Kanye West isn’t special; he’s each one of us. Ye’s confession (his album), or what is known as Jesus is King, is as powerful of a testimony we might come across. He is, obviously, a public figure with a high profile, so his conversion from Hollywood to Christ is going to radiate in ways that other conversions won’t; but this doesn’t mean that each and every soul who comes to Christ is any less significant than his home coming. And this is the point I want to address: Kanye’s conversion is symbolic of each and every one of ours. Why is it that his story is under suspicion? I read an article written by a guy named Nathan Campbell for EternityNews.com: here is the part that stood out to me:

In Romans, the apostle Paul says: “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9). Kanye seems very much to be making such a declaration; and I have no reason to believe he’s not believing in the resurrection; he’s certainly been enforcing a Christian moral code on those working on his album and documentary, and seeking to uphold similar standards in his home life (with less ability to influence proceedings, according to his wife Kim). This sort of lip-service is not a guarantee that Kanye is a Christian (though my point here is not to rain on that parade). Jesus himself said “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21). It’s great that Kanye now sees himself working for God, that he’s not just a Christian musician but a “Christian everything” and that this is transforming how he lives and does business, and let’s pray it continues…

And this:

The story of the Bible is the story that Jesus is Lord. Jesus the new, true, Adam, and the new, true, Israel. It’s the story that God is represented by an image — the image of the invisible God — who reveals the nature of God when he is crucified and then raised from the dead. Not in celebrity, not with an album launch, but on a cross. When Kanye has demonstrated, from a lifetime of being shaped by the cross (rather than telling Jimmy Kimmel that Christianity has his business growing, and that he’s a billionaire) then maybe he’ll be worth holding up as an example. Until then I’ll heed the words of this ancient song, and join Kanye saying “Jesus is Lord…” and celebrating that he sets prisoners free.[1]

If I were to critique this from a theologically historical perspective we might bring up the framework that gives us concepts and language like: ‘temporary faith’ ‘experimental predestinarianism’ ‘practical syllogism’ ‘divine pactum’ so on and so forth. But I want to make my response more user friendly than that. Here is what someone else wrote on my Twitter feed in response to Ye; this fellow is a mainline pastor: ‘Just a wait and see. “By their fruits ye shall know them.”’ Then there are others who seemingly are skeptical because Kanye is a Trump supporter; or maybe because he doesn’t fit into certain folks’ ecclesiological structures; or maybe it is because of West’s cultural expression as a black man, and how that expression doesn’t conform to historical church liturgies; or maybe it is because some think that only their church, and the way they believe salvation is appropriated, does not fit with the revivalist-conversionist mode that Kanye has come to Christ through. I have observed a variety of reasons on social media in regard to why people are skeptical about West’s salvation. Their reasoning may entail one of the reasons I listed, or a combination. But to be sure, there are many who are ‘judging him,’ as he writes in reference to his reception by many Christians: ‘they’ll be the first one to judge me / make it seem like nobody love me.’[2]

All that I see going on with Kanye is someone who has come to their ‘first love,’ and they want the whole world to know it! There is nothing strange about this; this is what new on fire Christians typically do. It is just that West is in a unique high profile position as a lyrical artist and pop-cultural icon. But to question his confession of faith in Christ, and then frame that in a works-righteousness framework—whether that be from a more Arminian or Calvinist framework, or other precisianist soteriological constructs—is as pharisaical, self-righteous, and holier-than-thou as anyone can get! Who does anyone think they are when they are engaging in this behavior? Do they think they have achieved a certain level of righteousness before God that they can look down their noses at a baby Christian like Ye, and say: ‘we’ll see.’ We’ll see what?! What if Kanye falls off the edge; does this mean he was ‘never of us,’ and now he’s on his way to an eternal hell? This is what both the Arminian and classical Calvinist would say, from within their own respective emphases. What is this; ‘we’ll see?’ Will ‘we see’ with you too? Are you so uncertain of your eternal salvation in union with Christ that you place this question mark over your own soul? No, you don’t; do you?

As the Apostle Peter writes: “³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, ⁵ who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” And this: “²² Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, ²³ having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever, . . .”[3] When someone comes to Christ they are born again of an ‘imperishable seed’ that cannot perish because they have been united to the indestructible life of the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Coming to union with Christ is an event not a process. The thief on the cross illustrates this. It isn’t by a life of good works, or performing certain deeds, or going through ‘sacred’ rituals that justifies someone before God; it is the Word of God who justifies in and through His own broken and risen flesh and blood.

Kanye by confession of faith in the risen Jesus is now born again of the water and blood of Christ’s life. It is this reality that is streaming with power and zeal through the veins of Kanye’s life. He clearly cannot contain it, and wants the world to know. How this reality can be questioned based on erroneous and even heretical concepts of salvation is beyond me (or this is how it is questioned, based on erroneous conceptions of God’s Grace and salvation). Kanye, like all of us, stands before the Almighty God who we know in the face of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t answer to me, or you, or anyone else but God. Who are you ‘oh man’ that you would question the reality of Ye’s salvation when the basis of that salvation is the same one that you claim to be a Christian from? It is the Grace of God, which is constantly mediated to us moment-by-moment by the Holy Spirit’s mediatorship of the mediator between God and humanity, through which we joyously confess along with Kanye that Jesus is King and Lord.

I want to get into more detail on the relationship I see between conceptions of the Church (ecclesiology) and how that impacts the way people think of salvation (soteriology), but I will do that in a later post. I simply wanted to give a brief defense for Kanye’s salvation; as I do, I know that I am giving a defense for the basis of my own.

[1] Nathan Campbell, Jesus is Lord and the danger of fame-adjacent Christianity, accessed 10-28-2019.

[2] Taken from his song, Hands On.

[3] I Peter 1.3-5; 22-23.