By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 10
The first problem with the Protestant concept of being “saved” while still alive, merely because one “accepts Jesus in one’s heart as one’s personal Lord and Savior,” as the wishful thinking goes, is that it is totally unbiblical, unhistorical, and unreasonable.
It is unbiblical because nowhere in the whole of both Testaments will you find one single verse saying this. It is unhistorical because from Jesus’ time until Luther’s (approximately 1,500 years), no Christian ever believed this. It is unreasonable because it gives freedom to sin under the illusion of being already “saved.”
How did Jesus save us, then? He did not give us Heaven for free, just like that, as if we did not have to fulfill the Commandments. We call Christ our “Savior” because He has saved us, in essence, from four things: 1) sin, 2) death, 3) Hell, and 4) the Devil.
But this does not mean that we will become unable to sin, to die, to go to Hell, or that we will be free from temptation from the Devil. God did not remove our free will, contrary to what Luther said.
How did He do it? God chose to save us by a bountiful redemption. God, at the prompting of the divine mercy, and under no compulsion of justice, resolved to restore mankind to His favor. He might have done it in many ways. He might, for instance, have saved us without demanding anything from us, have freely admitted us once more to His friendship (that was the wrong Lutheran idea); or He might have been pleased to accept as sufficient atonement the acts of penance which we ourselves could perform.
But He chose none of these ways. In His infinite bounty, He chose the way of superabundant redemption, so that we might do more than discharge the debt we owed Him because of our sins, and should fully earn the recovery of His friendship.
For such a redemption, the following conditions were required:
That the atonement should be made by a representative of the human race, of course: Since man offended Him, man must be the one to do the atonement;
That the atonement should be freely made; of course: He would not accept an atonement that was the result of compulsion;
That the atonement should be made by a man who was not obliged to make reparation, and thus be pleasing to God Himself, of course: But there was not a single man to be totally pleasing to Him on earth; and, above all;
That the atonement should be more pleasing to God than the sin had been displeasing to Him; of course: The atonement could not be a deed of a lesser magnitude than the sin.
Now, in our Redeemer Christ, the Son of God made Man, born of the Virgin Mother, all these conditions were fulfilled:
As Man, Christ represented the human race, and made Himself answerable for our sins: “The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6);
He made the atonement freely: “No one takes (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18);
He was pleasing to God because He was God’s beloved Son; He was without sin, and was, therefore, not bound Himself to any form of reparation; and
The atonement was infinitely greater than the offense, because it was performed by a Divine Person, the Son beloved of the Father. Thus, it was infinitely precious in the sight of God.
These conditions and their fulfillments must be read again in order to fully understand how Christ, and none other, was able to redeem mankind. He was a man like us, equal in everything except in sin; He offered Himself freely, and did not have to do it by compulsion; He was most pleasing to God the Father, being His only-begotten Son, and His sacrifice was infinite in value, and therefore greater than the offense made by man.
I can understand it if you, dear Reader, may be asking yourself this question: “But why did God choose to redeem us in this way? Jesus’ Passion was horrible!”
Yes, the fact is that God wanted this form of redemption to show His boundless love for us, and also to make us understand the hatefulness of sin! In short, to move our hardened hearts toward loving Him.
Take for instance, St. John’s affirmations about God being Love itself: “God is love”; that is, God is love itself — “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him” (1 John 4:8-9). “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:4-5).
Christ Himself proclaimed that He came into the world to obtain pardon for our sins, and to give us a new spiritual life, to be our Redeemer. “The Son of Man came,” He said, “to save the lost” (Matt. 18:11) and “to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). And again our Savior declared: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
We, who are so attached to comfort and ease, will find it difficult to grasp the idea that Christ was eager to shed His Blood for us. When He told His apostles that “He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed,” St. Peter, with warm-hearted solicitude for His Master, “began to rebuke Him, saying: ‘God forbid, Lord! This shall never happen to you’.”
But Jesus turned on him sharply and said: “Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, because you are not on the side of God, but of men” (Matt. 16:21-23).
St. Peter was a scandal or an obstacle, because with thoughtless compassion he sought to dissuade Jesus from entering on the way of the cross. Again, He said: “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50).
One could say that Peter meant well, but was off the right path. Jesus said He was “constrained,” not in the sense of being obliged, but because He was distressed with eagerness. The baptism of which He spoke was the baptism, or bathing, of His limbs in His Precious Blood, not the Sacrament of Baptism of water.
We would do well to meditate over these affirmations of Our Lord Jesus Christ in order to better understand the seriousness of sin and His desire to save us through His sacrifice.
Next article: How did Christ understand His sacrifice?
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(Raymond de Souza, KM, is available to speak at Catholic events anywhere in the free world in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Please email SacredHeartMedia@Outlook.com or visit www.RaymonddeSouza.com or phone 507-450-4196 in the United States.)
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