A Homily on Salvation and on Christian Perfection (Part 1)

Many speak of salvation, many desire to be saved; but if one asks them what salvation consists in, the answer becomes very difficult for them. It would not matter if the matter ended in mere difficulty of answering! But no: the harmful consequence flowing from this is very significant. Ignorance of what salvation consists in imparts indefiniteness and incorrectness to our actions in the field of virtue. Apparently we do many good deeds; but in essence we do very little for our salvation. Why is this? The answer is very simple: because we do not know what our salvation consists in.

To know what our salvation consists in, we must first know what our ruin consists in, because salvation is needed only for the ruined. He who seeks salvation, by this very fact necessarily recognizes himself as ruined: otherwise why would he seek salvation? Our ruin was accomplished through the destruction of our communion with God and through the entering into communion with fallen and rejected spirits. Our salvation consists in the breaking of communion with Satan and in the restoration of communion with God.[1]

PART ONE

All mankind is in ruin, in a fallen state. We have lost communion with God in the very root and source of our being: in our first ancestors, through their voluntary transgression. They were created spotless, not partakers of sin and corruption: from the very moment of their creation they became partakers of the Holy Spirit; having received natural being according to their humanity, they at the same time received supernatural being from union with the Divine Nature. Voluntarily rejecting submission to God, voluntarily entering into submission to the devil, they lost communion with God, their freedom and dignity, surrendered themselves to submission and slavery to the fallen spirit. They voluntarily rejected life, called death upon themselves, they voluntarily violated the wholeness of the good granted them at creation, poisoned themselves with sin.[2] As the beginning of mankind, they communicate and do not cease to communicate their contagion, their ruin, their death to all humanity. Adam, created according to the all-holy Image and Likeness of God, who was to produce offspring corresponding to him, defiled the Image, destroyed the Likeness, produced offspring corresponding to the defiled image, the destroyed likeness. Holy Scripture, having testified that man was created in the Image of God (Gen. 1:27), already withholds this testimony from Adam’s children. Scripture says of them that they were born according to the image of Adam (Gen. 5:3), that is, such as Adam became after the fall. Due to the loss of the Likeness, the Image became worthless. From the face of each man entering into the being of the fallen state, Scripture brings a sorrowful confession: “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps. 50:7[3]). Men became enemies of God, their Creator (Rom. 5:10).

God, by His ineffable mercy, called mankind back into communion with Himself. This He accomplished through the most wondrous, incomprehensible way. By one of His three Persons, the All-holy Word, He took upon Himself humanity, being conceived in the womb of the Most Holy Virgin by the action of the All-holy Spirit, setting aside from Himself the ordinary human conception from male seed; conception that communicated to all men the contagion of sin. Thus there appeared in mankind a spotless Man such as the first ancestor was created. This spotless Man was a partaker of the Divine Nature, like the first-created, but incomparably to a far greater degree: the first-created was a holy man by grace, but the God who became man became the God-man. He took upon Himself all human sins. He was able to do this because, being a man, He was also the omnipotent, all-perfect God. Having taken all human sins upon Himself, He offered Himself as an expiatory sacrifice to God’s justice for sinful mankind; He accomplished redemption, because He was able to do so. The infinitely and boundlessly Holy One redeemed by His sufferings and death the numerous, but limited, sins of mankind—and Holy Scripture with full justice testifies of Him: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29). The God-man stands in for Himself before God both the entire world and each man. The virtues, both social and private, flowing from fallen human nature, lost their significance upon God’s becoming man: they have been replaced by the great work of God—“faith in the One whom He has sent” (Jn. 6:29). In this great work of God is contained salvation, as the Saviour Himself testified: “And this is eternal life (salvation), that they know You, the only true God”, and “Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (Jn. 17:3). The virtues of the Christian must flow from Christ, from human nature renewed by Him, not from nature fallen. As our fall does not consist in the destruction of good from our nature—this is the distinguishing mark of the fall of the rejected angels—but in the mixture of our natural good with evil unnatural to us, fallen human nature has virtues and good deeds proper to it. They are performed by pagans, Mohammedans, and all who are alien to Christ. These good deeds and virtues, as defiled by the admixture of evil, are unworthy of God, hinder communion with Him, oppose our salvation. Let us reject this false good or, more correctly, this greatest evil! Let us reject the activity of fallen nature! Let us give ourselves over to the activity commanded us by Faith in Christ! Let us cease to conduct our life according to the dictates of our fallen reason, according to the inclination of our fallen heart! Let us begin to conduct our life according to the teaching of the Gospel commandments, according to the demands of God’s will. Living thus, we shall be saved.

