Salvation

Salvation is the work by which God delivers man from sin and death, and gives him a share in his own life. All sacred history tends towards it, from the promise made after the fall to its accomplishment in Christ, who came for this. “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:10

What man is saved from

Man is saved first of all from sin, the evil from which all the others flow. Sin is a rupture with God: it turns man away from his end and strips him of the life of grace, which he held only from him. It also binds the one who commits it, making him a slave to what he thought he was freely choosing. “whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” John 8:34 From this servitude no one ransoms himself by his own strength.

From this sin comes death, which is its wage. It entered the world through the fault of the first man and now reaches all his descendants. “By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death.” Romans 5:12 The death of the body announces a graver one, that of the soul separated from God for ever. “For the wages of sin is death. But the grace of God, life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23

Behind sin and death stands a personal enemy. The devil seduced man from the beginning and drew him into the fault; by this fall, man passed under his power. His dominion extends as far as sin: whoever gives himself to it belongs to the one who led him there. “He that committeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning.” 1 John 3:8 Scripture names him the prince of this world, and holds the sinful man as his captive. From this master, man does not deliver himself by his own strength; only one stronger than he could wrench him away.

From all this Christ delivers man. He reconciles him with God and restores the grace that sin had taken from him; he triumphs over death by his Resurrection and opens eternal life to him; he breaks the empire of the devil and snatches him from the one who held him captive, giving back to him the condition of son of God. “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” Colossians 1:13

By Christ alone

There is only one Saviour, and it is Jesus. His very name says it: Jesus, in Hebrew Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), means “the Lord saves”, and the angel himself gives Joseph the reason: “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Matthew 1:21 No one but him can restore to man what sin has taken away. “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12

By the Cross and the Resurrection

Christ saves by taking upon himself the sin of the world. By his death on the Cross he destroys sin; by his Resurrection he conquers death and opens life to man. Here the love of God is measured. “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in him may not perish, but may have life everlasting.” John 3:16

He satisfied for us

How can the death of one repair the sin of all? Sin is an offence against God, and its gravity is measured by the one it offends: infinite, it surpassed any reparation a man could offer. There had to be a man, to make reparation in the name of men, who was at the same time God, so that his offering might have a worth beyond measure. Such is the mystery of God made man: Saint Anselm expressed it by saying that Christ alone could render to the Father, in the place of the guilty, a satisfaction equal to the fault. He takes upon himself what was owed by us. “Him, who knew no sin, he hath made sin for us: that we might be made the justice of God in him.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

What the prophet had foretold from afar, contemplating the suffering servant, is accomplished on the Cross. “But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5 Christ does not appease a vengeful God: it is the love of the Father that first gives the Son as the victim who reconciles. “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” 1 John 2:2

Redeemed at great price

To save, in Scripture, means first of all to redeem. To redeem is to pay the price that gives a captive his freedom; and man was captive to sin, handed over to a master from whom he could not free himself by his own strength. Christ pays this price by giving his life. “the Son of man also is not come to be ministered unto: but to minister and to give his life a redemption for many.” Mark 10:45 This price tells the worth of what had to be given to tear us from evil: the very blood of the Son. “You were redeemed, not with perishable things, with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.” 1 Peter 1:18-19 This is what the word redemption names, from the Latin redimere, to buy back.

One misreading remains to be set aside: this price is not paid to the devil, as if evil had over man a right that had to be bought back from it. The sinner had made himself a slave, but no justice founded that power, and God does not bargain with evil. Christ, by giving himself, satisfies before God for sin and, in the same act, despoils the devil: by his death he brings to nothing the one who held man under the empire of death. “through death, he might destroy him who had the empire of death, that is to say, the devil.” Hebrews 2:14

A gift of grace

Salvation is offered freely, before any merit. The initiative comes wholly from God: it is he who saves, by pure grace, and man receives from him what no human power could obtain. “For by grace you are saved through faith: and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8

To become children of God

By grace, God makes the saved his child, adopting him in his only Son. “God sent his Son, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Galatians 4:4-5 This adoption gives a share in the very life of God, in his nature. “that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature.” 2 Peter 1:4 Tradition sums up this mystery in a word: God became man so that man might become god, not by nature but by grace, raised to share what God is. This is the work begun at baptism and completed in glory, when man will see God and live by his life.

This salvation is the work of the three divine Persons: the Father takes the initiative and sends, the Son accomplishes it in his body given up, and the Holy Spirit completes it in us, pouring into the heart the love of God and making the cry of the son resound there. “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying: Abba, Father.” Galatians 4:6 It is therefore not by our own strength that we become children, but by the Spirit who regenerates us. “according to his mercy, he saved us, by the laver of regeneration and renovation of the Holy Ghost.” Titus 3:5

Welcomed in a living faith

This gift, however, waits to be received. Man welcomes salvation through faith, which opens in conversion and enters the new life through baptism. “For if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Romans 10:9 This faith is living: it shows itself in the charity and the works it inspires; a faith that did not act would be dead. “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision: but faith that worketh by Charity.” Galatians 5:6

This is why the faith that saves is never faith alone. Scripture says so in the very terms sometimes set against it. “You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone.” James 2:24 Not that man saves himself by his own strength, which would be to fall back into the illusion of one who ransoms himself; but the grace received makes him truly righteous, and not merely covered on the outside: it renews him from within, so that good works are not added to faith from without, they are its living fruit, which God himself, by grace, crowns as a merit. “Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 7:21

The cooperation of man

Salvation is the work of God, and man labours at it freely. Grace associates man with his own salvation: it carries him, awakens him and strengthens him, and he answers it with his whole life, to the very end. “with fear and trembling work out your salvation. For it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to accomplish, according to his good will.” Philippians 2:12-13 The two act together, at two different levels: God acts first and from within, and it is he who makes man able to act, so that man’s free response is wholly a gift of God and wholly his own.

Offered to all

God excludes no one from this offer. “Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4 Christ died for all: his Passion has a worth great enough to redeem the whole world, and God excludes no one from it; yet this salvation offered to all bears its fruit only in those who receive it. His grace reaches, by ways known to God alone, even those who have not known the Gospel, provided they seek God with an upright heart.

Already given, not yet completed

Salvation is received in three moments. It is won once for all on the Cross, where Christ accomplished everything. It is received now, in grace and the sacraments, where the saved already lives the new life. And it will be completed on the last day, when man sees God face to face. The Christian is therefore already saved, and still awaits it. “we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope.” Romans 8:24

One can still be lost

Once received, salvation is not for all that guaranteed whatever may happen. God never withdraws his offer, but man, remaining free, can refuse it after having welcomed it: grave sin, called mortal because it kills in the soul the life of grace, breaks anew the friendship with God. “he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall.” 1 Corinthians 10:12 Salvation is therefore not a possession secured against all loss, but a life to be kept to the very end. “he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.” Matthew 24:13 What is at stake is real: to refuse God until death is to fix oneself far from him for ever. “these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.” Matthew 25:46

And so perseverance to the end is itself a grace, one that is asked for and not presumed. The Council of Trent teaches that no one can, without a special revelation, hold it for absolutely certain that he will persevere. The Christian therefore stands between two pitfalls: presumption, which thinks itself saved in advance, and despair, which thinks itself lost; between the two stands hope, firm and humble, which counts on the fidelity of God without ever dispensing from its own.