by Joe Cady
At the heart of the Gospel is the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, who reveals in the most profound way that “God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal” (DV 4). Through the paschal mystery (the life, death, and resurrection of Christ) God’s plan of salvation reaches its fulfillment, and Jesus Christ becomes the meeting place where God and humanity are once again restored to friendship. Through Jesus Christ, the gift of salvation and the invitation to new life is offered to the entire world. But what exactly is this salvation? What does it consist of?
At times, the Christian message has been presented as something like this: we’re all sinners, and because of that sin, we are separated from God and headed toward eternal damnation. And because there is nothing we can do to solve this problem on our own, God sends his Son, Jesus Christ, to die for us and open the doors to eternal life. If we accept what Jesus has done for us and place our faith in him, we are able to go to Heaven and experience eternal life.
Now, that version of the story isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just incomplete. It’s true that we are sinners, and that this sin makes us incapable of experiencing the life and union we were created for. It’s true that the wages of sin is death, and that we are in need of the gift of God’s grace in order to be saved. However, salvation is so much more than just a “get out of hell free” card. Certainly, none of us were made for hell. God desires all people to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth. But salvation is more than simply not going to hell. Salvation is a healing of the wounds of sin and a restoration to the fullness of life. We often hear of Jesus “saving us” as something that he does for us, and there is a certain truth to that. But the salvation of God isn’t just something Jesus does for us but something he does IN US. God saves us not just by changing the direction we’re headed when we die (from hell to heaven), but by transforming us through the power of his grace, to become people who are able to love God and neighbor the way God intended from the beginning.
The Church speaks of this internal transformation as “justification”, which the Catechism defines as “The gracious action of God which frees us from sin and communicates the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ (Rom 3:22). Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man” (CCC Glossary). The gift of salvation doesn’t consist of God simply turning a blind eye to our sinfulness, but of God actually changing us from the inside out. God doesn’t just want to declare us forgiven and grant us access to heaven, he wants to actually re-create us by his grace and make us worthy of heaven. As the Catechism says, “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man” (CCC 1989); “Justification detaches man from sin which contradicts the love of God, and purifies his heart of sin. Justification follows upon God’s merciful initiative of offering forgiveness. It reconciles man with God. It frees from enslavement to sin, and it heals” (CCC 1990); “Justification…conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy” (CCC 1992). Do you see the common theme here? In Catholic teaching, salvation always involves healing, transformation, restoration, and a real interior change, all of which comes about by the power of God’s grace.
The beginning of salvation is always God’s free initiative. We can never earn salvation, and God certainly does not owe it to us. It is a free gift offered to us by the mercy and goodness of God. As the Catechism says, “Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to be children of God, adoptive sons, partakers in the divine nature and of eternal life” (CCC 1996). Salvation is a gift, from
beginning to end. But, it is a gift that we must respond to and participate in. As St. Augustine said, “God created us without us, but he does not will to save us without us.” The salvation of God is something God wishes to achieve within us, and as such, it requires our cooperation. What exactly does this look like?
(1) Repentance and Faith
Repentance involves not only an acknowledgement of our sin and sorrow for it, but also a turning away from sin and an amendment of our lives. Through repentance we recognize our need for conversion and reconciliation, and we turn to the one who alone can heal us and give us new life. Acknowledging our need for salvation, we turn in faith to the one who wishes to save us. Through faith we place our trust in Jesus Christ and surrender our lives to him, knowing that he alone is able to heal us and empower us to live in newness of life as beloved children of God. However, repentance and faith are not the end of the process.
(2) The Importance of Baptism
From the very beginning of the Church, the next step after repentance and faith has always been baptism, which is “the sacramental entry into the life of faith” (CCC 1236). On the day of Pentecost, when the Church set out on its mission of proclaiming the Gospel to all nations, those who first heard the Gospel asked Peter and the Apostles, “what are we to do, my brothers?” And Peter’s response was, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Through baptism, we are reborn in newness of life, and empower by the Spirit to live as children of God. And this new life in the Spirit is meant to inform our patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting in the world.
(3) Faith Working Through Love
Through repentance, faith, and baptism, we are reborn in the “righteousness of Christ” and are re-instated into the family of God as adopted sons and daughters. And this new life in the Spirit is meant to bear fruit in love of God and love of neighbor. In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, he speaks extensively on the role of faith in the Christian life. But the first and last time that he uses the word “faith” he says that God has sent the Church into the world to bring about the “obedience of faith”. Meaning, faith must always be active and made manifest in works of love.
These works of charity do not “earn” us salvation, as if we need to do a certain number of good works before we are able to get to heaven. However, the scriptures do tell us that God will reward us according to our works. St Paul says, “God will repay everyone according to his works: eternal life to those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works, but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness” (Rom 2:6-7). In order to understand this rightly, we have to make a distinction between “strict merit” and “gracious merit”. We can never earn anything from God, strictly speaking. But God, as a loving Father, is able to reward us for our fidelity, imperfect as it may be. He does this not because we deserve it (strictly speaking), but because he is a good and gracious God, who wishes to reward his children. This is gracious merit. Like when my kids draw me a picture and I thank them and put it on my refrigerator. I “reward” them with praise and thanksgiving not because it’s a good work of art, but because I recognize it as offered to me in love. The same is true with God. He rewards us not because our works are perfect, but because he is a good and loving Father.
However, when it comes to “merit” before God, God’s grace always comes first. It is God’s grace that enables our works to have any merit before God. The Catechism says, “The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate
man with the work of his grace…the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful” (CCC 2008). “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion” (CCC 2010), but once we have been adopted and reborn as children of God, “moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for the attainment of eternal life” (CCC 2010). Repentance and Faith come first, which enable our works to have merit before a loving and compassionate Father. “The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men” (CCC 2011). The whole process of salvation in attributed in the first place to God’s grace: the initial free gift of salvation offered in Christ, the grace of God moving us to faith and repentance, and the growth in sanctification through our cooperation with grace.. all of this is the work of God’s grace. When God rewards us for our fidelity and love, what he is actually doing is rewarding our cooperation with the grace he has given to us. As St. Augustine says, “You are glorified in the assembly of your Holy Ones, for in crowning their merits you are crowning your own gifts.”
The saving action of God is a work of interior transformation by God’s grace; a work that finds its ultimate realization when we are united with God in the kingdom of Heaven. Until that point, God’s work of salvation is unfolding within our lives. What this means is that from a Catholic perspective, salvation is always a present reality on its way to fulfillment. It is a process of interior transforming, changing us from sinners into saints. This is why purgatory makes so much sense within Catholic teaching. Purgatory isn’t a “second chance” for those who turned away from the Lord in this life; rather, purgatory is simply God finishing his transforming work in the souls of those who have died in God’s friendship but are not yet perfected by God’s grace. Salvation is a work of God within us, and purgatory is God finishing that work in order to make us fit and ready to experience the perfect love of God in eternal life. This is the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ, through whom the power of God’s grace has broken into history in order to reconcile us to himself and heal the wounds of sin and division. Let us turn to the Lord this day and every day with repentance, faith, and a commitment to being led by the Spirit in love of God and love of neighbor.