Salvation Seminar Week 6.       St. Paul writes, “... [W]ork out your own salvation with fear and trembling” ( Phil 2:12 ).       Hmmmm. We are to work out our own salvation? I thought our salvation was all God’s grace through faith in Christ ( Eph 2:8-9 ). Yes, indeed it is. At the same time God invites and even requires us to participate in our salvation – a sharing, a partaking, in that grace.       After “... with fear and trembling,” Paul continues: “for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” ( Phil 2:13 ). So God works in us, both by the exercise of the will (his and ours) and by the actual good works (his and ours). We will, God wills. We work, God works.       Another way Paul expresses this is that we are to imitate God by walking in love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us ( Eph 5:1-2 ).       That’s why salvation is not a ...

Salvation Seminar Week 5. Salvation – is it only a matter of a legal transaction? God merely declaring us “righteous” notwithstanding our sinfulness? Jesus taking on our sin and pronouncing us “justified” and “not guilty” as a legal declaration? We being clothed with Christ’s righteousness which hides our sin?  True, Scripture does indicate that justification, or salvation, does have a legal dimension (e.g., 1 Cor 4:4 ). But it is not the only dimension. Scripture tells us that salvation involves nothing less than actually being made like Christ.  Not a mere cover-up. An actual transformation. That is why grace is so amazing–it is way more than our human nature could ever achieve. There are two serious problems to thinking of salvation as only a legal transaction, a mere declaration of legal standing without corresponding reality. First, for God to declare us “righteous” while we actually remain sinners, then God would be making a declaration contrary to reality. He ...

Salvation Seminar Week 4.       “The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” ( 1 Cor 10:16-17 .)       In Chapter 4 of Dr. Michael Patrick Barber’s book, Salvation , he tells a story the likes of which many of us Catholics have also experienced. Dr. Barber’s fellow-passenger on an airplane, noticing what Dr. Barber was reading, asked, “Are you a Christian?” He replied, “Even better, I’m a Catholic.” The passenger looked surprised and said, “I didn’t realize Catholic were Christians. Would you say you have a personal relationship with Jesus?”       The Catholic answer to that question is: Of course! Even the Catechism ( CCC 2558 ) says that faith is “a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God.” Of course!       But Christianity is not only about me and Jesus – in...

  Salvation Seminar Week 3.       “You are not your own; you were bought with a price” ( 1 Cor 6:19-20 ).       In today’s thinking, we might expect this sort of language to be speaking of slavery, trafficking in human slavery. But in St. Paul’s expression, he means quite the opposite.       When we sin, we have enslaved ourselves – enslaved ourselves to sin, and to that temptation and the tempter which we succumbed to. We enslave ourselves to evil. It’s soul death. St. Paul is talking about buying us back from that slavery, that spiritual death.       The salvation offered to us in Jesus Christ, as presented in the Scriptures, includes this aspect:  “redemption.” To redeem something or someone is an economic term. If I were a Hebrew living on my ancestral land in Palestine, and came to be deeply in debt, I might sell that land to raise the funds I needed. Or, if that were insufficient, I...

  Salvation Seminar Week 2.       Jesus prays that we who believe in him “may be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us .... that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one ....” ( Jn 17:21, 22-23 .)       This abiding in God point to a reality, a manner of existence, diametrically opposed to hell.       Hell is the state of definitive self-exclusion – we exclude ourselves! – from communion with God and the blessed of Heaven. The sufferings of hell consist in the loss of the vision of God, the loss of the oneness with God which is the only thing our hearts ultimately desire and yearn for.       So is salvation about saving us from hell? Yes, for sure.       But is that all salvation is about? For Heaven’s sake, no! Salvation is not just fire insurance!     ...

Salvation Seminar Week 1.       “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God – not because of works, lest any man should boast” ( Eph 2:8-9 ).       In the Catholic Liturgy, and the several Scriptural readings at Mass, salvation is mentioned so frequently, and in so many aspects, that it can slip by us if we do not take time to notice.       For example, last Sunday’s Opening Prayer begins, “Keep your family safe, O Lord, with unfailing care, that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace, they may be defended always by your protection.”       Safety, care, defense, protection – all aspects of our salvation, an implication of some harm we are saved from. Yet in that short prayer, the most direct reference to salvation is in the word “family.” We are God’s “family.” Our salvation is in our adoption into God’s family as sons and daughter...

  Salvation Seminar.       “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith....” (Ro. 1:16.)       Salvation. Saved from what? Saved for what?       In the Introduction to his book, Salvation , Dr. Michael Patrick Barber points out that Catholics are very familiar with the language of “salvation,” and we think we know what being saved means – until we are asked about it. Then we generally stumble.       We call Jesus “Savior,” so why should we be reticent about being saved? Especially if salvation matters a very great deal.       Dr. Barber tells of a priest he knew who would say in his homilies (sermons) things like, “Don’t get distracted by all that fancy theology. All that matters is that you have Jesus in your heart.” Of course having Jesus in our hearts is a truth, all would agree. “But it is not simply enough to love the ...

  Are You Saved?          What’s salvation? What does that mean? Every Sunday when we recite the Nicene Creed we say that Jesus Christ came “for us men and for our salvation.” Why Jesus came! So what does salvation mean?  Beginning on Sunday, February 2nd, the author of these articles, Dibby Green, will lead a seminar exploring the question. The seminar is for 10 weeks (Feb. 2 through Palm Sunday), on Sundays from 11:30 AM to 12:20 PM, in the Parish Hall at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, 9970 California City Blvd., in California City. This seminar will read together and discuss an easily-to-read, easily-to-understand, but profound and deeply Biblical book titled, Salvation , by Dr. Michael Patrick Barber, Scripture scholar and theologian with the Augustine Institute. The book is part of the “What Every Catholic Should Know” series published by the Institute. The seminar is open to everyone – you don’t have to be Catholic! All are welcome. We have...