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It’s about relationship, not religion.  That’s the bottom line.  Our relationship with God and with other people.  Hopefully some footy jargon will help.  Imagine you make a really bad foul, the ball is no-where and you dive in neck-high and catch the other guy around the throat with your studs.  Well, a variety of reactions may follow, but what’s for certain is that you deserve a red card.  Get the picture?  Only you deserves the punishment because only you were dumb enough to make such a reckless challenge!  You are guilty!  You know it, everybody else knows it and you willingly hold your hand up ready to confess… Now imagine the scene… the ref has an eye-sight problem (sound familiar?!) and ends up sending off the wrong player!  He’s not done anything wrong, yet has not complained, but has instead taken it on the chin and, in fact, taken your punishment.  There is now no need for you to be sent off or even get a yellow card.  The foul has been dealt with… 

Well that’s actually a picture of what Christians believe Jesus has done for them when he died on the cross.  He was taking the punishment that should have been ours.  May sound complicated, it’ll certainly sound incredible, but that is really what God’s love is like.  We know we’ve ‘committed fouls’ over and over, regardless of whether we’ve ever got caught.  But are we sorry?  What have you done with that guilt or all those regrets?  Have we come clean to God?  After all, He’s the one we have to answer to one day… 
You see, God loves you.  He wants to forgive you.  It’ll cost you nothing, but forgiveness is not cheap.  It cost God His Son.  Get it?  Understand why Christians get a bit carried away with how good God is sometimes?

Then what?  Well, let’s go back to the game.  The player who should have been sent off is well grateful!  In fact, he’s so grateful he makes a conscious decision to play the game differently, to play by the rules.  He won’t be perfect, he’ll still make mistakes, bad tackles from time to time, say things he shouldn’t from time to time, but something is clearly different.  His experience of ‘someone else taking his place’ has changed him.  That’s what it’s like for someone who becomes a Christian.  They certainly don’t become an angel overnight!  But life takes on a different perspective.