What you don’t know about Salvation

I normally don’t write theological articles or stories but, I have been on a 3 years research adventure to try and rediscover what salvation is and what it actually means. I find it therapeutic to constantly question my beliefs and have come to find out that I don’t even know why I believe in certain things, this has been most certainly helpful since it has come from within hence am less likely to get into a battle of wits trying to defend a position that I don’t even have a reason to.

Has someone ever confronted a truth you hold so dear yet their logic is so simple and makes so much sense that you are left in a state of truth distrust? I recently came to find out that this state of internal conflict is known as cognitive dissonance. Look at that, you learned something new today, go you, Heheeee… definitely use it in a sentence or against one of your friend especially that one who normally likes to shine yet knows nothing.

Cognitive dissonance is what I would call a brain hack, someone just challenges your belief system, you know they are right but you still hold on to your believes as truth, leaving you with a million questions, conflicted to the core and unable to make heads or tails about that belief anymore.

Questioning your internal belief system is important because if the force comes from outside and is too great, it’s most likely to break you. I have seen two God fearing people feel abandoned by God to a point of being atheist and hanging out in grave yards. Life can do a number on you until una pata factory reset.

Allow me to speak to your mind for a minute and advance a not so radical but tantalizing theory. Your brain is like a super computer that runs various programs at various times based on your desires, circumstances, locus of control “I’ll explain what this means later” and most importantly your experiences. A combination of all these things and emotions create programs in your brain that are activated based of your current engagement. You may hear people say, she knows what buttons to press to get him mad and get what she wants, or that thing triggered me and consequently I behaved in a certain way.

I challenge you to observe and analyze your response to various triggers and circumstances this week, you will notice patterns emerge. When the trigger happens try and react different as you normally would, this works best with your boss or significant other, since they are already programmed to treat you in a certain way based on how they carry you “Vile wame kubeba”.

In summary identify the trigger, pause, check your default reaction and react the exact opposite. For example if your boss call you a lazy employee, instead of being mad, tell them that you appreciate the observation and they can take their opinion to the nearest lavatory. Wewe usi fanye hivyo, you’ll get fired na Kenya saa hii hakuna makazi, but you get the drift.

Hacking your triggers to react as you desire not as you have been programmed to respond is the most underrated super power of the 21st century. Given the multiple triggers you encounter in a single day in the form of friends, family, colleagues, bosses, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, kids, advertisement, social media, you name it and it’s most likely trying to elicit a response from you.

That is why I decided to take this adventure in order to avoid internal or external brain hack that would affect one of the most important domains in my life. By the way did you know that the military operate on what they call domains, there are 6 main domains in the USA military that enable them strategize efficiently, link to that video in the comments section. Hmm I wonder what domains our most lovable KDF employ.

Anyway, I decided to question what Salvation really is, I was tired of other people interpreting my faith, especially this being the point at which the Christian faith hinges on. Take away the doctrine of salvation and the whole thing falls apart into a heap of garbage.

I’ll encourage you to do the same in the most important parts of your life and see what you’ll uncover. In the spirit of taking no prisoners in the courts of thought I was ready to lose it all, if only I could gain my own personal insights on what this thing that I held so dearly was all about.

What I thought was going to be a simple 1 to 2 months adventure ended up being a 3 years journey. 1 year which was spent reading and learning the book of Romans, which to my astonishment is a very complex web of only 16 chapters, talk about hiding gems in a book. ?I encourage you to use Jon Courson’s commentary that, unfortunately are no longer on YouTube, but you can find them in this link https://www.joncourson.com I would really love to hear how long it takes you to go through the whole Romans commentary. I remember being stuck in chapters 1 and 2 for 3 months, story for another day.

Pole where were we I got carried away in the excitement of Romans. Yes, 3 years of research led me to the points below on what salvation actually is and what it means for me. This will be a smooth ride since I went to the desert and back for you, take a cup of hot cocoa and journey with me into what you did not know about salvation.

Salvation has three distinct phases or parts that I will carelessly name as follows; Physical, Spiritual and The New Covenant. Feel free to rename them as you see fit and share your description in the comments section. I recently made acutance with a Catholic Priest, I wonder what he has to say about this article. I should do a pod cast with him on the matter. Let me know if you would like to see a pod cast on this article with a catholic priest, if this article gets 1,000 likes I’ll make it happen.

