In Death By Love

John 11:25-26"You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one, who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live.

26 And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?

We live in a world full of seasons, timing, events, deadlines, budgets and everything that the world needs to sustain life and at least move the wheel of life a stride further.

We also live in a world of expectations, demands and happenings.

The last two weeks has seen my country Kenya plunge in a dungeon of sorrow and misery as we mourn our fellow 147 Kenyans killed mercilessly by terrorists in North eastern Kenya.

Its also unfortunate that this happened just a day before good Friday, when Christians all over the world commemorate the death of Jesus Christ our lord. Its normal for something of this magnitude to evoke questions amongst us Kenyans and especially Christians. We take note that the majority of Young people who perished were Christians who had woken up for early prayers and devotions oblivious of what and who were about to attack them in a merciless fashion.

It feels like bewildering times for Kenya and for Christians there are those who are wondering if God is good why would he let such an obnoxious episode rule the light of day . They are those who said that there were warning and prophecies that preceded this attack. There are much estimation out there to try and explain what we are in to which are of no avail in comforting the mourning families nor in restoring, hope peace and confidence amongst Kenyans

In death by Love

I really have no sufficient explanations to answer ‘the problem of evil’ that we see in our society today. I know there are those who would wish that all our Muslim brothers be annihilated from this land probably because we are faced by what is taking shape of jihad killings. Oh how we would wish that evil be eliminated from us. But if that’s our desire, we are asking that God to kill all people in the world for evil doesn’t exist independent of human life. Sin got attached to us like super glue and evil pervaded all faculties of human life. So we can’t just wish evil away.I wish to submit that God is deeply engraved and sympathizing and encouraging us with all the comfort we need in Christ Jesus. Human suffering reveals the fragility of human life, anytime is time to die, anywhere can be place to die if grammar hasn't eluded me there yet.There are simply million ways to experience suffering and death of the human sol but inside of us we roar with life ,immortality, hope that endures forever.

You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live.

Let me draw our attention to the hope we have right here, now.

Jesus says “I am, right now, resurrection and life”

In death by love, Jesus ripped away the entity of sin and all vices from us. He is the resurrection and life.

If we believed we died in Jesus, let us also believe that we are raised up with him in a newness of life.

Heb 2:16-17It's obvious, of course, that he didn't go to all this trouble for angels. It was for people like us, children of Abraham.

17 That's why he had to enter into every detail of human life. Then, when he came before God as high priest to get rid of the people's sins(the message Bible)

No words can capture the horror we underwent as a country in the past week. I do sympathize with the family who lost their loved ones in the Garrisa attack. I also cant imagine the horror that the cross was. Smitten and pierced, Christ took upon himself the weight and the intensity of human suffering. This was one event that for all time changed the course of history

Yet we don’t currently see evil completely wiped away from the face of the earth but we see Christ crowned with glory.

Heb 2:9 What we do see is Jesus, made "not quite as high as angels," and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory "bright with Eden's dawn light." In that death, by God's grace, he fully experienced death in every person's place.(The Message)

What we see even in such a travesty is not the ideal picture of a world rid of sin but we do see Christ who tasted death for all of us. This is the power of his death because his death was also our death. He drank that bitter cup to its dregs. He came and lifted us from that misery which is death and sat us in the highest seat in the heavenly places .

1^st Cor 15:55-57Who got the last word, oh, Death? Oh, Death, who's afraid of you now?

56 It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power.

57 But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three - sin, guilt, death - are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ. Thank God (The message)

Who’s got the last laugh now? That which was a master over us even death is defeated by one stroke of death which was also a stroke of life. Greater still, sin and guilt and finally death is dealt a blasting blow by a single stroke of death.

Death is no longer frightening if you know what life is really yours in Christ. We are not the ones to recoil back at the sight of life’s uncertainties. Jesus said he who believes in him heaven though he dies he will still live for he has not really died at all. Its as complex and easy the same way the cross is to us, the same way the lamb of God was slaughtered before the foundation of this world .

