TOS060 Basics of Faith VIII: Salvation For audio TOS060: Basics of Faith VIII – Basics of Salvation – Truth of the Spirit (podcast) | Listen Notes
Truth of the Spirit with Patti Brunner. With this episode we will wrap up the series on the Basics of Faith with the Basics of Salvation. Man was cast into darkness when sin entered the world. Over time mankind got ‘used to the dark’. Jesus became man to become the perfect sacrifice to redeem the prisoners and set them free. Through the sacrificial death of Jesus, sin was forgiven and man is restored through the Light of Christ. Salvation is a free gift purchased by the Blood of Jesus. We cannot earn it—we can only accept it—or reject it. From the first moment of the Resurrection nothing stood in the way of the outpouring of God’s love.
Blog:
Mankind was cast into darkness when sin entered the world. And, I am sorry to say, over time mankind got ‘used to the dark’. Jesus became man to become the perfect sacrifice to redeem the prisoners and set them free. Through the sacrificial death of Jesus, sin was forgiven and man is restored through the Light of Christ. Salvation is a free gift purchased by the Blood of Jesus. We cannot earn it—we can only accept it—or reject it. From the first moment of the Resurrection nothing stood in the way of the outpouring of God’s love except our own ability to reject it.
You are listening to Truth of the Spirit; I’m Patti Brunner. With this episode I’m going to wrap up the series on the Basics of Faith with a quote from the New Testament’s letter of Paul to the first generation of Christians of the Church in Corinth, he wrote: “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures;” (1 Corinthians 15:3)
This is known as “Salvation”. In this episode I will help you to understand our need for salvation, God’s plan for his gift of salvation to us how God went to great measures to ransom us from the darkness of evil, and how Jesus was sent to redeem us from the slavery of sin that we might have eternal life and to bring us back to a Spirit to spirit connection with him, the fullness of God’s presence within us even now.
Jesus died on the cross to pay the price of the sin of the world and his resurrection conquered death. Through this He gave us the gift of salvation.
Let’s look at the history of why he needed to ransom us and his plan for mankind.
In the beginning God created man and the universe and everything that’s in it for the benefit of man because God wanted to share his love. He created man in his image and likeness and gave him free-will so that man could freely love God.
Man walked and talked with God in the Garden with an intimate connection. Man could have anything he wanted except to eat of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Satan, a fallen angel who had rejected God, tempted man to distrust God’s words and man disobeyed God and sinned. As a result, not only did Adam and Eve lose their spiritual connection with God -but so did their descendants and all of mankind. Man was now completely separated from intimacy with God.
Man was cast into darkness when sin entered the world.
Scripture tells us in Genesis 3:7, that man’s eyes “were then opened” to evil. Man was corrupted by his sin and the effect of sin caused him to suffer sickness and death not only physical death but spiritual death as well and the loss of eternal life.
Over time mankind got ‘used to the dark’.
They didn’t even realize that they were prisoners of the darkness—prisoners of sin.
Just as man was corrupted, all of creation was corrupted by the effects of man’s sin resulting in famines, wars and decay of all kinds.
One thing man didn’t lose: God’s love. God continued to love him. From the beginning, God had a plan thru one righteous man named Abraham. God chose him and his offspring, the tribes of Israel, to be his chosen people. God planned to reconnect his Spirit to man’s spirit and restore man to his kingdom.
Abraham believed and trusted God so much that even when God asked him to offer his only son in sacrifice, Abraham said “yes”. In obedience to God Abraham was willing to prove that he put God first before his only heir, Isaac.
Abraham’s son, Isaac, carried the wood of the sacrifice on his shoulders up the hill of Mount Moriah for his father just as Jesus, some 2,000 years later, would carry the wood of his sacrifice, the cross , up the same hill for his Father.
At the last moment God stopped Abraham’s hand as he began to bring down the knife to obediently sacrifice his son. Then God provided a substitute: a ram caught in the thicket, for him to sacrifice instead. [Gen 22:12-13] These foreshadowed how Jesus would be the substitute sacrifice for our sins.
Thus God, thru Abraham’s descendants, developed the Israelite tribes and the plan for man’s redemption. During a time of great famine the tribes migrated to Egypt but within 400 years they were enslaved by the Pharaohs as their numbers increased.
God began to reveal a foreshadowing of His redemptive plan thru the Israelite’s exodus from their captivity in Egypt.
God sent Moses and 10 plagues to Pharaoh to request freedom. While enslaved in Egypt, which symbolized man’s slavery to sin, God instructed the Israelites to slaughter an unblemished lamb, eat all of its flesh and place its blood on the doorposts and cross-beam of each home. This blood in the form of a cross saved the first born and their families gathered there from the 10th and final plague sent as the ‘angel of death’ “passed-over.” God established the Feast of Passover so the future generations would recall this important foreshadowing act. (Ex12:13) God thus broke the oppressor Pharaoh’s hold on the Israelite people causing him to release God’s people from slavery in Egypt.
