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Column Are You Saved?
June 16, 2010 | Comments Off
Are you saved? Do you have assurance of salvation?
Catholics are often scolded for not being able to speak with complete confidence about their eternal future.
Actually, this puts us in pretty good company, as it was Paul who wrote, “I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby justified. It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Cor. 4:4).
Paul understood, as do Catholics, that even the most fervent believer does not lose his free will and can ultimately reject God, who alone can foresee what our ultimate choice will be. Protestants who disagree with this point to verses, such as John 10:27-30 and Romans 8:28-39, which suggest that there are some who are kept by the power of God.
These verses refer to the elect, who are predestined for glory, but the mistake that some Christians make is assuming that everyone who sincerely accepts Christ is among the elect. There are, after all, those who “believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away”, according to the parable of the sower (Luke 8:13).
As Master Poe would say in the TV series, Kung Fu, “Do not go in fear, Grasshopper.” For a Catholic, also, can have assurance of salvation by resolving to avoid mortal sin and to reconcile with God through confession when serious sin occurs.
After all, we can have hopeful confidence in the promises of Christ (Rom. 5:2), but it is only “he who endures to the end [who] will be saved” (Matt. 24:13).
But if we’ve done nothing to earn our salvation, a faith-alone Christian might argue, we can do nothing to lose it!
Tell that to Adam and Eve, who did nothing to earn their time in the Garden, but still found themselves toiling for thorns and thistles as the forbidden fruit digested.
Scripture tells us that even the Christian who stands “fast only through faith” can be cut off again (Rom. 11:13-22); that those who have “received the knowledge of truth” and have been sanctified by the “blood of the covenant” can “sin deliberately” and face “a fury of fire” (Heb. 10:26:31); that even he who has a knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus can again become entangled in the defilements of the world from which he escaped, facing worse fate than he who never knew the way of righteousness (Pet. 2:20-21).
The truth is that salvation is spoken of in terms of our marriage with the bridegroom Christ (Eph. 5: 25-27), and what marriage could last if we only proclaimed our love and didn’t live it, as well?
The permanence of a marriage can be assured when both spouses commit to serving and honoring each other, but one can predict how long that relationship would last with no sacrifices, no sense of commitment, and no signs of affection. When that same apathy is allowed to rot a believer’s relationship with Christ, a divorce can occur then, as well.
In other words, work allows us to sustain our faith.
While some Protestant groups object that works have no role in our faith, the only place that “faith alone” appears in Scripture is when James tells us that we are justified by our works and not by faith alone (Jas 2:24). When Paul warns that we are saved by faith apart from works, such as in Eph. 2:8-9, he speaks of “works of the law”, which are those Jewish traditions, such as circumcision, which are no longer binding in the New Covenant.
None of us can boast of that work (Eph. 2:8-9), as even our good deeds are a free gift from God. Yet, Paul so recognized the importance of an active faith that he urged his readers to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phi 2:12).
Are you saved? Am I?
I have been saved, but the process continues. Let us pray for one another that we remain doers of the word and not just hearers (Jas. 1:22-24), and that when we stray, we remember the loving forgiveness of God, who waits to welcome home even his most prodigal son.
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