"If God can save an old homosexual like me, He can save anybody."
~ Little Richard
No doubt what Little Richard is saying here means a lot to him. He is kind of saying, "I've been one bad dude, folks, and God has saved me."
The question that bugged me for a long time was, "What exactly do we mean by the word saved?" I began to notice that what people meant by "being saved" was in the eye of the beholder. The line between the "saved" and the "unsaved" was not easy to find. In the eyes of some, there are not many saved at all. In their eyes, often, the vast majority of the human race is headed for everlasting hellfire and brimstone, and that would likely include poor Little Richard here who has deluded himself. In other words, it was hard for me to pin down what exactly being saved meant.
I finally reconciled this, in my own mind, by observing that, according to scripture, salvation comes by faith and it is a gift of God. But the actual arbiter of this condition was confession: "No man can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit." That is, our confession is what identifies that we are followers of Jesus no matter what anybody ~ including other Jesus followers ~ thinks of us. I am not judged by you. My confession, like Little Richard's, is that Jesus has saved me.
But that doesn't go far enough. We've seen the signs in our lifetime that say "Jesus saves." And we saw the graffiti that said He saves green stamps (which nobody saves any more.) The point is, to say "Jesus saves" is an open-ended question: what does He save?
The answer is, He saves or is saving the world. He is in the process of saving this whole thing that has been, like Little Richard, polluted and destroyed. But Christians have tended to deny this. We sift this good news through a screen that says, "Only the righteous will be saved." Yet, there is none righteous, no, not one. That includes you and me and Little Richard too.
So is Jesus saving a part or the whole? And if He is the savior of the whole shebang, what difference does it make if we follow Him? Because, in following Him, we are way ahead of the curve and we are in on a secret. But it is not to remain a secret. The truth is, "Jesus saves it all." We were ruined and Jesus is the savior: that's the good news (or the gospel, if you will.)
The salvation issue becomes uncomplicated and not up to the arbitrary criteria that various persons and leaders might construct from their "private interpretations." This also frees us, as believers, to love our neighbors, our fellow human beings. We are no longer bringing a message of condemnation to the world, condemning everyone who doesn't fit our worldview. What we are really saying is, "Do you see this world? It is passing away. God is replacing it, through Jesus Christ, with a far superior system."
This is fabulous, and hard for many to grasp. In fact, for many it sounds like heresy (a belief that offends God.) I wasn't comfortable with it either. But now I can say to Little Richard: "You're right, bro. God can save anyone. In fact, He has."
I have long said that it was not the birth of Christ but the cross that was the crux of history. Whatever happened before, it all changed when Christ died and rose again. How radically did it change? We don't see it all yet. But, like Paul said, "Every knee shall bow." Wow.
