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KWENU! Our culture, our future |
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Analysis of salvation
Chinedu Maduabum Onitsha, Nigeria
Friday, 14 September 2007
Introduction The purpose of salvation is to pay for the sin of mankind. Salvation is different from redemption and restoration. The work of salvation is purely for payment of the wages of sin. The scripture said that the wages of sin is death. Unlike salvation, which stands as payment, redemption is to bring you out of the obligations of the law while restoration has to do with returning to the original position or status quo.
The work of salvation as well as redemption is done by one man, Jesus (the messiah) but at different times. The scripture said his name shall be called Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins; that is the work of salvation. The sin of Adam was attended with terrible effects and a consequence; one of which is loss of life, resulting from the breach of covenant and also, there was loss of glory. The sin affected not only the sinner but also the immediate environment. And since it involved loss of life there was need to re-establish a new covenant in which life will be preserved, not like the one made with Adam, which he breached although it was an explicit sin that is in respect of breakage of physical law. Adam did not sin in his spirit but in his body, Paul said, in the body I serve the law of flesh and sin while in my mind, I serve the law of God. So the possibility of pardon is there for Adam since he did not commit implicit sin.
Christ came with a new and better covenant. His coming was of a dual nature; coming from God spiritually and from man physically. It is this that separates him from the spiritual condition of Adam. Thus having a direct link with life and maintaining a new covenant, which is spiritual relationship with God. At the same time he took part of the flesh of Adam. This is a divine contraction to effect the payment of wages of sin. Adam being the first man, Christ had to come as his child in order to have the same body so that he can effectively pay the wages for his sin.
Incidentally, Christ came with a covenant of life without the conditions of a law like the one given to Adam. As such, Christ was free from all forms of encumbrances in the spirit whilst in the body he was under the punishment of the law already violated by the principle of imputation that is by inheritance. Under the new law, God had made it possible for him to rise again after death. The body that he put on was to be able to save man. God expect that the blood of a sinner be shed and when that happened, Christ became the father of a new race in which there is a new covenant. Thus, he saved our lives and gave us the privilege to live after paying for the wages.
Wages of Sin: The scripture said that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 3:23). Death is believed to be the outcome of sin. As the scripture also said, through one man sin entered into the world. The net effect of breaching a covenant of life is death. Physical death is a consequence of violation of an explicit law while spiritual death results from violation of a spiritual law. Spiritual death is the outcome of the breakage of the pattern of life. It is the sin committed against the Holy Spirit that leads to this kind of death.
Death means separation of the spirit from that of God. In this sense physical death means a temporary separation and spiritual death a permanent separation. Man is known to be of two natures – physical and spiritual and it is this duality that actually explains physical or spiritual death. People condemned by the physical law die a physical death and vice versa. It is based on this that Paul considered the physical death as a gain because of the spiritual life that awaited him through faith in Christ. As Hebrew 4:3 said, for we who have believed do enter into (God’s) rest…
Remission of sin and sacrifices: When Adam sinned, the right to live on earth ceased. God then gave him a new covenant and new body that he might die for humanity and in the process free his body. Thus being free from the condemnation of sin Christ has fully paid for and has made us part of a new relationship with God. We are no more under any law. Man is saved through this process of remission or atonement for sins, which Christ did for us. The scripture said without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Hebrew 9:22). The shedding of blood signifies death. The blood of Christ is enough for our sins – no other work should be imagined.
God has plans to save man for the purpose of restoring him back to his glory and he has not abandoned his plan. God is saving us by paying for our sins and also by making us not to sin spiritually. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not the work of the Holy Spirit to make us not to sin physically. If it were so, then Adam, Peter etc. could not have sinned physically. Remission was necessary in order to give man back his life.
Death resulting from sin is a natural outcome of loss of functionality and that explains the need for salvation. Remission of sin is a ritual involving sacrifice of blood. The sinner having breached the condition of logical existence should not be allowed to live. And the blood sacrifice by Christ adequately explains the logic of salvation of mankind. Before Christ came, they were using the blood of animals for atonement but this merely covered the sins – it merely covered the sins you committed not the one to be committed. The death of Christ was able to save man through the principle of substitution. This is a principle whereby when a life is punished for a sin it frees other lives from the sin. In other words, no life will be punished twice for a particular act of sin.
The system of blood sacrifice is practised in some communities in Igbo land. In Onitsha for instance, in the old times any one who committed murder will have to pay immediately with his life. But if he ran away from the community and after a reasonable time of absence there is the possibility of abrogation of death. However, there must be a sacrifice of animal, which will signify that payment has been made for the sin through spilling of blood of the animal.
Compensation is the logic of atonement. This is because man needed to be saved not only from the wages of sin, but also the consequences of sin. The wages of sin required blood. What of the consequences? So complete salvation will not only take care of the wages but also the consequences. Consequences of sin refer to the acts that impinge on the immediate ecology or environment/jurisdiction. There is a difference between remedy and compensation. You can either claim remedy or compensation for damages. In the case of sin, you claim compensation for damages because you cannot remedy for what you have done. The compensation for damages is the life of Christ. Having known the nature of man, we can see that there is no effort from man to make him in the likeness of God. So any time effort is being made, it violates the basic principles of creation. It is amazing that after Christ would have paid completely for sin, the born-again are still battling with sinful problems. What then is the problem? The solution lies in the existence or absence of law.