Those who assign to the good deeds of fallen nature a high value it does not deserve fall into the greatest harmful error. They fall into it without realizing it, into the humiliation and rejection of Christ. Often one hears from them the question: “Why should not pagans, Mohammedans, Lutherans, and all such manifest and hidden enemies of Christianity be saved? Among them are many of the most virtuous people”. Clearly, such questions and objections come from complete ignorance of what human ruin and salvation consist in. Clearly, by such questions and objections Christ is humiliated, the thought is expressed that Redemption and the Redeemer were not a necessity for men, that men can satisfy their salvation by their own means. In short, by this question and objection Christianity is rejected. The virtues of fallen human nature had their value, like the provisions of the Old Testament, before the coming of Christ; they brought man into a state capable of receiving the Saviour. “The Light has come into the world”, said the God-man of His coming to men, “and men loved darkness rather than Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be exposed as evil; but whoever practices the truth comes to the Light, that his deeds may be seen as done in God” (Jn. 3:19–21). It is natural for those who love sin to reject Christ, because Christ commands the abandonment of sin loved by sinners. It is natural for those who love virtue to turn to and cleave to Christ, because the fulfillment and fullness of the good they love is Christ.

“God does not show partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:34–35). These words were spoken by the holy Apostle Peter regarding the pagan Cornelius, the centurion, whom God called to Faith. The striving toward true virtue prepared and made Cornelius capable of receiving salvation. Thus should we understand the word “acceptable”, according to the explanation of the great teacher of the Church, Saint John Chrysostom; thus this word is explained also by the very narrative set forth in the Acts of the Apostles by the holy Evangelist Luke.[4] Though Cornelius was a pagan, he had abandoned idols and prayed diligently to the one true God, and gave abundant alms. Once, during prayer, an Angel of God appeared to him and said: “Cornelius! Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter” (the Apostle): “he will speak to you words by which you and all your household will be saved” (Acts 10:3–6). Cornelius’s prayers and alms were so powerful that the merciful Lord looked upon them; but they, of themselves, did not provide salvation for Cornelius. They made him capable of believing in Christ, and faith in Christ provided him salvation. Here is the precise valuation of good from fallen nature! Good has value only when it leads to Christ. But when it, being satisfied with itself, separates from Christ, then it becomes the greatest evil, takes from us the salvation granted by Christ, salvation which it, of itself, in no way can provide.

Similar to the action of natural good is the action of the Old Testament. Turning away from it before the coming of Christ was apostasy from God; the desire to remain with it after Christ’s coming became apostasy from God (Gal. 5:4). The Old Testament was a minister of salvation, preparing men for Faith in Christ, through which salvation is granted; but for Jews who wished to remain forever with the Old Testament, it became an intermediary, an instrument of destruction. The soul-destroying error of the Jews consists in that they, by the action of pride and self-conceit, gave to the Covenant given them by God a different meaning from that given by God, and for the sake of the Old Covenant, which was a vivid shadow of Truth—the New Covenant—they rejected the New Covenant; for the shadow they rejected that which the shadow prefigured; for the temporary guidance to salvation, they rejected salvation itself, rejected Redemption and the Redeemer.

Equally soul-destroying is the error of those who, blinded by pride and self-conceit, assign to their good deeds, deeds of fallen nature, a value not belonging to them. “Robber and thief—that is he who” does not enter “by the door but climbs in another way” (Jn. 10:1): so also is he who, without Christ justifying him, justifies himself.[5] All the saints, forsaking their own righteousness, sought God’s righteousness and found in it (holy) love, hidden from nature corrupted by the fall.[6] Nature, being corrupted by the fall, has also corrupted righteousness. “We have all gone astray”, says the Prophet, “and are like filthy rags; all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Is. 64:6). “From head to foot there is” in him, in fallen man, “no soundness” (Is. 1:6).[7] The evil that has struck us, according to the Fathers’ explanation of the Prophet’s words, is not partial, but in the whole body, has embraced the entire soul, has seized all its powers. Not a single particle has remained in our nature that is not damaged, not infected with sin: no action of ours can take place without an admixture of evil. When water is mixed with wine or vinegar, each drop of it contains a mixture, so also our nature, being infected with evil, contains an admixture of evil in every manifestation of its activity.[8] All our wealth and all our dignity is in the Redeemer. “Man is justified by faith in Jesus Christ alone” (Gal. 2:16[9]). To assimilate the Redeemer with living faith requires the complete renunciation of one’s soul (Lk. 14:26), that is, not only of sinfulness but also of the righteousness of fallen nature. The striving to keep hold of the righteousness of fallen nature defiled by sin is active rejection of the Redeemer. “You have severed yourselves from Christ” (you are estranged from Christ) “whoever of you seek to be justified by the law” of Moses, or by natural law; “you have fallen away from grace” (Gal. 5:4), says the Apostle. “For if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing” (Gal. 2:21). This means: in the mode of thinking (mindset) that permits the dignity of one’s own human righteousness before God after the revelation of Christianity, there necessarily exists a blasphemous concept leavening this entire mode of thinking, a concept of the needlessness of Christ for salvation, a concept equivalent to the rejection of Christ. The Lord said to the Pharisees who were striving to hold to their own righteousness: “you say, ‘We see’; your sin remains” (Jn. 9:41). “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mt. 9:13). This means: those who do not recognize their sins as sins, nor their righteousness as worthless rags defiled and torn through communion with sin and Satan, are estranged from the Redeemer, confessing Him perhaps with their lips, but rejecting Him in their deeds and in their spirit. The holy Apostle Paul, who was blameless and righteous according to the laws of Moses and natural law, counted his righteousness “as loss for the sake of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, the Lord”. He rejected his righteousness, counting it “as rubbish (as refuse),” “so that I may gain Christ”, says the great Paul, “and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith” (Phil. 3:4–9). “And while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves were also found to be sinners” (Gal. 2:17): because there is no way to approach Christ and assimilate oneself to Him without recognizing from the sincerity of the heart that one is a sinner, a lost sinner, having no own justification, no own dignity. “No flesh will be justified before God by the works of the law. But now a righteousness from God apart from the law has been revealed, attested by the law and the prophets. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. There is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:20–24).

