We have all heard stories of how fellow Christians came to faith. Sometimes the stories are very pretty and they remind us of God’s tender love, endearment and steady pursuit of his children. God’s love fully demonstrated on the cross and the opportunity he gives his children to be partakers of this new life is breathtaking. Nevertheless, I was thinking about this topic recently and it hit me that the road to salvation is not always pretty. Not everyone gets saved at a worship concert while sobbing and weeping softly in their seat. Not everyone rushes to the altar after that evangelist does an altar call for people to give their lives to Christ. The road to salvation is sometimes messy. Salvation is also called the new birth and if you know anything about birthing a child then you will know that it is really messy. From the day of conception through the pregnancy, to the day of delivery, it is all messy. Experiencing the new birth in Christ could be just as messy as that. 

If there is anything I expect you to walk away with from this short series, it is the fact that no salvation story should be underrated or undermined. Salvation is God’s rescue mission. A rescue mission is still a rescue mission regardless of how long it took, how many boulders were lifted to get to the victim(s) or even what sacrifice had to take place for the victim(s) to be saved. This takes me all the way back to cross. 

I have heard world renowned atheists like Richard Dawkins belittle what happened at calvary and suggesting that the all-knowing God who created the heavens and the earth could have thought of a better way to save the world than to die on the cross. This will appear logical until we deeply interrogate what sin really is and its remedy. One would have expected the all-powerful God to just snap his finger and immediately zap away all that is wrong with the world and start a new one devoid of sin. Well God is not Thanos. This is the real world; we are not stuck in a Marvel comic either. 

First of all, sin is consequential both in the spiritual realm and the physical. I dare say it is more consequential spiritually than otherwise. The bible states categorically that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). This death is not a physical one, but a spiritual death which is characterised by a separation from God. In the New Testament, Jesus illustrates this same concept of spiritual death with an agricultural metaphor when he says in John 15:5 that, “I am the vine, ye are the branches … for without me you can do nothing”. When  a branch of a tree is broken off, it is dead because it is has been separated from its source of nourishment. This is what it means to be spiritually dead. 

Adam and Eve were instructed to refrain from eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because the consequences of doing so was death (Genesis 2:17). From the story, we can tell that they didn’t die a physical death when they disobeyed God, but a spiritual one which was characterised by separation from God and a spread of decay through generations of the human race. Hence, to deal with sin and its consequences with a physical approach and not deal with its spiritual roots is an exercise in futility. Take for example Jesus’ description of the Pharisees and their attitude towards righteousness. We see this clearly in his chastisement of the Pharisees in Matthew 23, popularly known as the “7 woes to the Scribes and Pharisees”. From verse 25 to 28, Jesus referred to the Pharisees as hypocrites because of their approach to righteousness. His chastisements are summarised as follows:

• Jesus accused them of cleaning the outside of cups and plates while there is greed and self-indulgence inside. 
• Jesus described them as whitewashed tombs that are clean on the outside but are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness
• Jesus accused them of outwardly appearing righteous to others but being filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. 

This is how God sees the Pharisees who followed the very laws he had given to the Israelites. It goes to show that it takes a lot more than dressing the outside of a vessel for God to consider it clean. It takes a rebirth of your spirit, a transformation of the heart, for you to be truly saved. If you expect God to snap his finger for all of this to happen then you are expecting him to go against the laws he has made himself. 

This brings me to my second point: without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). The debt we owed God while we dwelt in sin is not cancelled unless blood is shed. Hence, all the sacrifices in the Old Testament only serve as a foreshadow to the great sacrifice on calvary. To save us, God intended to do a thorough job. He didn’t set out to do a lazyman’s work of merely washing the outside of the vessels we possess. He intended to create in us a new spirit that is united with his Spirit. This is no joke. It had to take the shedding of precious divine blood. In Hebrews 10:10, we are told that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all. Which means, the sacrifice of Jesus doesn’t need to be repeated (contrary to what happened in the Old Testament when animals were sacrificed). Jesus’ sacrifice is good enough to deal with all our sins and for all time. This is the essence of God’s approach to saving humanity. He intended for Jesus to be sacrificed to fulfil the law regarding remission of sins and also to offer us salvation that is good enough to save all of humanity and at any point in human history after the cross. 

God’s rescue mission was not all pretty and flowery, but it was effective and that’s just what we should focus on. Christians the world over sing songs about the cross and speak flamboyantly about its essence to the body of Christ, however, the cross is basically a symbol of death. In our world today, it could be synonymous to an electric chair. When we sing songs of adoration for the cross, we are not praising it for the instrument of death that it is, but for the life that came out of that one cross on calvary. At the center of our salvation story is an instrument of death. From the perspective of our Saviour, I can boldly state that salvation can be messy but completely worth it. The agony of Christ on the road to calvary and the pain he felt while hanging on the cross should tell us that our salvation caused him a lot of pain and cost him his life. 

In Hebrews 12:2, we are told that Christ endured the pain of the cross and despised the shame because of the joy that was awaiting him. This affirms the fact that God’s rescue mission of the whole of mankind didn’t come on a sliver platter. However, the Saviour was not perturbed or discouraged by the enormity of the task at hand, neither did he abandon the mission because of the excruciating pain. Rather, he endured the pain and disregarded the shame that came with being executed like a sinner all because of the joy that was set before him. Perhaps, we should also concern ourselves more with the joy of salvation rather than the manner in which salvation comes to us. I know there is exceeding joy in being saved, but today I came to remind you that the road to salvation is not always pretty and maybe we need to appreciate salvation a little more because of this.