Redemption and Law: The churches have been mixing up salvation, redemption and restoration. Though the work is done through one mission, they are not the same thing. This has made a mess of pastoral teachings and has left the people more confused. These three things are not properly analysed to the people and they continue to wallow in ignorance. Redemption is not salvation – redemption is to remove you from the obligations of the law. The scripture said that when “the fullness of time was come God sent his son, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem them that were under the law”, (Gal. 4:4). So redemption is to bring you out from under the law.
In order to appreciate what Christ did, we shall look at the two kinds of sins that is the implicit and the explicit sins. Implicit sin concerns the breakage of a spiritual law while explicit sin involves oral commandments of God. The law of spirit is not necessarily put in writing but works by the operation of the Holy Spirit. It is what is called the law of the spirit and life in Christ. On the other hand, the law of sin and death, which is a physical law, does not necessarily lead to death because such sins are pardonable. Nevertheless the death of Christ is enough compensation for our sins and no other work is needed to support this.
After you have been saved and the new law was re-introduced then you will continue to sin; when you are born-again, you receive forgiveness. But if you are subjected to the law you will still sin again. On the other hand if you remove the person from the law, then you have redeemed him. So we talk about redemption when we talk of removing people from the law. When people sin, they are under the law and it requires a Messenger like Christ who comes with a covenant of grace to redeem them. When Christ met the Jews he met them in sin and also under bondage because there was no effective law as at that time. At that time, they had breached the covenant of the law. What they taught was not God’s laws but human teachings. If you remove the law and bring another law there will still be sin. So when the apostles came, they brought back the law and there was sin. The ministry of Joshua today is to remove the laws so that the children of Israel shall be free. Paul referred to the law of Judaism as bondage of Egypt. The apostles brought back the same bondage of the laws and the people died under it. It is now that we are being delivered again from such bondage. We are now set free by his grace.
Essential Condition of Redemption We have stated that redemption is to set you free from the possession of another. The bible said that law is like a husband (Rom. 4:1-4), and as long as the husband lives the bride is subject to his rules but if he dies, she is then free to remarry. It is only death that can separate people from the marriage of possession. Death is therefore a necessary condition. In the case of salvation, death serves as payment while in redemption it is a means of extrication. Christ died in our position as a substitution.
Process of Redemption What is then required in the context of redemption is death; for it is death that does us part with the law. The question is how did we then die? We died when Christ died. We died in the body of Christ. How? Christ is the first born of God’s old creation and also his new creation. Christ was the first man of God’s new creation just as Adam was in the old.
The process of redemption is this, before Eve was created, Adam had been. When Adam slept, Eve was made. Eve was then inside Adam in one body before God decided to separate her (Gen. 2:23). The scripture recorded that God made them two, male and female and called the name Adam. So it is two personalities in one body until God decided to make two personalities two bodies. In like manner, Christ came as Adam and before we were manifested as God’s people after the Pentecost he had already died. So we died in him because we were in him in the new creation pending the day of our manifestation as a separate personality from the head.
What then confers to you the status of being that of Christ? – It is faith. Faith is necessary for if you are not Christs’ then you have not actually died even though Christ died because if you are not Christs’, you are not in him and his death is not for you. So it is by faith that we appropriate the work of righteousness, which Christ did for us.
This is the only process of redemption. Having undergone this process through the divine order of marriage and its laws, man is completely redeemed from the law and is no more subject to the husband of law. He can freely commune with a new master, which is Christ. The work of Christ is enough. Any one going back to the law as a way of salvation is really in trouble. He is even committing lewdness – it is an abomination. The bible even said that when a woman is separated from a husband and marries another, that if she be divorce from the second husband, which she married after she was separated that she cannot go back to the old one, that is an abomination. So by this, nobody is expected to go back to the Law of Moses after being completely extricated from faith in Christ by the death of Jesus Christ. By going back you are committing lewdness.
A practical demonstration of redemption in the bible is Ruth. When her husband died, she requested somebody to redeem her and the person who redeemed her was Boaz. Boaz married Ruth and gave birth to Obed who in turn gave birth to Jesse, the father of David. God indeed has a purpose for the man he has saved from the obligations of the law. He has not changed the original purpose for creating man.
Restoration and society: As we can see, the work of salvation and redemption eventually culminates in restoration of the society of God. Restoration means to go back to the status quo ante. To bring man back to Eden when he enjoyed communion with EL. It is same as to bring about the realisation of the promises given to Abraham that is seed, land, kingdom and sanctuary. The word of God is not fulfilled until a society of God under the man of God is established and the glory of EL covers the world as the waters cover the sea.
