Citizen Columns
Question
If Christ's resurrection saved us, why aren't we all in heaven? Or hell? Didn't He defeat evil and death forever? What is your faith group's view of salvation and how humans can reach it?
Answer
Have you ever been given a promise from someone you know, love and
trust? How do you react to that promise? You believe that they will
deliver, because that is your experience with them in the past.
So it is with God. Believers trust God's promises, because their
experience tells them that God can be trusted. This is not the vague
faith of "pie in the sky by and by." It is tested, proven faith based on
previous experience.
Past events in ones life confirm again and again that God is present and
acting, especially in the most desperate situations when one has used up
all one's own resources and there is no other way out. It is precisely
in these situations when the word "saved" has real meaning. Believers
build up a dossier of these experiences over a lifetime, and each time
confirms their trust: yes, God is present; God cares for me and loves
me. "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in
spirit" (Psalm 34:18).
This is the experience Christian believers also have of the
resurrection. Despite appearances to the contrary, there is an inner
conviction that comes from experience, that God in Christ has defeated
sin and death and we will one day know the full force of this
indestructible life. We experience a taste of the resurrection in the
midst of death every time we celebrate Easter and sing "Christ is
risen." We experience it every time we celebrate the mystery of the
risen Christ present among us in Holy Communion, "Lo, I am with you even
unto the close of the age".
Salvation means deliverance from sin and death, but above all it means
communion with the risen Christ. This taste of salvation here and now
assures us time and again that we can trust the bigger promise of life
to come.
Father John Jillions
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