Necromancer wrote:Isn't forgiveness a part of the new gospel, that with Jesus, if you work to achieve redemption you may still enter Heaven because of your sacrifice and repentance?
I can't speak about the tradition you name...a form of Lutheranism, is it? I wouldn't have recognized it as evangelical, though.
The general evangelical position is that salvation is "not by works that we have done," (Titus 3:5) and "by grace...through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works..." (Ephesians 2:8-9). The evangelical concept is that one gives up on hope of self-perfection, and instead accepts that one is going to need the intervention of God to make you any better than you are, and his sacrifice, not yours, to balance the scales of justice.
Well, well, alright. What's your version/core beliefs of Christianity?
Surely, the 10 Commandments are central to the Christian belief all over the World (for good reasons)!
Actually, not so much so. I just got through talking with someone else about this. He had a hard time believing me, since it's such a common idea people have. But you'll observe that few Christians today are strict Sabbatarians, for example, which puts them out of commandment #3 or 4 (depending on how you're numbering). But they'd probably be fine agreeing with "You shall not steal," or "You shall not commit adultery," and certainly on "You will have no other gods." The
whole law...well, Jewish authorities number the commandments at 613, rather than a mere 10. The 10 are just the "biggies." And many of these laws have to do with very specifically Jewish traditions -- regulations for eating and clothing, and so on. From an evangelical perspective, the Big 10 Commandments are good, and are highly regarded by many traditions; but they were first addressed specifically to the Jewish nation.
In contrast, the New Covenant perspective, is this: "...by the deeds of the Law, no one will be justified in [God's] sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3:20) Salvation is a matter of giving up on making oneself good, and instead embracing the answer God Himself provides (a la John 3:16).
Surely, even if the child-rapist/torturer "sings" of Jesus Christ that doesn't "buy" him/her Heaven! Good?
Christianity views the situation the opposite way...it's not that respectable people deserve heaven and child-rapists do not; it's that nobody can actually be good enough to
deserve heaven. Rapists and, say, god-haters, greedy folks, liars, thieves and so on...it's just a matter of degree. We've all got a little of that in us, don't we? And if a few are daring enough to do evil, and the rest are only bold enough to have those sorts of evil desires in secret, well, who is really better anyway?
But it doesn't matter. From a Biblical perspective, everybody's a sinner. And you probably realize that the apparently-respectable can be secretly as prurient, nasty and proud as anybody. In fact, when Jesus Christ walked the Earth the biggest problems he had were not with the prostitutes and traitors, but rather with the people who were highly regarded as religious authorities, and felt they actually needed no help being worthy of heaven (There's a neat story about that in Matthew 21:28-32. It's worth a look, if you've never had the chance to see it: you can google it easily.)
So Jesus was not particularly enthused about people who thought they'd made the grade by themselves. As I suggested above, it's by God's grace that anyone at all is saved, because, as the Bible says, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus...(Romans 3:23-24).
So that's a short take on what I can tell you about evangelical Christianity, at least with regard to the differences from the other tradition framing your question.
Happy to help. I hope you get interesting feedback on the topic.
Very strange....which tradition are you drawing that from? 