Restoration involves restoring glory, inheritance and communion with God. There is an order involved in restoration and also there is process of a very long time involved. When God made Adam, he gave him everything and made him king of the world and in charge of the fishes of the water. The whole material world was given to Adam. Also, God communed with him. Adam was placed in the presence of God in the garden. But because of sin, he lost these three things. Adam was chased out of the garden, forced to go and work for his belly and disposed of the material world. But God did not forget his plan for Adam, which he started in Abraham.
There is time allotted for the restoration of inheritance, kingdom and communion. God showed Abraham a land, which he should inherit. But the showing of the land is not the same thing as inheriting the land. The confusion in the church today lies in the difference between introducing you to inheritance and actual inheritance. There is a very big gap between the introduction and the realisation. When God was talking to Abraham, he told him that the iniquities and the sins of the Amorites are not yet full. The land was introduced to Abraham and realised through Joshua. And we have 7 cogent generations of people who occupied the land these were 7 gentile generations between the introduction of the land and its realisation.
The principle of restoration appears to be the number 7. From the Naaman’s leprosy and restoration of his body was 7 times of deepening the river Jordan. This is also the principle involved in the jubilee whereby every land that is held for debt shall be released at the time of jubilee. Jubilee counted as 7 weeks of years that is 49 years, the next year being the jubilee. Jubilee means release and restoration. In this case, the person who holds the land will release it and the person who owns it shall have it restored to him.
When Adam lost the land, i.e. the world, the devil took over. The devil continued to own it until the time of Christ when he said, look at all the glories of the kingdom of the world and if you bow your knees to me I will give then to you. The devil indeed was in charge; Christ called him the prince of this world, (John 14:30) while Paul called him the god of this world (2Cor. 4:4). Each time the Jews loose possession it goes to the gentiles. So we can see the two parallel forces in operation – between the people of Adam and the people of the serpent. You can now see what forces are in control in the gentile world. The serpent handed over his former seat to the beast and so he is in charge.
We expect a kind of 7 weeks of anything before Adam will be restored based on the principle of restoration. There must be a type of jubilee – a specific time within which Adam will regain what he lost. The bible talked about Jerusalem being trodden under foot until the times of the gentiles be fulfilled. This shows that restoration is for a time. The whole world has not been restored to Abraham. From the time Abraham was introduced to the land of Canaan to the time he got it, there were 7. And in Daniel we were introduced to the whole world, the kingdom and the glory of the whole world, which Daniel said shall be given the people of the saints of the Most high. Before then, 7 kingdoms of the gentiles must pass that is the seven heads of the beast. As at the time John received the revelation, the angel told him that there are 7 kings; 5 are fallen and 1 is now and the 7th one is not yet come and when he comes he shall remain shortly. There is the 8th but is of the 7th (Rev. 17:10).
At the time John saw the revelation, we had the 6th king that was pagan Rome. The 7th that stayed a short time was Constantine. Constantine was emperor in that empire around 313 AD. He introduced Christianity in Roman world. He stayed for less than 200 years unlike his predecessors. Then another system of the beast started. By 476 AD Roman Empire was sacked and by 590 AD the Holy Roman Empire as spoken by St. Augustine was established. That was the 8th, which is of the 7th and then shall go into perdition. That is where we are today. It went into perdition during restoration, although he shall rise again. The beast that was, and is not and shall be, shall rise. It is already rising in the empire of Christianity, colonising the whole world through the ministry of the lamb (lamb with two horns).
There are always 7 kingdoms separating the introduction of promise and its realisation. From the time Adam lost the kingdom to the time he will regain it will be 7, could be 7 millennium (7, 000 years). For the restoration of the new heaven and the new earth; nothing has yet been restored – no land, no kingdom, no sanctuary of God. Yet, even the church is in the process of building for future inhabitation of God. When once the time of the opposite occupation is full, God will restore the promise to the Jews. From the time of the darkness of the earth to when it was given to man was 7 days. And when God wanted to give the Canaan land to Abraham, it took 7 generations.
Furthermore, from the time of Abraham to Joshua was 7 strong generations. Joshua met and fought the 7th generation and overcame them. Even they went round the city for 7 days and also 7 times. The number 7 is very significant. After the gentiles occupied the land for 7 generations, God also gave the Canaan land to the Jews who occupied it for 7 generations from the time of Joshua to the time of David was 7 generations. After that they started loosing it to the gentiles at the time of Solomon.
Today, God is no more talking about the land of Canaan, which he gave to Abraham but the whole world – a kingdom over the whole earth, which shall have no end. The book of Romans 4:13 talked about a worldly kingdom of God. God was talking about Abraham being the heir of the world. Explicitly Daniel 2:44 talked about the kingdom of God that shall have no end and which shall be given to the saints of the Most High. Also Isaiah 11:9, Rev. 11:15, Heb. 2:14 talked about this worldly kingdom (world empires).
Conclusion Christ brought the ministry of salvation and fulfilled it as a lamb. He also brought the ministry of redemption and fulfilled it during the days of the apostles when they were redeemed from the Law of Moses. Today we are talking about the ministry of restoration. Joshua is the snapshot of the ministry of restoration that is the restoration of inheritance of the whole world. The other exponents of restoration are David and Solomon. These are ways the work will be done – showing the very pattern, principle of the actual operation of restoration. |
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