?I’ll quote several scriptures and jump to and from the old and new testament for the whole thing to add up and make sense. Let get this show on the road.

1.?The Physical Part: What You and I have to do.

This is the easy part that we all know and might have practiced.

Romans 10:9 If you declare with your mouth, “That Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This phase of salvation involves you and I believing that Jesus is the Son of God, he died, was buried and rose again on the third day. A Very simple statement yet it has cost millions if not billions their lives.

I remember in Kiswahili we were taught that statements have two to three meanings “Maana ya juu na maana ya ndani”. If you take maana ya ndani or the Dipper meaning, then you’ll notice that this simple statement of salvation is founded on three major Christian doctrines i.e. the doctrine of substitution, the doctrine of reconciliation and the doctrine of Justification.

Let’s jump into these very theological sounding doctrines because why not get into another rabbit hole while we are at it.

Substitution – Like the word suggests in football when a player is not playing well the coach will remove him and a substitute player will replace them. Same difference; God removed us from the game and Jesus substituted us, which game you might ask, the game of SIN. Where is this found in the bible, glad you asked? 2nd Corinthians 5:21 He made he who had no sin, to be sin for my sake. Congratulations you have just finished theology 101, onto the next one.

Reconciliation – Like the word suggest when you are your girlfriend / boyfriend argue and are not in talking terms, you reconcile, forgive each other and it’s all lovely bubbly until you kosana again and the cycle continues. Same difference; God forgives and reconciled us to himself after substituting our sins with Jesus, so it’s now lovely bubbly between us. Where is this found in the bible? I thought you’d never ask. 2nd Corinthians 5: 17-19 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old is gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself thorough Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

Congratulations you have now finished theology 102, onto the next one.

Justification – Like the word suggest, if you break the law you must face a judge and be sentenced, however this is not true in Kenya because if you break the law you have 2 options, bribe the police so that the case disappears or bribe the judge so that the case disappears. Fortunately God is not a Kenyan and he does not eat bribes for breakfast. So now when you die and stand before the mighty God for judgment a big file with all your sins shall be brought by the prosecutor aka Lucifer, he will be so happy because your sins mean that you shall not get to heaven and when he opens the big file with all your sins, ok let’s be real here, some of you will have like 5 big files, zile vitu huwa mna fanya ata shetani ana shangaa. When your files are opened, abra kadabra shakala boom, they shall be blank, Yieee makofi makofi. Everybody will be like, “allar allar kuna endaje huku”, then Jesus shall appear as your lawyer and say, “This one has NO SINS, give him a direct ticket to heaven”. Then it shall hit you justice was served when you were substituted earlier on in the game. Hence at that point you’ll have been justified to get into heaven and God shall hit the harmer and say, “Next case”. Shetani abaki hapo ame zubaa kwani jana kuli enda aje “Insert Mejja’s song”. Best reference I could find.

Before we go, the statement in verse 19 above shocked me because, we live life fearing sin yet it does not matter because they shall not count, as a believer even if you do 1 million sins today, tomorrow etc. God will not judge you on them. You can sin as much as you like and nothing, other that the consequence of your sin will happen to you”. This is the beauty, simplicity and complexity of the doctrine of Justification.

If you take the word Justification apart you will get “Just As If You Did not Sin”. Today and on Judgment day, God will look at it, just as if you did not sin. Friends this is not a license to kill and go do all sorts of weird stuff, because God does not care or he will not impute “An accounting term for credit or Add” sin on your account. We are smarter than that and should live a life worthy of this calling and as Paul so eloquently put’s in in Romans 6: 1-2 what shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Just a side note on this I love Romans 7:15-20 “……For I do not do the good that I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

The solution to this paradox that Paul was facing is found in the story of Cain and Abel where God came and spoke to Cain, Himself before Cain went on to commit the first homicide. Genesis 4:6-7 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it” in the NIV it says you must rule over it. Meaning that God knows that sin desires to have us by we have been given the ability to master / rule over it.

That was quite a detour, let’s take a short commercial break, refill your cup and we shall tackle the 2nd part.

2.?The Spiritual Part: What does the Old Testament have to say?

