling us “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear.” Jesus emphasises that people are important to God and that He is always there to love us, protect us, guide us and provide for us.

In Matthew 7:7-12, Jesus goes on to give us ways of dealing with worry, namely, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” To combat worry, we need to talk to God, but it’s all too easy to pray and then to carry on worrying, as if our asking has no effect on the situations we’re praying about!

This tendency to fail to see the answers God provides and therefore to continue to worry is shown in Acts 12:12-16, where the church was fervently praying for Peter’s deliverance from prison but were actually so astonished when he turned up at the door that he was left there! We are often not ready to receive the answer God gives or we can misinterpret what He says or does. We can fail to see God’s miraculous answers and end up worrying again. In order to break the vicious circle of worry, however, we have to both ask God for His help and recognise the answers when they come. As the circle of worry is broken, it can be replaced by our thankfulness.