What God Did for Our Salvation

Let us ponder, beloved, how much God has done to save us. First He prepared His kingdom for those who would obey His will. God did not leave happiness and blessedness only for Himself, His Son and the Holy Spirit, but prepared it for us as well, desiring to make us His children by grace and partakers of the Holy Spirit. For our salvation, I fight against the demons of the heavenly hosts, the Archangels, the Angels, whose service is that! protect people and help them escape. The Holy Scriptures also speak of this: Angels are ministering spirits, sent to serve for those who have to inherit salvation (Heb. 1:14)

For our salvation, God "from non-beings" created the sensible world and made us kings in it over all His creatures, commanding them to serve us, and for us to fulfill His commandments, in order to receive pleasure in Him in the next life. In short, in order for us to be saved, God did not predestinate us to wrath, but to receive salvation (1 Thessalonians 5:9). For our salvation, the Lord yes. Law and commandments, and sent prophets who had no other purpose than to teach us the way of salvation. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—the whole Trinity works for our salvation.

And as great as the work of creating the world was, so great was the work of our salvation. For both our introduction into the world and our salvation are the result of the action of God's omnipotence. And faith has as its goal nothing else than the salvation of our souls, as the Apostle Peter writes: "Attaining at last through your faith the salvation of souls" (1 Pet. 1:9).

What blind people we are, my brethren, if we do not see how much God has done for the salvation of our precious soul. And so, having now learned of the greatness of salvation, let us live the few remaining days of our lives, always bearing in mind the words of the Apostle Paul: "Behold, now is the time of acceptance, behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Corinthians 6:2). After all this, is it possible never to think about what the Lord has done for our salvation? Let us gather together, awaken all our dormant good aspirations, and use the rest of our lives for the salvation of our souls. Let us say what the lawyer asked Christ: What must I do to inherit eternal life? (Luke 10:25). This work is the most necessary of all the works of the world: what must I do to be saved? Everything else is harmful, useless and vain. We have already exposed our salvation to dangers many times, and let us be afraid to do so in the future. Let us thank God that in His great goodness He tolerates our negligence for His salvation. Let us pray to Him that He will help us to complete the work we have begun.

Let us ponder, my brethren, what labors, sufferings, and death Christ endured in order to save us. And in doing so, He showed us that our salvation is most precious to Him. Instead of punishing us for our sins, for our insolence, for always resisting His goodness, He suffered for us – blasphemers and apostates. And He did not regret to give us His Divinity for our salvation. In Himself He united it with human nature and accepted such sufferings that His entire Body – from head to foot – was a continuous wound, and He experienced such torments as no man has ever experienced, just as the Prophet Isaiah says: "A man of sorrows, and knowest sorrows" (Isaiah 53:3).

He was born in poverty, in a cave. He had no place to lay his head. Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has not where to lay His head (Matt. 8:20). He died in poverty. He endured the most grievous blasphemies and ended His life with a dishonorable death, being obedient even unto death, even the death of the Cross (Phil. 2:8), He accepted in His flesh unimaginable torments from cruel tormentors, to the point that His Blood flowed down to the earth like a stream. He experienced such sorrow and struggle as no one has ever experienced: "My soul grieveth unto death" (Matt. 26:38). And, in short, a whole abyss of torment was poured out on Him in order to extinguish the flame of eternal torment, which we had kindled by our sins, and also in order that we might reach Heaven.

Thus, after God has delivered us from our disastrous condition by such a terrible death, and has endured so much suffering as no one has ever had to endure, let us know how precious our salvation is. And if we do not understand this, then how unresponsive we will be before Him!

After all this, let us think, my brethren, how amazing is this: Christ shed His all-holy Blood for our salvation, and we do not wish to take care of our own salvation as the Apostle Paul commanded: "Therefore, while there is time, let us do good" (Gal. 6:10). If we do not fear our negligence now, then we will certainly fear before the Throne of the Righteous Judge, Christ, when our deeds will be revealed as they really were.

Let us be ashamed of our foolish and sinful life, which we have lived up to now, and let us resolve to overcome all our passions and all the evil that is hostile to us. And if until now we have neglected our salvation as an insignificant matter and unworthy of remembrance, now let us fervently pray to the Lord that He enlighten us to begin at least now the work of saving our souls, because the time that we could use for our correction will not return.

"Light" sins