The second part is the complex part of this equation because it is a mystery and who does not love a good mystery. Here we will crisscross from Deuteronomy to Acts scheme through Romans and get out of the rabbit hole with new found revelation, let us be on our way. Oooh and before I forget congratulations, you finished theology 103 and are now in second year, look at you, BlushBlush* karibu tukuje graduation.

To understand this 2nd part we shall use the analogy of a bride and groom, unfortunately our happy couple are not so happy and might need to be separated later on in the story. Before we separate them as kamati ya roho chafu it’s important to note that one distinction between Christianity and other religions is that in Christianity we believe that we are all born as sinners, while other religions believe that we are all born innocent.

Why is this an important distinction to make? Because in other religions your salvation is based on the Good Vs Bad that you do. If you do a lot of good, you go to the happy place, if you do a lot of bad you go to the bad place.

As a Cristian, it does not matter how much good you do, even if you never do 1 bad thing, since you were born a sinner you will go to hell unless you get saved. Wait a minute does that mean that Jesus was also born a sinner?

In the spirit of not taking prisoners in the court of thoughts lets dig in a little bit dipper. He was born of a Virgin; that means one of 3 things, either he was implanted into Mary as an embryo from heaven, Mary’s egg fused with a sperm from heaven or Mary was born with both male and female genitals and she impregnated herself. Call me blasphemous, and am insulting religion but ignorance is a disease that we do not entertain on this newsletter, we must get to the bottom of things, so if you are offended or want to call Mary transgender that is on you. We are trying to understand salvation and now we have a dilemma that could break the whole thing apart.

As always you know the drill we must get back to the bible for answers. Luke 1:26-38 Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call him Jesus. The nuances of the conception of Jesus are quite seductive to explore but I deliberately left out a 4th option to tease your mind, which is that Jesus was conceived by the power of the holy spirit as it does actually say in Mathew: 1:18-25 When the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream urging him not to leave Mary. “Joseph Son of David,” The Angel of the Lord Said” do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the Child with her was conceived by the Holy Spirit”.

Wait a minute again, does this mean that the Holy Spirit had been around all along and Jesus had lied when he said he will send his disciples a helper and they should wait in the upper room? As elaborated in Acts chapter 2 “One of the most powerful bible chapters I must say”. Not quite am actually getting ahead of myself, but the short of it is that, the Holy Spirit had been around from the old testament days but his role had not yet been defined as you will see in phase number 3.

Imagine we have not even gotten to the main point yet…. Aaah bear with me friends we are too deep in this, you can’t leave now, breathe in deeply 3 times and let’s get on with it.

Great, in the Old Testament the wages of sin is death, Jesus came and we were substituted, reconciled and justified, but in the background what IT people will call the backend there is a mystery that is happening and that is what I what to unveil.

Going back to the story of our not so happy couple i.e. bride and groom, we are the Bride i.e. you and me and the Law of God is the Groom, in this case the Torah i.e. in the old testament specifically as defined in Deuteronomy. This is important because it is through the law that we even recognize sin, otherwise what is sin. Romans 5: 13 Yes people sinned before the law was given, but it was not counted as sin because there was no law yet to break.

In that case we are tied to the hip to the law; we are married to it, and since the law is this big bad wolf (I say this figuratively – The law is perfect and nothing bad can be found in it) that tell us what we can and can’t do, more over it recommends we die and not go to heaven i.e. The wages of sin is death, we need a way to get away from the law .The only way to annul a marriage is via divorce, unfortunately that can’t happen since God hates divorce, so the only way to get rid of your spouse is to kill them or kill yourself, now we can’t kill our spouse even if we hate them and we can’t commit suicide because life if for the living and there is so much to live for. While at it remember that the Law our husband is perfect, he has not done anything wrong, we are actually the ones who have cheated and done what he asked us not to do, but who are we to be told what to do and not do, Mr. Law ata tu tambua, ata juwa hajui.

So God himself introduces death into the equation and says “if the law is perfect and has not done anything then the Bride, who is you and I must die for the law to be fulfilled”. But since I can’t kill these people physically their spirit must die, and since they need their spirit to live I shall raise it up from the dead, but it can’t be the same spirit, it shall be a spirit that can’t be touched by sin, and for me to do that I’ll have to marry this spirit to a new husband that has no sin.

