We have finally arrived at the "how" of salvation after having first noted that "salvation" is at the heart of the Biblical story and secondly that "salvation" references God's action of giving human beings life eternal as part of God's coming earthly kingdom. The question with which both Judaism and Christianity have wrestled with then is how does one obtain this salvation? There are two spectra along which answers fall: Law/works vs. grace/faith; and election/being chosen vs. choosing/free will. We will look at the first spectrum today.
We begin with Law/works. Within the Old Testament there is the sense that salvation is offered only when the people do what God wants them to do. The idea is that the covenant is an if-then proposition. If you will do what I tell you to do, God says, then I will be your God and you will be my people. Though God never abandons the people of Israel as a whole, there are many individuals within the community who are lost along the way. Two examples are those post-Exodus people who died in the wilderness because they refused to enter the Promised Land and those who were killed in the Babylonian conquest because they refused to listen to the prophets. This view reaches its fullest expression in the time of Christ as the Pharisees argued that the coming Kingdom of God was reserved for the righteous; meaning those who perfectly kept the Law(s) of Moses.
While the Apostle Paul seems to reject works as a means to salvation, he hedges his bets a bit in his letter to the Galatians (5:21b) when, after offering a list of sins, he writes, "I warn you as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God." These words suggest that while we may not have to perform certain works in order to be saved, there are some actions that might prevent us from receiving that same salvation. James and Revelations are two biblical books which focus on the connection between works and salvation. In James (2:14ff) we read "What does it profit, my brothers and sisters, if a person says they have faith but have not works? Faith cannot save him. So faith by itself, if it has no works is dead." At the end of the book of Revelation (20:12) it is stated that "And the dead were judged by what was written in the books; by what they had done." Thus salvation appears to be tied to works.
We now examine grace/faith. While most of us might not associate the Old Testament with grace, there are numerous examples of grace at work. God does not kill Adam and Eve for violating the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead God saves them by making them clothing so that they would not be naked. When Cain slays Able, God does not kill Cain in return, instead placing a mark upon Cain in order to save him. When King David violates at least half of the commandments during his affair with Bathsheba, God does not kill him but instead forgives him. Each of these instances offers us a glimpse of God offering salvation based on grace rather than works.
In the New Testament we witness Jesus offering salvation through grace to sinners and tax-collectors, to the woman caught in adultery and to Peter after Peter had denied Jesus three times following Jesus' arrest. The Apostle Paul builds his theology around grace rather than works. In his letter to the church in Ephesus (2:8) Paul writes, "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." This thought is made even clearer in his letter to the Galatians (3:10,13), "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written 'Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, and do them…Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law." In other words no one can keep the law perfectly so no one can be saved by the Law/works. Thus the only basis for salvation is grace of God received through faith.
In the next article we will look at the other spectrum; that of election/being chosen vs. choosing/free will.
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