Question by Eric Boateng, Corpus Christi Catholic Church, Sakumono, Tema:
My Lord, there is the general belief that the salvation of man is a process and not a one-time event. Scripture admonishes believers to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12 NKJV). So at what point could a Catholic claim to be saved? Is it when he is baptized (as an infant or adult), or when sacramentally confirmed, or when he formally accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and personal Saviour in accordance with Romans 10:9-10?
In two related questions: Could one’s salvation be known or guaranteed while on this earth? And if one is saved, is that person everlastingly saved?
Answer by Bishop Joseph Osei-Bonsu:
In answering this question, it will be necessary to look briefly at the teaching of Scripture on the concept of “salvation”.
What is salvation?
“Salvation” is the term most often used in Christian theology to express the provision that God makes for our human condition. It can be used of any kind of situation in which a person is delivered from some danger, real or potential.
Salvation in the Old Testament
In the Old Testament, the verb ‘save’ expresses particularly God’s actions in delivering his people. In the context of his saving Israel from their enemies, the noun can be translated as ‘deliverance’ (Ps. 3:8). But it is also used in a very broad sense of the sum total of the effects of God’s goodness on his people (Ps. 53:6). Thus, the Old Testament understanding of salvation is quite concrete and often covers more than spiritual blessings.
Salvation in the New Testament
In the gospels, the word-group is used of the mighty works of Jesus in healing people from disease. For example, we often have stories of Jesus doing miracles accompanied by such words as “your faith has saved you” (e.g., Luke 7:50). In such contexts, salvation has a strong physical component (though we would be wise not to exclude a spiritual component even in such passages).
In the New Testament, the sense of rescue or deliverance found in the Old Testament is still uppermost, but the reference is to deliverance from sin and from the wrath of God as the ultimate fate which awaits the sinner (Rom. 5:9-10). For Paul “salvation” refers to what Christ has done in his great saving act for sinners; all the Pauline passages bear on this act in some way. It is central to Paul’s understanding of Christianity, for salvation is the very purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15). Salvation is a comprehensive word bringing out the truth that God in Christ has rescued people from the desperate state that their sins had brought about.
The use of the term in itself indicates that the thought is of an action from the outside by God who is the saviour; human beings cannot save themselves by their own efforts (Tit. 3:5). Thus, salvation is dependent on the grace of God. It is effected through the action of Jesus Christ whose incarnation and atoning death took place in order that he might save sinners. In the Pastoral Letters, there are several references to “God our Saviour” (1 Tim 1:1; 2:3; Tit 1:3; 2:10; 3:4), or to “Christ our Saviour” (2 Tim 1:10; Tit 1:4; 2:13; 3:6).), and it would not be unfair to say that this title summed up the Christian doctrine of God in relation to his people. The name ‘Jesus’ is etymologically ‘Yahweh is salvation’, and this meaning must have been known to Christians (Mt. 1:21).
The Time of Salvation
In the New Testament, salvation is said to have taken place in the past, as taking place now and as something that will take place in the future.
Salvation in the Past
There are many passages in the New Testament in which salvation is spoken of as having already taken place. Paul can say, “in hope we were saved” (Rom 8:24), where the past tense looks back to the beginning of the Christian life. There is both a backward and a forward look when Paul writes “For we were saved in hope, but hope seen is not hope” (Rom 8:24). This intriguing passage recognizes that there is a sense in which salvation is in the past: “we were saved”. Paul looks back to the death of Christ for sinners and to the faith that repentant sinners exercised when they came to Christ. But he also speaks of hope, and that points to the future when believers will experience to the full all that salvation means.
Salvation is past when the apostle says that God, “when we were dead in trespasses, gave us life in Christ – by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2:5). A little later Paul repeats the essential thought, “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph 2:8), where again the perfect tense points to a salvation already accomplished. Another relevant passage is, “Not from works of righteousness that we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Tit 3:5). Again, Christ “delivered us from the power of darkness” (Col 1:13). Paul leaves his readers in no doubt as to the reality of salvation as an accomplished fact. It happened in the past.
Salvation Now
There are other passages in which salvation is said to be here and now. For Paul, the gospel is “the power of God for salvation” and God’s righteousness is being revealed in it (Rom 1:16-17). The tenor of Paul’s writings and the manner of his living show that this is a reference to a present happening. Again, he quotes Isaiah 49:8, referring to God’s help in a day of salvation, and proceeds, “Look, now is the acceptable time; look, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). The double “now” conveys a sense of urgency: salvation is not to be deferred to some convenient time in the future. Salvation is now. The gospel must be accepted now. In Romans 6 believers are defined as those who have been baptized into Christ, buried with him and raised with him so that we “might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:3-4). Here the transaction of being saved is pictured as accomplished fact and the “walking in newness of life” as a possibility yet to be realized.