Consequently when we get saved our spirit literally dies and the law is fulfilled, the wages of sin is death then it’s resurrected in Jesus and we become the Bride of Christ. In my opinion that is why there is a celebration in heaven when someone becomes a new believer, there is a wedding in heaven with cake cutting, balloons and all.

Note: The new resurrected spirit is different and nobody understands what it is, which is why it’s referred to as a new creature in 2nd Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (King James Version).

So you become something different when your spirit dies fulfills the law and eventually married to Jesus. And that is why Nicodemus in the bible asked Jesus how is it that a man can be born again? To him it was physical birth, but Jesus was talking about a spiritual rebirth. Paul so eloquently put it way better than I could ever do it in Romans 6: 1- 11 Talking about how we have died and are resurrected with Christ and in Romans 7: 1-6 Talking about how we are separated from the Law and are the bride of Christ.

These two verses are the foundation of this second point, please pause here and read them for yourself.

You’ve read them? No… Please get a bible even if it’s on the app and read them. Imagine I’ll wait for you to read them before I continue. You’ve read them? No… Heheee Yes…. Well done, look at you, you’ve combined theology 201 and 202 in one semester, good job, karibu mushaino za graduation zi come.

3. The New Covenant – What’s love got to do with it.

Finally we get to the 3rd and final phase of salvation, am really proud of you for getting this far, it has not been an easy journey for me writing this for context I started this article on 21/08/2023 and finished it today 02/11/2023. I know it has also not been an easy journey for you reading this, we truly thank God for getting us this far together, wewe ni shujaa, I celebrate you. Enough with the niceties if your mother did not smother you as a child consider yourself now sorted I have done it for you.

Our journey begins with the prophet Jeremiah who wrote a very interesting verse which captures the first 2 points and this one exactly as explained, giving me confidence that what I write here was not something that I thought up, imagined or stumbled upon, but truly the word and works of God.

It is written; Jeremiah 31: 31 – 34 “The day is coming, “Says the Lord” When I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors, when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” Says the Lord. But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days, “Says the lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the Lord.’ For everyone. From the least to the greatest, will know me already.” Says the Lord. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”

In Jewish traditions before a King sat on the throne he had to write down the law in this case specifically the Ten Commandments. Jesus himself said in Mathew 5:17 Do you think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish but it fulfill then (NIV Version).

So when we become married to Christ and he is now King of our hearts he fulfils both Zachariah’s prophesy and Jewish traditions of writing a new law in our hearts. Funny thing is that God is all about laws and he is the same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and you can see his unchanging way specifically in this point.

What is this New Law that Jesus writes on our heats, am glad you did not ask, but am going to tell you anyway. John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another. As an addition the Holy Spirit who has been ever present was then poured out on Pentecost as written in Acts Chapter 2: 17 In the last days, ‘God says, I will pour out my spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughter shall prophesy. Your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams.

Fulfilling the words of Prophet Joel in Joel 2:28-32 and also fulfilling the words of Prophet Jeremiah that we read earlier that the Holy Spirit was to be enthroned on our heart and dare I say, “Is the ring that we wear to symbolize our marriage to Christ just like a bride and groom who wear a rings to symbolize that they are married”.

With all these having been prophesied, said, happened, written and rewritten the beautiful Love Story of the protagonist / hero Mr. Law and our savior Jesus is complete.

Summary and conclusion

Friends I truly hope that you now have a better understanding of what salvation is, how it happens and what it means when you boldly proclaim your faith. My prayer is that you will earnestly seek to search scripture, unravel God’s mysteries share them with others and live a life worthy of your calling.

When times and seasons dim and it’s all saddens and gloom may the words of this pages remind you of the technical architecture and God’s master plan for your life, giving you a smile or laugh as to how weird, intricate and deliberate our faith is.

May you live long and prosper, thank you for engaging with me, remember to never take prisoners in the court of thoughts, and when this articles gets 1,000 likes remind me to organize a podcast with my Catholic Priest friend, who knows it might even be a podcast with the Pope, Heheeeee…. But seriously kama una juwana na Pope ama ni boys wako ama you know a guy who knows a guy, hook us up bwana, it can be a great story to tell.

Before I forget congratulations, you finished Theology 301, weuweee, makofi, makofiii, sasa fanya homework bado uko na Theology 302, 401 and 402. Call us for your graduation manze, cake sio kitu ya kunyima watu.