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

Insights from John Bunyan’s spiritual autobiography.

if you have not yet landed on a piece of literature that will make you dread on the thought of religion, then you would want to land on this small booklet by John Bunyan called 'Grace abounding to the chief of sinners'
If you happen to be an avid reader of Christian literature, John Bunyan may not be a stranger to you. An avid person and extremely religious. We know him from his famous writing ‘the Pilgrim’s progress’ John Bunyan was a classic English writer cum pastor who lived in the 17^th century, a period where the church had begun experiencing reformation from the Roman catholism.
What strikes me the most about this individual was how religious he was and he captures this very well in his spiritual autobiography ‘Grace abounding to the chief of sinners.’
This spiritual Biography is a spectacular journey of John Bunyan’s spiritual endeavors One full of struggle, conviction, self identity crisis, egoism and finally spiritual triumph.’
This was a person who in his religious endeavors tried to become the perfect human being. Infact at one instance he indicated that in his prayers he boasted that there was no pious man in England than him .He was extremely captivated by piety and his once profane life suddenly began gravitating towards religiosity and extreme morality. He says that he did this with all his passion and he had all the pleasure of pleasing God with his own righteousness.


The story and Life of John Bunyan gives reference to this virus of religion that plagued the church ever since the medieval ages when the gospel was domesticated under the then Roman catholic church . Things as I see began going wrong way back. 

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation,,,,,, Rom 1:16 . The absolute singularity of the gospel is missing today’s church. Church programs and other biblical teachings that seem logical to our religious mindsets have taken place of the gospel. what am I saying,,, is that fiery teaching that you may ve come to know as ‘gospel’ really the gospel ?we may have good teachings that appeals to our estimation of who we think God is and really say that such a message is the gospel. One of my friends usually jokes that God created man in his own image but Man has created God in his image. This portrays how religion operates in the faculty of a God imagined in our own minds and presumed as the eternal God. God is not an image formed in our minds, neither is he an estimation we learn from religion. God is our eternal father and his invisibleness made manifest in the person of Jesus.
I ve heard of many teachings being presented as the gospel but has got nothing to do with Jesus and his power of resurrection and what he has done and accomplished for us. Probably you and I have not yet heard the gospel being preached in our neighborhood.
Paul says that if anyone even him preaches another gospel other than what he preached, such a person should be cursed ,,,(Gal 1:6-8)
When I read Bunyan’s spiritual biography I see exactly the virus that had plunged the church at his time. Paul also speaks of the same

Gal 1:6-8 Am surprised and astonished that you are quickly turning renegade and deserting him who invited and called you by the grace (unmerited favor) of Christ (the messiah) and that you are transferring your allegiance to a different (even an opposition) gospel.

7. Not that there is (or could be) any other (genuine gospel)but there are (obviously) some who are troubling and disturbing and bewildering you with a different kind of teaching which they offer a gospel and want to pervert and distort  the gospel of Christ (the messiah) (Into something which its absolutely not)

8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to and different from that which we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema, devoted to destruction, doomed to eternal punishment.)(amplified)

Paul is absolutely livid with any distortion in matters gospel. He is cursing anybody who distorts the gospel that’s according to what he had preached. That’s something I tell you.

Back to our friend Bunyan, His encounter with the gospel is something outstanding. He was amazed by four poor widows who were discussing the scriptures with a lot of pleasantness, refreshing themselves as ones enjoying pleasant beams of sunlight while he was shivering in the cold, afflicted with snow and dark cloud .[1]

At this stage the gospel was scandalizing everything he knew Christianity to be about . That’s what the gospel does by releasing us from the chains of religion and self into a new arena of freedom. Freedom not to sin but from sin, making us dead to sin and being alive unto God. The gospel falls on us like a ton of bricks pervading every area of our sorry lives. This is grace abounding to the chief of sinners.

We must take note that we should not promote a teaching that is in opposition of the gospel. For that teaching even if it massages our religious ego its doom to fail terribly. I will tell you that religion is facing a massive fall in today’s context. People are getting bored with routines and regulations and yearn for fellowship, for relationship.

People want to be accepted and loved but in the eyes of religion this is another license to sin, an absolutely preposterous estimation of human beings that we don’t see people in the church as people loved but instruments of sin. How can the gospel of grace be a license to sin?

Romans 6:1so do we bring back  competition between sin and grace? That’s what you want to do by bringing the sin issue back.(kainos amplified)

The gospel is most certainly about the grace of God that abounds to the chief of sinners. The heart and the engine of the gospel is love and God is certainly in the mission of love. Lets exalt God by declaring his goodness which abounds to all spheres of humanity. Blessings

Bunyan, John. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. Welwyn, UK: Evangelical Press, 1978.

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[1] Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 26.