A present salvation is meant when Paul speaks of the gospel as “the power of God to us who are being saved” (1 Cor 1:18), and when he refers to “those being saved” (2 Cor 2:15). “With the mouth one confesses for salvation” (Rom 10:10) is another indication of a present salvation, not only one that is looked for in the future. This is probably the case also with the “godly grief” that “works repentance” leading to salvation (2 Cor 7:10). Salvation is in the present when Paul asks rhetorically, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” and answers, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom 7:24-25). Paul is referring to this mortal body and to the constant temptations to sin that such a body provides. And he exults in the deliverance Christ brings. In the battle of life, salvation may be said to be the “helmet” (Eph 6:17), or the helmet may be “the hope of salvation” (1 Thess 5:8). Either way, salvation is now a critical part of the Christian’s armour.
The apostle’s attitude to the salvation of Israel also reveals a longing for something to happen now. He speaks of his affectionate goodwill towards his nation and adds that his prayer is for their salvation (Rom 10:1). While, of course, there is a future dimension to the salvation for which he prays, the emphasis in this passage is present: he wants Israel to be saved now! That salvation is present is seen in another reference to Israel, namely that it is due to Israel’s transgression that salvation has come to the Gentiles (Rom 11:11).
Salvation in the Future
Paul is certain that salvation is a present reality and that it is a life-changing experience. But he also looks for a future salvation when “all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26), or again when he urges, somewhat mysteriously, that a certain sinner be “delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:5). There is much that is obscure to us in this passage, but salvation “in the day of the Lord” certainly looks for the ultimate salvation. This is very clear also in the apostle’s reference to our citizenship as being in heaven, “from where we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil 3:20). The clearest example of the futuristic use of the term “salvation” is in Romans 13:11, where we hear that “salvation is nearer now than when we first believed”. The statements that “all Israel will be saved” and that “the Deliverer will come out of Zion” (Rom 11:26) may be understood of the present or of the future. The eschatological nature of salvation is to be found also in the following passage from Philippians 2:12-13, “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure”. In this Philippians text, salvation is a reality still in process and yet to be accomplished. The motivation for this “outworking” is “fear and trembling”, not in the sense of “being afraid of”, but rather in the sense of “awe”, namely, the “awe” which comes when we contemplate God’s work of “amazing grace” in Christ.
That salvation also lies in the future is evident from some sayings in the New Testament relating to death and judgment. Whether one will go to heaven or hell is dependent on the judgment after one’s death. According to Heb. 9:27, “…it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment”. In 2 Cor 5:10, Paul tells us, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad”. We have to give an account of our lives in judgment after death. Mt. 25:31-46 presents us with such a scenario at the end of time: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left” (Matthew 25:31-32). The Son of Man will then judge people on the basis of what they did or did not do for their fellow human beings who were hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, in prison, etc.
That salvation belongs to the future is also clear from the following words of Jesus in Mark 8:38, “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels”.
For Paul, even if salvation has been won by Christ for believers, the lives that they live must show that they have been saved. Indeed, if they do any of the following, they will not enter the kingdom of God:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5:16-21).
Again, in 1 Cor 6:9-10 Paul says,
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.
According to Rev. 21:8, “…as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death”.
In the light of the foregoing, let us look carefully at the question posed by Eric Boateng. The way the question is framed suggests to me that he has in mind the rather popular but erroneous idea that, for believers, our salvation is all wrapped up and that we have nothing else to do. While salvation is and will always remain a free gift of God, we need to dispose ourselves by our righteous way of living to be worthy of eschatological salvation. It is for this reason, for instance, that St Paul in 1 Cor 1:2 describes the Christian as someone who has been sanctified in Christ Jesus (i.e., made capable of receiving God’s eschatological gift of salvation) and at the same timecalled to be a saint (i.e., lead a life of ethical holiness in this world). When it comes to salvation, the most important thing is what God has offered us in Christ Jesus but that does not mean that the individual Christian has nothing to do with regard to his or her salvation.
We saw above that in spite of Christians being saved already in this life, if they indulge in certain vices mentioned by Paul in his letters, they will not enter the kingdom of God. Indeed, the sacraments are there to help us to become more holy but at no point in their lives can Catholics or other Christians for that matter say that they have been saved while still alive. In view of the possibility of sin, Christians cannot at any stage in their lives in this world say with conviction that they have attained salvation. They can confidently say this only after the judgment. There is the need, therefore, to work continually at our salvation.