What we Believe about Salvation (Orthodox)

Excerpts from:

 Introducing The Orthodox Church: Its Faith and Life.  Anthony M. Coniaris, Light and Life Publishing, pages 47-54, 1982.

A question is often addressed to us is: “Are you saved?” There are those who delight in using this question in their Christian witness. It is really not a bad question, for it directs our thinking to an all-important subject. But repeated too often it can become overbearing. There is a story of a man at a baseball game who was looking for an opportunity to share his Christian faith. Finally someone spoke to him. “Is this seat saved?” “No,” Said the man, “are you?”

The three stages of being saved

A very godly bishop was walking down the street one day when a little girl, a very zealous Christian, no doubt, asked him, “Bishop, are you saved?” The bishop, a very kind man, smiled and said, “My dear friend, might I just inquire a little more exactly as to what you are asking me. Are you asking me, have I been saved? Or are you asking me, am I now being saved? Or are you asking me, shall I yet someday be saved?” Well, that pretty much flustered the little girl. She didn’t respond. “Honey, “said the bishop, “All three are true. I have been saved. I am being saved; and I shall yet be saved.” You see, salvation is comprehensive. It has to do with our past--- we have been saved from sin and death through baptism. This we call justification. It has to do with the present--- we are being saved. This has to do with our daily walk and growth in the life of Christ and the Spirit. This we call sanctification. And salvation has to do also with our final glory in Christ. As Paul said, “When Christ who is our life appears, then also you will appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4). That we call glorification.

Another bishop when asked the question, “Have you been saved?” replied, “I have.” “And when were you saved?” he was asked. The bishop replied immediately “On a Friday afternoon at three o’clock in the spring of the year 33 A.D. on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem.”

That is when we were all saved, but God will not force this salvation upon us, we must--- each of us--- accept it personally as the great gift of God’s love. We were saved in baptism which is our personal Golgotha. Baptism is the tomb where “we were baptized into His death” (Rom. 6:3); it is also the womb from which we were born anew receiving within us the life of Christ.

Work out your salvation

We were saved at baptism but we must continue to “work out” our salvation for the rest of our lives by daily serving, loving, obeying, and following Jesus.

When you stand before God’s alter to be married, you are pronounced man and wife in the Lord. You are married right there and then. No one can argue that point.  But it is equally true that you will work out your marriage from that moment on till the end of your life together. As two wills seek to become one, your marriage becomes what God ordained it to be.

In Jeremiah 3:14 the Lord said to His people, “I am married to you.” Our relationship to God is like a marriage relationship. More than anything else God wants our love, our heart. He wants us! In the Christian life, as in marriage, two wills are involved; God’s will and ours. Jesus constantly yielded His will to the Father. It was the last thing He did before He went to the cross. That kind of obedience is not easy. And it is not something we can do once and forget. It is a way  of life--- a constant yielding of our will to God’s will daily. Each time we choose God’s will we are working out our salvation. In the words of St. Paul, “Therefore, my beloved… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).

A Constant moving toward God

In Orthodox theology salvation is not static but dynamic; it is not a completed state, a state of having arrived, a state of having made it, but a constant moving toward theosis, toward becoming like Christ, toward receiving the fullness of God’s life. And it can never be achieved fully in this life.

A Cry for Salvation

People today are not running to church with the question: “What must I do to be saved?” But when they run to psychiatrists, when they take doses of drugs, when they drown themselves with alcochol, when they try to resign from the human race, when they complain that life is not worth living and try to commit suicide, what are they doing but confessing a need--- a need to be saved from themselves, from the sin and death of their daily existence.

An Inner salvation

The salvation we are looking for is not to be found in education, or politics, or economics but in Christ. It is a spiritual, an inner salvation, which in turn produces and outer salvation. Changed people produce a changed society. The peace and fulfillment we are searching for can be found in a relationship to God that only Jesus can bring. “Peace I leave with you, “ He said, “my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you (John 14:27).

What is Salvation

What does it mean to be saved? What is salvation in Christ? Salvation is freedom--- freedom from the tyranny of self-centerdness, freedom from the bondage of fear and death.

Salvation in Christ is being freed from myself so that I can become the person God created me to be and intends me to become.