Moses then led the estimated 1 million Israelites in a great exodus out of slavery from Egypt, miraculously crossing through the Red Sea, then toward the Promised Land. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church points out in paragraph #1221, the liberation of Israel from slavery, by passing thru the waters of the Red Sea, symbolized the freedom we receive thru the waters of baptism, the freedom from sin and the restoration of eternal life.
The Israelite people came forth out of Egypt free from captivity but their hearts and minds were still in Egypt and therefore in bondage. Not fully trusting in God they continued to grumble and complain and even wanted to return to the slavery. They wandered in the desert for the next 40 years which was their punishment for doubting and disobeying God. This was all a foreshadowing of God’s redemptive plan of salvation for man: freeing man from the slavery of sin and leading man back into the Kingdom of God and the difficulty man has in accepting his freedom.
The Holy Spirit overshadowed God’s chosen people but could not work directly in the spirit of man because of man’s sin. The wages of sin is death. Without the shedding of blood there was no remission of sin and no union with God. The debt of sin required a perfect blood sacrifice – but how could an imperfect and broken world produce a perfect blood sacrifice? … The answer is it could not… but God could.
John 3:16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his only Son, so that he everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Acts 4:11b-12 NJB “Only in him is there salvation; for of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved.” His name of course was Jesus, the Son of God, true God, true man, who came to save the world.
“For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin” 2 Corinthians 5:21 NAB
Jesus was never in darkness but took on the darkness of sin in his Passion
Why would he do this? It was so mankind and God could be intimately connected through the Holy Spirit—something impossible until man was redeemed and death was overcome.
God forgave sin and restored man through the Light of Christ. We can see how the Light of Christ came into the world by reviewing the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious mysteries of the Rosary, and during each Eucharistic Celebration of the Mass, especially brought to mind during the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter, we get the opportunity to relive some of the events of the history of our salvation.
Jesus, himself, celebrated the foreshadowed Passover meal at the ‘Last Supper’ offering his own body and blood for his disciples to eat and drink in the form of bread and wine; then later Jesus fulfilled the sacrificeon the cross by the physical shedding of his blood and dying for our sins. His perfect blood sacrifice was completed in complete obedience to the Father and man’s debt for sin was finally paid in full, for all time—our sin.
As Christ arose from the dead he opened up the gates of heaven for all. After death and sin was conquered once and for all, Jesus, truly man, ascended into heaven, into the paradise that man had left behind because of sin. Now, man was free as he was at the beginning and once again in free, full communion with God.
The Holy Spirit was sent to be with us after Christ returned to sit at the Father’s right hand. The Holy Spirit is the Giver of gifts. By accepting the Holy Spirit through Baptism and then through other sacraments, the relationship with God is restored.
Ephesians chapter 2:4-8 says: “4 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus,”
We became one in Christ’s body; the Body of Christ.
Ephesians continued, “7 that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God;” verse 9: it is not from works, so no one may boast.
Salvation is a free gift purchased by the Blood of Jesus. We cannot earn it—we can only accept it—or reject it.
This ‘re-birth to life with Christ’ means dying to our old nature of darkness and slavery to sin, and through the rebirth of Baptism receiving the Holy Spirit and being reborn into new life. But like the Israelites, we have been in slavery to this world’s darkness and sin for so long that we sometimes think that that is all there is.
“Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him … the interior helps of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and ‘makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth’.” CCC #153
It takes true obedience, and trust in God to live this new life in the spirit. Acceptance of God’s gift of salvation allows God’s love and grace to come into our hearts and begin a transformation in us thru the power of the Holy Spirit. The more we accept God’s love –the more of his grace can penetrate our hearts -and the more we become transformed.
‘This day begins a new thing, a new way, a new day in your life and your relationship with God.’ ‘The Lord your God has set into motion a plan of salvation to rescue those affected by choices made. When man receives the grace of salvation time stands still and eternity enters the soul. The life that was meant to be is thus entered and the life to be lived in abundance is begun. Baptism thus brings life, eternity with God, and the grace to fulfill his plan’ for us, His plan for salvation.
Does living this abundant life mean that we won’t have to go thru trials and hardships anymore? No, there can never be complete perfection in this world, but as we place our trust in God then all things are possible and we will be much better equipped to handle the testing and trials of this life.
When Jesus came to time as true man, he brought with him the salvation that was meant to be from the beginning. Through the salvation of the cross/the sacrifice/ the redemption of the sin of mankind, Jesus brought freedom to those enslaved by darkness and restored the relationship between man and God so that God could dwell in and about with the fullness of creation.
Jesus promised us in the Gospel of John 8:32 “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:36 NIV “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed”!
If you would like to read the blog of this episode, you can find it on my website: PatriarchMinistries.com. You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit with Patti Brunner. I invite you to subscribe—it’s free! And come back for more. With the Holy Spirit there is always more! Praise you Jesus, thank you for your gift of salvation! We accept your gift. Amen
