I grew up in an Egyptian family with very strict parents who took me to a traditional Egyptian Coptic Orthodox church, where we are taught that the only way someone can become a Christian is if they’ve been baptised by the priest as a baby.

I was also taught that once we had been baptised, I had to try to be perfect, and if I wasn’t perfect I wouldn’t be able to go to Heaven, and God wouldn’t forgive me, because He is perfect and would only let perfect people come into the Kingdom of Heaven.

I got very worried if I had sinned, and always felt guilty, because I knew I couldn’t take my old sins away, so even if I had confessed on Sundays and tried to work hard not to sin, God was still keeping a record of my sins during the rest of the week, and I wouldn’t be good enough to go to Heaven.

When Geoff first started to talk to me about Christianity, I told him that this was always something that scared me, because I knew I was a sinner and couldn’t be perfect. He replied to me with this question:

What does the Bible say? I said I didn’t know because we didn’t study it that much, the important thing that mattered was what the priest said, and I needed to do what he said so I didn’t end up in Hell. Geoff would go back to the same question,  What does the Bible say?

How could I pay for my sinful nature when I was a baby?  What would I pay it with?

I said the priest did it when he baptised me. Geoff asked, but how could he do it if he was born a sinner too?

And the conversation would go on until I understood that it was impossible for one sinful person to pay the price for another person’s sins, because they were both born guilty and neither had anything to pay the penalty with.

That’s when I started to learn about God’s grace. God sent His Son, who was born perfect and without any sin, to die for all the people in the world.

This was the only way our sins could be paid for. He told me if I wanted to receive God’s grace, which came from His great love, I needed to understand, trust and confess that when Jesus died on the cross, His precious life, which was pure and free from all sin, would have to be sacrificed to pay for my sins. I needed to trust that Jesus’ death on the cross was sufficient to pay the penalty and give me life.

Now I know that God is a patient, merciful, compassionate and loving Father, who sent His own Son to die for my sins, and when I repented and asked Him to forgive me, it’s His grace that saved me, His loving kindness.