An Instruction for the Twelfth Sunday: On Salvation

“Good Teacher,” a certain young man asked our Lord Jesus Christ, “what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” (Mt 19:16)—that is, what must I do to be saved? A most important question! A question that should particularly occupy each person during the time of his earthly pilgrimage! Just as a quiet harbor continually appears to the imagination and memory of a traveler sailing a great sea, so we, borne upon the waves of life’s sea, must continually keep eternity before our mental eyes and during the arena of temporal life arrange our portion in eternity. What acquisition made by us on earth can remain forever our inalienable possession? Only our salvation. Whoever used earthly life to accumulate riches will leave the riches at the transition into eternity. Whoever used earthly life to acquire honors and fame will be deprived of them by cruel death. But whoever used earthly life to acquire salvation will take his salvation with him into eternity and in heaven will be eternally consoled by the acquisition made on earth.

Beloved brethren! What must we do to be saved? The answer to this question, the most satisfactory answer, we find in the Gospel. The Lord declared that for the salvation of those who do not believe in Christ, faith in Christ is necessary; and for the salvation of those who believe in Christ, it is necessary to live according to God’s commandments. The one who does not believe in Christ will perish forever, and the one who believes in Christ with his lips but does not fulfill His all-holy commandments and therefore denies Him by his deeds will perish forever. In other words: for salvation a living faith in Christ is necessary.

When the Jews asked the Lord, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?” the Lord answered them: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.” (Jn 6:29) Living faith in Christ is work, and work of God so extensive that salvation is wholly accomplished by it. Such faith is expressed by the whole life, the whole being of a man; it embraces his thoughts, his heart’s feelings, all his activity. “He who believes” with such faith “has eternal life” (Jn 6:47). “And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (Jn 17:3) Living faith is vision and knowledge of God (Heb 11:27). Living faith is a life wholly devoted to piety and dead to the world. Living faith is the gift of God. The holy Apostles asked the Lord for this great gift, saying to Him: “Increase our faith” (Lk 17:5). Only through living faith can a man deny himself the supposed merits of his fallen nature, become a disciple and follower of the Lord by understanding and activity befitting renewed nature.

The spiritual palace in which is preserved and from which is abundantly dispensed the spiritual treasure—true faith—is the one, holy Orthodox Church. For this reason it is necessary for salvation to belong to the Orthodox Church; the one who does not obey the Church—“let him be to you like a pagan and a tax collector,” (Mt 18:17) said the Lord. In vain do some regard the sin of the mind as a light and insignificant sin! As much as the spirit surpasses the body, so much is a virtue accomplished by the spirit more exalted than a virtue accomplished by the body; as much as the spirit surpasses the body, so much is a sin accepted and accomplished by the spirit more grievous and destructive than a sin accomplished by the body. The sin of the body is obvious; the sin of the spirit is very often scarcely apparent, sometimes imperceptible to people immersed in worldly concerns. For this reason it is more terrible; for this reason its strokes are more certain; for this reason the wounds it inflicts are more incurable! The light-bearing angel stricken by sinful thought became a dark demon and, expelled from the heavenly dwellings, was cast into the abyss. He brought with him a multitude of angels and a multitude of men who allowed their way of thinking to be infected by false opinions. The Lord, naming the fallen angel the father of lies, also called him a murderer, as not abiding in truth (Jn 8:44). Lies are the source and cause of eternal death; on the contrary, truth is the source and cause of salvation, by the determination of the Lord Himself (Jn 8:32). The holy Church holds holy truth in its bosom. Belonging to it and obeying it, one can have a correct way of thinking about God, about man, about good, about evil, and consequently about salvation. It is evident that without having a correct way of thinking about salvation, it is impossible to have salvation itself. The beginning of salvation is truth! The beginning of salvation is correct thought! The pledge of destruction is departure from truth through a false thought. Every deviation from the teaching of holy truth and acceptance of a false thought opposed to this teaching is connected with the terrible sin of blasphemy and denial of God. Experimental proof of this we see in the fall of the first-created, which began with the acceptance of a false thought; experimental proof we see in all heresies. Of these, some blasphemed God, striving to deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and to distort the all-holy dogma of His incarnation; others blasphemed God by attributing to man divine qualities; still others blasphemed God by calling the Holy Spirit a creature; others blasphemed God by rejecting the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church’s sacraments and calling them human inventions. Finally, some blasphemed God by demanding contempt for life according to Christ’s commandments, cunningly being silent about the dogmas of faith but at the same time killing faith, which for its life necessarily needs the works of faith. “Faith without works is dead,” (Jas 2:20) said the Apostle. The greatest calamity before the end of the world will befall those people who, according to the Apostle’s teaching, “did not receive the love of truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, so that they will believe the lie,” that is, will permit “the working of error,” in the person of the greatest lawless one, “that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thes 2:10-12). By acknowledging an evildoer out of evildoers as god, people will thereby declare and confess the quality of their reasoning, the quality of their spiritual disposition. Our way of thinking, or our mind, can be spiritual only when it remains wholly in truth, raised to it by living faith in Christ. Departure from truth is a fall from spiritual heaven into carnal reasoning, into falsely-named wisdom, into destruction.

Beloved brethren! Let us offer to the Lord the most fervent prayer, as the Apostles offered, that He would grant us the sole means of salvation—living faith. In asking through prayer for the reception of this gift, let us prove the sincerity of our desire to receive this priceless gift by our own effort to acquire it. “Turn away from evil and do good” (Ps 33:14, 36:27; 1 Pet 3:11). With effort let us tear our heart away from sin and with effort make virtue our own. Now we stand in the holy temple before the invisible God and have the opportunity to ask Him for all that is necessary for our salvation; that time will come when we shall stand together with all humanity before His face to give an account of our earthly life. Let us beware lest we then bring before God merely the vain name of Christians without the deeds required by God from Christians. He has promised to give a terrible answer to hypocritical Christians, and He will give it. “Then I will declare to them,” He said, “I never knew you. Depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!” (Mt 7:23). Amen.

Papists.

Protestants.

The Venerable Isaac the Syrian. Discourse 28.