Salvation

By Jack Chui

It is not often that I think I learned something more about my faith. I received a little homework piece which I shared with my Tuesday cell group on the topic of Salvation which spoke to me, and I'll try and share it here as best I can. Most of it will be direct quotes from the notes I received from my Sydney Catholic charismatic youth group and I'll highlight the bits I found most profound to keep it shorter.

Some of us Catholics have been asked the question by Protestants brothers and sisters 'Are you saved!?'. They seem to use the phrase quite often - at least the term 'saved' which seems to be another way of saying 'baptised' for Catholics. As Christians, we believe our salvation comes from Jesus who died for us on the cross - but what exactly does it mean? What does it mean to be saved and what are we saved from?

We need to be saved from the wrath of God. Many of us aren't aware of this wrath (judgement of the human race) and so don't need Jesus so much. Its like - who needs a fireman when there's no fire? Who needs a Saviour when there's no clear and present threat of judgement.

So we need to be actually saved from God himself... but the mysterious and glorious part is that the One from whom we need to be saved is the very One who saves us! This was a little shocking for me to take in. It reveals a few shortcomings in our understanding:

We fail to understand who God is and we fail to understand who we are. Our view of God is too low, and our view of mankind is too high. This was Isaiah's painful discovery when he got a glimpse of the unveiled holiness of God. In that encounter, Isaiah understood for the first time in his life who God is. It was also the first time he understood who he was. He cursed himself, crying 'Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips' (Isaiah 6:5). His experience was not unique in the bible. Very ego shattering... We are not worried about the wrath of God because we have discounted the severity of our sin. Our self esteem is a shield protecting our eyes from God's holiness.

We all admit that no one is perfect. Being a sinner doesn't sound so like such a serious offense. There is an assumption in me that since God is divine, He is the bigger guy, He is obligated to forgive us. When we sin, we sometimes evade the consequences by saying 'everyone gets a second chance' or as us Aussies say 'fair go!'. But who says anybody deserves a second chance? Does justice require that everyone get a second chance?

A second chance is grace. A second chance is mercy. Mercy and grace are things that are never deserved. They cannot be deserved. If they were deserved, they would not be justice and not mercy. Deserved grace is simply not grace at all. As good as I think I am, none of it counts in increasing my chance of being 'saved' or receiving grace. God seems to have set the standard 'too high' and should have lowered it. But because God created us, He has every right to set the rules, and who's to say that God should lower the bar? Who are we to tell Him to lower the bar?

God as our 'author' has authority over us and therefore we have an obligation to carry out His commands. Sort of like in the army/navy. If God imposes an obligation upon us that we fail to perform, then we incur debt. The problem is, our sins are many and grave - its impossible to pay it back. This is where grace comes in. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, backs up our indebtedness by taking upon Himself the obligation to pay what must be paid. This is how we are saved from the wrath of God and this is the good news of salvation!

A word has been resonating with me the whole week. That word is the word 'nothing'. Just one word which can have different feelings depending on how its used. The way I hear it used in my mind is that 'I am nothing'. Absolutely nothing. And I don't feel bad about feeling this because of what I learned from above. There's truth in it - that everything I have has been given to me by God, and so therefore I don't actually own anything. Its not mine - it was given to me by God. I am really nothing... My nothingness also helps me realise that I can't do anything to increase my chance of getting to Heaven. It is the grace given by God which is going to get me there.

So if I can't do anything - then what's the point in trying. Why bother doing all this ministry and good works around the place? I read the answer somewhere recently, that its because that God intended Heaven to be started on earth - not just when we die. To bring His Kingdom closer, I want to do all these good things that God wants me to do. I want to see God work through my nothingness and to see God work through the nothingness of others because that is such a spectacle that no man on their own can match.

Some of the above is a bit of a patch job, but I have the fuller set of notes if anyone would like to read it. I hope I did it some justice.