Salvation is God lifting us up in Christ Jesus. It is God giving us hope. It is God working an unrelenting work in our personalities, in our characters, in our lives. It is God not giving up on us.

Salvation according to Orthodox theology is not the state of “I have arrived. I have made it. I am saved.” Rather, it is the state of “I am moving. I am growing in God, for God, with God, and through the power of God.”

Saved by Grace

St. Paul assures us that we are saved by grace through faith. Let us examine first the word grace: What is it? Grace is a gift rather than a wage we can earn. It cannot be deserved. Sin give wages. God gives grace. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus or Lord” (Rom. 6:23) “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God--- not because of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8).

There is a story about a man who went to heaven. He was met at the pearly gates by Peter, who said, “It will take 1000 points for you to be admitted. The good works you did during your lifetime will determine your points.”

The man said, “Unless I was sick, I attended church every Sunday, and I sang in the choir.”

“That will be 50 points,” Peter said.

“And I gave to the church liberally,”  the man added.

“That is worth 25 more points,” said Peter.

The man, realizing that he had only 75 points, started getting desperate. “I taught a Sunday school class,” he said. “That’s a great work for God.”

“Yes,” Said Peter. “That’s worth 25 points.”

The man was frantic. “You know,” he said, “at this rate the only way I’m going to heaven is by the Grace of God.”

Peter smiled. “that’s 900 points! Come on in!”

In this world we get what we pay for, people say. Do we? What can we ever pay for the grace of God? What can we ever pay for His love? What can we ever pay for His sacrifice on the cross?

Grace is the unlimited pouring out of God’s mercy. It is God’s unconditional forgiveness offered to the unworthy. It is God accepting us as His children in Baptism, filling us with His Holy Spirit in Confirmation, and then sending Jesus to live in our hearts through Holy Communion. It is God loving us when we are unlovable. “But God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ die for us” (Rom. 5:8).

A word about good works and our salvation

The person who has accepted Christ, been baptized and received the Holy Spirit begins a new life which is expressed in love through good deeds. A person is not saved by faith alone but by faith which expresses itself through love as St. Paul writes. St. James asks, “What does it profit, my brethren, if man says he has faith but has no works? Can his faith save him? If a brother or sister is ill-clad and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving then the things needed for the body, what does it profit? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:14-17).

Not Meritorious

The good works that we do, do not earn us any special merit points in heaven.  We can never buy God’s love with them since Jesus specifically tells us: “So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’ “(Luke 17:10).

Our Good deeds do not put God in our debt. It is God’s love in Christ that puts us forever in His debt. Our good deeds are a grateful response, a feeble attempt on our part to show appreciation to God for what He has done for us. We can never fully accomplish all that we should do, but neither should we stop trying. Love will not let us. “The love of Christ controls us, “ says Paul (2 Cor. 5:14).

Created for good works

Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” This verse seems to contradict the one just before it: “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is a gift of God--- not because of works lest any man boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). One verse says: “You have been saved… not because of works,” and the next says: “Created in Christ Jesus for good works.”

A new creation produces new works

Far from contradicting each other, these verses give us the Orthodox Christian position concerning good works. Good works do not produce salvation, but salvation produces good works. We are not saved because of good works, but we are saved for good works. Christ makes each one of us a new creation, a new being. The new being, through the power of the indwelling Trinity, produces new works. Christ does not begin by changing our deeds. He begins by changing us. The good deeds flow by God’s grace out of the new person.

A showplace of good deeds

The early Church was a showplace of good works done for Christ. Having been made a new creation in Christ, those early Christians began to produce new deeds that astounded the pagan world.

In one of the earliest apologetic works preserved, Justin the Martyr (d. 165), writes:

“We used to value above all else money and possession; now we bring together all that we have and share it with those who are in need (cf. Acts 4:34-37). Formerly we hated and killed one another and, because of a difference in nationality or custom, we refused to admit strangers within our gates. We pray for our enemies and seek to convert those who hate us unjustly…” (I Apology VIV).

Tertullian (160-220) said: “It is our care for the helpless, our practice of lovingkindness, that brands us in the eye of many of our opponents. ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another’” (Apology XXXIX).

“And let our people learn to apply themselves to good deeds, so as to help cases or urgent need, and not to be unfruitful.” These words of St. Paul…