What does it mean that “by grace you have been saved?”  What is the role of “faith?”  What is the role of “good works.”  What, exactly, do we need to do to be saved?  Just believe in Jesus Christ? Just be a good person, doing “good works”?   

There have been many answers to this question over time, and much of seminary is spent studying the course corrections that some Christian groups have made as they bounce back and forth from heresy to heresy.  As with so many things, the answer is not found in one extreme or the other, but in balance.  This is the balance that traditional Christianity – Orthodox Christianity – has preserved and taught from the beginning.

St. Nicholai Velimirovich explains it with this parable (from the Prologue from Ochrid, November 9th): 

1. A child was on a journey by night, and it fell from hole to hole, from ditch to ditch, until at last if fell into a very deep pit, out of which there was no way it could clamber.  When the child had abandoned itself to its fate and thought that this was the end, suddenly there was someone standing above the hole, letting a rope down to it and calling to it to take a firm hold on the rope.  This was the king’s son, who rescued the child, washed it and clothed it and took it to his court, keeping it with him.  Was this child saved by its own act?  In no way.  Its only action was to grab the passing rope-end and hang onto it.  By what, then, was the child saved?  By the mercy of the king’s son.  In God’s dealings with man, this mercy is called grace.  ‘By grace ye are saved.’
   

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3. Let us also know and understand, my brethren, that we are saved through grace by the Lord Jesus Christ.  We were held in the jaws of death, and have been given life in the courts of our God.
   

Like I said, there is a dry way to approach the question of faith and works – and that is through study of the dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reformed Protestant churches.  But I am less interested in teaching you about history than I am guiding you to salvation through Jesus Christ Our Lord; so I am going to tell how this teaching relates to us as Orthodox Christians working out our lives here and now.  So while the divisions I will describe do not match up with their historical precedents, they are quite real and important.

First of all, there is a significant number of people who do not really feel the need for salvation at all. They think that they are good enough already.  To use St. Nicholai’s parable, it is as if they had managed to avoid falling into any hole from which they would ever need to get out.  It was to such as these that God Himself referred when He walked this earth two thousand years ago, saying; “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick… for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (St. Matthew 9: 12-13).  If you are already perfect, then you obviously don’t need anyone’s rope.  How many people do you know that avoid Confession because they don’t have any sins to confess?  You don’t need Confession and you don’t need Communion if you are already perfect.  So those of you who are perfect, please pray for the rest of us.  :-)  Because the rest of us are like the child in the story, falling from hole to hole and from sin into sin.

And just in case there really are people out there who think they have no sin, let me point out an unavoidable fact that is described both in Scripture and our everyday experience: “the wages of sin is death...” (Romans 6: 23)  Those who are perfect do not die – it is sin that brought death into the world (Romans 5:12); [and] death is a pit that no amount of work or self-righteousness can pull you out of, nor that even the most stubborn and hard-headed person can ignore.  Death awaits us all, because we have all sinned (Romans 3: 23).  Why not grab hold of that rope now, while you still have a chance?  Because only the perfect get out of the pit of death, and it is only in Christ that we can become perfect and inherit eternal life.

Secondly, there are those who think it is their good works that save them: they have replaced faith in God for faith in themselves.  These are folks who, when asked if they are saved, reply that they have done some things wrong, but on the whole they are pretty good people; after all, they haven’t killed anyone and they do the best they can, given the circumstances.  They admit that they are not perfect, but think that their sparkling personalities and great sacrifices will tip the balance in their favor when they appear before the dread judgment seat.  While I know Christians who act as if they believed this, it is irrational and heretical madness.  Christ died for our sins.  For all of our sins.  He made this sacrifice because without it they [our sins] would condemn us to death and eternal darkness (Romans 5:1-11).  If you think that you can make up for your own sins, then you have replaced Christ’s propitiary grace with your own, offering up your own goodness in place of His perfection.  If that is really what you want, then “good luck… cause you’re gonna need it.”  After all, [as today’s lesson of the Good Samaritan points out] the Judge will not be using your personal standard of right and wrong when he renders his verdict, but the eternal and changeless standard.  And in that balance, our deeds will undoubtedly condemn us.  That is why we need Christ to tip the scale in our favor (2 Corinthians 5:10, 21).

Lastly, there are some who are humbly holding on to that rope.  They recognize the hole they are in and that they cannot get out of it themselves.  They not only have faith in the rope to pull them out, they hold onto it as a force much greater than their own pulls them skyward.  For most of us, it is hard to hold onto that rope.  The effort of forgiveness, of “loving God” and “loving our neighbor” seems too much at times.  We have to concentrate and make the rope the focus of our attention, despite all the many distractions that surround us.  Sometimes we slip.  Sometimes we lose our grip through the sins of “self-righeousness [pride], greed, adultery, envy, impulsiveness, anger & laziness” (list of major sins from the “Short Catechism”); we slip down that rope, but even if we were to let loose of it completely and wallow once more in the pit of our depravity, the rope is there.  And Christ strengthens us and pulls us back to Him through His Mysteries of Confession and Communion.

And don’t forget who the parable of the child ends: once he pulls the child out of the hole, he takes that child to his court and keeps him there in splendor.

You are indeed in a hole, but the rope is here before you.  It is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, offered to you for the forgiveness of your sins, for life everlasting, and an acceptable answer at the dread judgment seat. Will you reach for it?  Will you hold it?  Will you recognize it for the lifeline it is, making it the center of your attention?  Salvation and an eternal life in the mansions of glory await all those who do.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.