By the inviolable law of ascetic practice, an abundant recognition and sensation of one’s own sinfulness, granted by divine grace, precedes all other gracious gifts. It prepares the soul to receive these gifts. The soul is unable to receive them unless it first comes into a state of blessed spiritual poverty. “When the mind sees its sins as numerous as the sand of the sea, this serves as a sign of the soul’s enlightenment having begun, a sign of its health”.[10] Having come into this state, the bishop Tikhon of Voronezh said: “Let us know our sins: for this is the beginning of repentance.[11] Let us repent, recognizing ourselves as worthy of nothing. The more unworthy they (the saints of God) recognize themselves: the more God, being good and merciful, deems them worthy.[12] What is our own? Weakness, corruption, darkness, wickedness, sins”.[13] Let us beware of this soul-destroying delusion! Let us fear the denial of Christ connected with this delusion! Let us fear the certain loss of salvation through the adoption of a false idea hostile to Faith! The more cautious we need to be in our time, since now with particular effort is spread the preaching of the heights of virtue and progress of fallen mankind, with the open aim to attract all to the field of these virtues and this progress. Deriding the all-holy good of Christianity, this preaching strives to instill toward it contempt and hatred.

The works of salvation are works of Faith, works of the New Testament. Through these works is fulfilled not human understanding, not human will, but the will of the All-holy God, revealed to us in the commandments of the Gospel. The Christian desiring to inherit salvation must accomplish the following works:

1) To believe in God in the way God commands belief in Him, that is, to receive the teaching about God revealed by God, to receive Christianity, preserved in all purity and fullness in the heart of the Orthodox Church, planted by the God-man in the East, spreading from the East to the world, abiding to this day in wholeness only in the East and containing the God-given Christian teaching unaltered, without change and without the admixture of human and demonic teachings. “It is necessary to believe”, says the Apostle, “that those who approach God must believe that He is and that He rewards those who seek Him” (Heb. 11:6[14]). Christian teaching has been proclaimed to the world by preaching, and is received by faith. Being divine teaching, revealed teaching, surpassing human reason, it cannot be received otherwise than through heartfelt sympathy, faith. Faith, by its natural property, is capable of receiving and assimilating to mind and heart that which is incomprehensible to the mind and cannot be received by ordinary judgment. “Whoever believes and is baptized”, said the Lord, “will be saved; but whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk. 16:16).

2) The one who has believed must bring repentance for his former voluntarily sinful life, and firmly resolve to conduct a life pleasing to God. “As obedient children”, teaches the holy Apostle Peter to Christians, “do not be conformed to the desires you had when you were living in ignorance. Rather, as He who called you is holy, you also should become holy in all your conduct” (1 Pet. 1:14–15). It is impossible to assimilate oneself to God nor to remain in assimilation to God while voluntarily remaining and abiding in sinful life. The New Testament proclaims to all who approach God repentance as the first condition of access to God. The preacher who began the preaching of the New Testament, the great John, the Forerunner of the Lord, began his preaching with an invitation to repentance. “Repent”, he said to fallen men, newly called to communion with God, “for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Mt. 3:2). With these words the God-man Himself began His preaching: “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Mt. 4:17). With these words the Word of God commanded His holy Apostles to begin their preaching, first sending them “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”, bound fast in destruction despite the prefigurement of communion with God granted to them. “Go and proclaim”, the Word of God commanded the apostles, “saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’” (Mt. 10:6–7). The call to faith and repentance is divine. Obedience to this call is necessary for salvation: it is the fulfillment of the all-holy will of God.

