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The Catholic Telegraph
June 14, 2002Two weeks ago, in the first of our Sunday readings from Paul’s masterpiece on salvation, we learned that salvation comes from faith, apart from the works of the Jewish law. Then, last Sunday, we heard about the nature of the faith that opens us up to God’s gift of salvation. In the verses that follow last Sunday’s reading, Paul begins a lengthy reflection on the results of God’s gift of justification in our life. He tells the Romans that salvation/justification brings, first of all, peace, i.e., the fulness of divine blessing expressed in a right relationship with God (cf. 5.1). In addition, salvation brings confidence that enables us to rely on God’s care for us and even to find a positive side to our afflictions (cf. 5.2-5).
Now, in this Sunday’s reading, Paul continues his list of the results of salvation and describes both the unfailing certitude of our new relationship with God as well as the basis on which that certitude rests.
Our reading begins with an account of how Christ accomplished our salvation. It was through His death, a death that made up for the unfaithfulness and selfishness of human beings up to His time. We were without any claim on God, i.e., "helpless" and "ungodly." Yet Christ died for us anyhow. Paul remarks that giving up one’s life for somebody else is almost beyond imagination, although, if the somebody for whom one’s life is given up is a particularly good person, the self-sacrifice might make some sense. But that’s not what Jesus did. He died for us before we had any goodness with which to claim His attention. He died for us when we were sinners and, in so doing, demonstrated His love for us.
Now Paul takes his argument a step further. If Christ loved us and saved us when we were God’s enemies, how much more will He love us and care for us now that we have been redeemed! We are now not sinners, but people who are sharers in His life, justified, sanctified, saved. Our salvation began with Jesus’ death. Its continuation is insured by our participation in His life. We no longer need fear that God is going to write us off or turn angrily away from our pride, rebellion, and disloyalty. All this makes it possible for us to "boast of God through our Lord Jesus Christ," i.e., to find security and worth for ourselves in the relationship of reconciliation that God has bestowed on us through the self-giving of Christ.
This passage reassures us that we have the right to hope in final salvation in view of what God has done for us through Christ’s gift of Himself for the sake of our well-being. We are now no longer sinners, no longer cut off from God through our participation in the sinfulness of humanity. We are saved, justified, made holy, and this state in which God has placed us guarantees our final fulfillment.
Sometimes believers torment themselves by trying to discern whether they are really saved or not, whether God has really taken them for Himself, whether God’s goodness will continue to be active in their lives. This kind of doubt and questioning reveals a defective idea of redemption. The fact of the matter is that God loved us and cared for us even before we became sharers in His life. If God looked out for us when we were hostile and distant, God will certainly continue to look out for us after we have become extensions of the life of the risen Christ!
The trouble is that, despite what God has taught us about sin and redemption, many of us still think that we have to earn salvation and that, once God has embraced us with grace, we have to live in a constant state of anxiety that God will turn away from us again. We find it hard to accept how much God loves us. We are inclined to think that God loves as we sometimes love each other, conditionally and contingently, willing to love as long as the other proves him or herself lovable, always ready to withdraw our love when the other stops seeming worthy of it.
We are never worthy of God’s love, either before or after we are justified. We are always inclined to sin, limited, constitutionally incapable of meriting God’s love or of responding appropriately to it once it has been conferred on us. We have to take God’s love as a gift we can never deserve and respond to it with the deepest level of gratitude of which we are capable.
We rely on God for our meaning and fulfillment, we "boast" in Him, not in view of what we have achieved, but in view of the goodness that God has expressed toward us. That’s all we have to rely on, but it’s infinitely more than we can provide for ourselves! Will many be saved, or only a few? Is it hard or easy to be saved? Once we have entered the community of believers, can we be sure that we will persevere in our acceptance of God’s gifts to us? These are all understandable questions, but they can only be answered in the context of God’s free and unmerited love for us. There is nothing we can do to guarantee salvation for ourselves. All we can do is rely on God. But the God on whom we rely is the God who loved us even when we were His enemies.
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Conversation Questions.
Why does God bother with us at all?
How do I "boast of God" in my life?
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