And why it still keeps people in chains today
When I was a young child, every night before I fell asleep, I went through the same ritual: a desperate mental checklist of every sin I could remember.
“God, forgive me for lying to Mum.”
“Forgive me for fighting with my sister.”
“Forgive me for sneaking biscuits.”
I would scrape my brain for anything I might have missed, terrified that if I forgot one, I’d wake up on the wrong side of eternity. It wasn’t a bedtime prayer. It was a ritual of survival for a nine-year-old convinced that God was tallying every mistake.
I didn’t stumble on this fear by accident. It was planted. One verse, delivered with solemn authority, had convinced me that sin always demanded payment, and the only currency accepted was death.
If you grew up in the Evangelical church system, as I did, you would have heard this verse many times. It was usually the first stop on what we called “the Romans Road” — a string of verses stitched together to explain the so-called gospel. The idea was simple: start by proving everyone is guilty, then move step by step to show how Jesus is the only way out.