3) Those who have believed in God, having rejected sinful life to enter into communion with God, enter into this communion through the initial Christian mystery—holy Baptism: Baptism is birth into divine life. It is impossible to enter into natural existence without being born according to the law of nature; it is impossible to enter into communion with God, in which consists our true life or our salvation, without entering into Christianity through holy Baptism. Such is the divine establishment. Through Baptism we enter into rebirth (Tit. 3:5), that is, into that holy being which was granted to Adam at his creation, lost by him at his fall, returned to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above”, said the Lord, “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (Jn. 3:3, 5). Being born according to the flesh, we become the offspring of our first ancestor according to the flesh, Adam, who gives us being together with eternal death; through holy Baptism we pass into the spiritual offspring of the God-man, Who, according to the testimony of the Prophet, “is the Mighty God, the Eternal Father, the Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6), Who, giving us spiritual birth, destroys in us the principle of death sown by birth according to the flesh, and grants us eternal life, salvation, blessedness in God. The holy John the Theologian proclaims concerning those who have believed in God and been reborn by holy Baptism: “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (Jn. 1:12–13). Holy Baptism, making us children of God, restores our freedom granted to us at creation, lost by us at the fall, restores the strength of the will, places at our disposal either to remain children of God or to reject adoption. Thus in paradise there was placed at the self-mastery of our first ancestors either to remain eternally in blessedness or to lose it. “Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard”, that is, with special care observe ourselves, “so that we do not drift away” (Heb. 2:1[15]). Holy Baptism is sealed by another mystery immediately following it, holy Chrismation. It is fitting that this mystery be named a seal, since holy Baptism can justly be named a covenant, a contract between God and man. The seal by which this covenant is sealed is holy Chrismation.

4) The abiding in adoption by God, which is given through holy Baptism, is sustained by a life according to the Gospel commandments. The abiding in adoption is lost by turning away from a life according to the Gospel commandments. Both of these the Lord Himself testified to: “If you keep My commandments”, He said, “you will abide in My love. Whoever does not abide in Me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned” (Jn. 15:10, 6). For salvation it is necessary that the one baptized into Christ live according to Christ’s law.

5) The God-man, having given us birth to salvation through holy Baptism, introduces us into the closest communion with Himself through another great, incomprehensible mystery, the mystery of the Eucharist, through which we unite and blend our body and blood with the body and blood of the God-man.[16] “Those who eat My flesh and drink My blood abide in Me, and I in them. Those who eat My flesh and drink My blood have eternal life. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves” (Jn. 6:56, 54, 53). Through this mystery the God-man has completely severed us from kinship with the old Adam and introduced us into the closest kinship, into unity with Himself. How should not those be saved who constitute one with the God-man? “Where the body is, there the eagles will gather” (Lk. 17:37), testifies the holy Gospel, nourishing themselves on this body. By worthy and frequent participation in the spiritual food descended from heaven and giving life to the world, we become spiritual eagles, we rise from the lowlands of the fleshly state to the heights of the spiritual state, we fly whither the God-man elevated human nature and His body, He Who was from the beginning in God the Father according to His Divinity, and who sat at the right hand of the Father according to His human nature after the completion of man’s redemption.

6) To sustain our weakness, to heal the wounds of sin which we receive after Baptism, to maintain the holiness by which we are sealed through holy Baptism in wholeness, God has granted us the mystery of confession. Through this mystery the state given by holy Baptism is renewed and restored.[14] To the mystery of Confession one must resort as often as possible: the soul of that man who makes a habit of confessing his sins frequently is held back from sinning by the remembrance of the confession that lies ahead; on the other hand, unconfessed sins easily repeat, as if committed in darkness or at night.[17]

PART TWO

The Gospel mentions two blessed states: the state of salvation and the state of Christian perfection. A certain rich and noble young man of the Jews fell at the feet of the God-man and asked Him to tell him how he ought to act to inherit eternal life, salvation? To the Jew, that is, to one who believes correctly in God, the Lord answered: “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt. 19:17). To the young man’s question about which commandments, the Lord pointed to commandments that determine the God-pleasing relationships of each rightful believer toward his neighbor, without mentioning the commandments that determine man’s relationship to God, as being known to the Jew and observed by him with precision, at least outwardly. The moral and religious ailment of the Jews at the time of the God-man’s coming in the flesh was different.