Jamin Bradley

The Evangelical formula for salvation is pretty simple: ask Jesus into your life and be saved. The Biblical formula, especially under Jesus’s teachings, is a bit more intense: give your allegiance to Christ in heart, soul, mind, and strength, and be saved. But regardless of how you understand salvation, this Christian dynamic has only been around for about two thousand years. So, how did one “get saved” before Jesus?

Most would likely respond that becoming a committed Israelite was how you got saved before Jesus. But let’s take the scenario back even further than Israel’s existence. When humanity rebelled against God by building the Tower of Babel, God gave them a cosmic consequence: Instead of having the one true God reign over the earth, humans would be split into nations, and God would appoint the lesser spiritual beings of heaven to rule over them instead of his perfect self.

The natural assumption here is that God expected the lesser gods to lead their nations to worship him, which would naturally lead them toward salvation on the day of judgment. But unfortunately, that’s not the way things played out, for the false gods became just as corrupt as any human and led their nations to worship themselves instead of the one true God.

So how might God deal with this situation, now that the nations were being misled by their gods? C.S. Lewis puzzled over this question at the end of his Chronicles of Narnia series. He imagined a man under one of the false gods, named Tash, coming before the one true God, a lion named Aslan, on the day of judgment. The man recounts the moment, saying:

…I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honor) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him… But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true… that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, thou knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.

This, of course, is fiction. But it is here in the realm of experimental theology that we begin to wonder how the day of judgment might look, which is far more confusing in the Bible than Christians give it credit for. Most say that when you die, there’s an immediate Heaven or Hell that you go to. But the Bible talks about how Jesus will judge some people more harshly than others. Apparently the day of judgment will pan out better for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah than it will for some you thought Jesus would go easy on. Likewise, all of the destinations of the dead are waiting for the end of time so they can be poured out in front of God’s throne so every human can face judgment. Furthermore, Hell seems to be a place that is to come instead of a place that is already happening. Again, the Bible is quite confusing on the subject of judgment.

Some might read these musings and think of it as heresy, saying, “There’s only one way to Heaven, and it’s Jesus Christ.” But that’s the thing: I completely agree. We can only be saved by our allegiance to Jesus, the pre-existent one who is God. Indeed, my proposal here is that faithful allegiance to Jesus has always been the dynamic by which we have been saved. Christians are saved because they make their allegiance to Jesus. Israelites were saved because they made their allegiance to Jesus. And perhaps there are some under the false gods who truly sought after Jesus without realizing that was the dynamic they were in. They didn’t have the words or the context to make sense of what they were doing, but like the man in Narnia, they pursued Jesus without knowing it.

Now, to be clear, all we can know for absolute sure is that we are saved by choosing Jesus while we are alive. But every human eventually meets Jesus on the day of judgment. Might it be that when Hades is emptied out before God’s throne, God might allow some to gaze upon Jesus and choose him because he actually was the person they were truly chasing after in life without knowing it? Jesus still remains the one way to Heaven and the answer to salvation if God allows such a moment to happen. We might even be apt to expect such a moment since so many lived before the time of the cross.

Rather than speak as though we’re sure about who’s where, are we willing to set our pride aside and leave judgment fully in God’s hands? Yes, Jesus is the only way to Heaven, but perhaps that old joke about Peter stopping people at Heaven’s gate while Jesus sneaks others over the wall is more real than we realize.