Now hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God
has been poured out in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Letter to the Romans 5:5
We have finally reached the concluding stages of this long study, and it is time to hypothesise a theory of salvation based on what we have seen so far. What we are going to try to outline is an idea of salvation that can answer the questions we have raised, and that does justice to God's love. We shall see that the theory that will be outlined, which we have called the theory of Vital Identification, is relatively new in its overall exposition and in some details, but it is not so new since it is inspired by ideas already enunciated in the past, especially during the first centuries of the Church; it would therefore be more appropriate to speak of a renewed theory. What we will adopt is a hypothesis of salvation free of all improper elements deriving from pagan philosophies, feudal ideals or antiquated legal sciences, which over the centuries have polluted the original ideas.
20.1. Why was Jesus killed?
A first and fundamental step in defining any theory of salvation is to understand the reasons for Jesus' death by crucifixion. It is quite evident that his death is the central, though not unique, element of any salvation theory, so understanding its meaning is a priority. Why was Jesus killed? Firstly, we would like to clear the field of a rather widespread idea: the crucifixion of Jesus was not enacted by God in order to satisfy his wrath; the death of Jesus, although inevitable, was not the work of God, but of evil men. As proof of this, Jesus said that it would be better for the man who betrayed him if he had never been born;543 he told Pilate that those who had handed him over to him were more to blame;544 he prayed for those who were crucifying him.545 If Jesus' crucifixion had been God's plan, we should honour the Pharisees, Judas (including Satan who entered him)546 and Pilate for carrying out the Lord's will.
No, God's plan was the salvation of sinners, not the death of Jesus on the cross; that this salvation came about even by his execution was because of circumstances and God's ability to make all things work together for good, not because God wanted to torture his son to satisfy his own justice or wrath. Jesus was killed by some men because of their wickedness, because they rejected the light of truth that he had brought; he was killed by religious men who saw the profits from sacrifices disappearing, because he preached free forgiveness of sins; he was killed by politicians because he exposed their abuses against the weakest; he was killed by Roman rulers because the freedom he brought to people was incompatible with the oppression they exercised.
Jesus was folly to the wise, a scandal to the devout and a disturber of the peace in the eyes of the mighty. That is why he was crucified. If anyone identifies with him, this world is “crucified” to him, as Paul said. He becomes alienated from the wisdom, religion and power politics of his society.547
Jesus voluntarily surrendered himself to the “death machine” out of his faithfulness to the cause of love and mercy that he had always preached, out of loyalty to his disciples, to all sinners and their victims who had gone astray and would believe in him.548 How poor a love he would have shown if he had recoiled from danger, as Peter advised,549 if he had fled to hide from persecution, if he had denied all that he had preached. The love he had, made his tragic execution inevitable. The killing of Jesus was the will and work of men, which Jesus did not evade solely out of love for men. It is that same love and the resurrection that followed that “avenged” his death, doing justice to his unjust execution.
In itself, the cross is contrary to God's will, a necessary consequence of the rejection of Jesus' proposal of conversion. He was forced by men to continue his redemptive mission in dramatic and violent situations, thus revealing a God who continues to love even when violence and hatred rage, and is on the side of those who suffer. The cross is the moment when Jesus' love reached a high point: “He loved them to the end” (John 13:1), and in rising he revealed the life-giving power of love. The cross thus becomes the symbol of the divine action which, through the power of love, can transform even the most negative events in human history into a history of salvation.550
In the book of Acts, the Evangelist Luke emphasises seven times that Jesus was killed by men but was raised by God.551 Perhaps, he was trying to clear the field of some idea that was already circulating at that time, according to which Jesus was killed by divine will. The cross bears witness to the evil work done by men when the Son of God visited the earth and at the same time shows how far God is willing to go for the sake of his creatures.
Matthew 21:42 The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
The cross was not God's plan. The resurrection of Jesus, the salvation of sinners and solidarity with the victims of all injustice, yes.
20.2. The faithfulness of Jesus
We have seen in the previous paragraph that it was not the death of Jesus that procured salvation for us, but his faithfulness until death; faithfulness to the Father, faithfulness to love, faithfulness and solidarity with humanity. Our salvation and justification were thus offered by Jesus because of his faithfulness, which went beyond death, the shameful death on the cross. He, like a lamb in the midst of wolves, did not hesitate to go to his death for our sake, in order to save what was lost.552 Jesus came to save sinners, he did not come to die on a cross; the cross was the inevitable reaction of the wolves.553 But he, the lamb, did not back down, he allowed to be pierced in order to save the lost sheep. Crucifixion is not the work of God; the trusting faithfulness (emunah) of Jesus that went beyond the obscene death on the cross is the sublime work of the merciful (hesed) God. Because God is faithful, fidelity is one of his main attributes, it is the pillar on which love (ahavah) is founded and it is the cornerstone on which all his promises rest. Just as the ancient promises were based on the faithfulness of Yahweh, the new covenant is based on the faithfulness of Jesus.554
The glorious resurrection of Jesus was proof that God was with him, even beyond death, and that every word he preached about himself was true and trustworthy. Jesus did not die in our place, nor did he take our sins upon himself to satisfy a punishing god or some sort of divine justice. Jesus faced death, he faced the worst of injustices, he the Son of God condemned as a blasphemer, in order to save what was already dead; he came in the darkness, he took his place with us where we are, and he temporarily allowed himself to be overcome by evil for one reason only, to join us and to give us the gift of light, of his love and of the life that frees and saves.
20.3. Love that saves
So, it was Jesus' faithfulness that brought us salvation, for through that faithfulness he gave us the gift of love. But how did this happen, and what does it mean that he gave us the gift of love? We have already seen what love consists of in the previous chapter, in which we came to the concept that God is, in essence and substance, love; his character is love, his nature is love, his life is love. Love is giving one's whole self for the sake of another, and what greater love can there be than to give one's life for someone else? A father who would throw himself into the fire to save his son in danger would be expressing the greatest possible love, offering his own life; how could he say he loved his son and then sit back and do nothing? It would be a hypocritical love, the fruit of the lips and not of the heart; love always requires self-giving. Similarly, how could God sit in the heavens and watch us suffer without doing anything? Instead, God became flesh, empathised with men in their sufferings, and did not hesitate to allow himself to be put on the cross to save us from death. That is what love is, to give one's life for one's friends. In what Jesus did, we witness the greatest act of love that God could ever perform, to allow himself to be humiliated and give his life for us. And how could God lose his life without first becoming fully human? God's nature is love, the absolute gift of himself; in order to be able to be manifested and shared with men, it was necessary for him to become a mortal being, to give all of himself. He did this by passing from the cross set up by those men who despised love because they loved only themselves.
How is Jesus a “sacrifice”? Not as a blood offering to appease God’s anger or honor or holiness but as one who freely devoted his own life to persevering in love all the way to the end. Thus, the “sacrifice” should be understood as Jesus’ self-sacrifice expressed in faithful living, his way of being in the world.555
It is God's gift of love in Jesus that saves mankind, that love which constitutes his life and finds personification in the Holy Spirit. The blood of Jesus, the life that flowed in his veins, is the equivalent in the physical world, of the spiritual life that flows in the “veins” of God, the Holy Spirit. The blood shed by Jesus is the life laid down, the total gift of self, and is therefore the equivalent of spiritual love, the gift of the Holy Spirit. To say that the blood shed by Jesus saves us, is equivalent to saying that the Holy Spirit who has been given to us saves us. These are ways of representing an identical reality on two levels, the material and the spiritual:
We have come to understand that what saves is love, and that this love manifested itself fully in the voluntary gift that Jesus made of his own life. Not only in the event of the cross, which is the culmination of this self-giving, but Jesus' whole life, from beginning to end, was marked as a gift of himself to the world. Every word, every gesture, every action, everything was moved by the same love.
It was not simply the love of one man that was given to us, many men have died for love and for just causes, it was eternal love, that which cannot perish because it comes from the source of life. It is a love that cannot be overwhelmed by death, for death is illusory, whereas God's life is true and eternal. We have seen how death is the separation from the source of life, therefore, death could not overcome and break God in himself, since the Father and the Son are one in love.556 Life conquers death, just as light conquers darkness; in a dark room into which light enters, darkness cannot exist. Thus, when the life of God, who is love, is united with man, death cannot subsist; if death is separation from God, and God comes to dwell in us through his Spirit, death is automatically conquered, and we experience a spiritual resurrection; it is love that brings us back to life. Paul says that if Jesus has not been resurrected, then we are still in our sins,557 for it would mean that his life was not eternal and could not deliver us from death. The death of Jesus reconciles us to God because by it we know that God loves us, that he has never been our enemy558 and that he would spare nothing for us; that is why we have the courage to approach him. But what brings us salvation is his life. The resurrection of Jesus is the proof that in him was true life, the eternal life that conquers death; it is the love of God, the Holy Spirit that was given to us at the moment of our identification559 and union with Jesus, what frees, redeems, justifies and sanctifies, in a word, vivifies. Ultimately, and in essence, we are saved by his life.
Romans 5:10 For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
20.4. The gift of love
For God to give us the gift of love, the Holy Spirit who frees from death and restores life, God would have had to give everything for us. You cannot tell someone you love him or her if you do nothing to show them your love in their time of difficulty; love involves concrete actions, it means giving up something of yourself to care for the other; love is self-sacrifice in action. In this God showed his love: “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”560 Jesus' faithfulness to this love, his total self-giving, the fact that he spared nothing by going to the most tragic and shameful death, experiencing every possible and imaginable physical, moral and even spiritual suffering, is what made possible the gift of perfect love; the Holy Spirit. Nothing less could have given rise to this wonderful gift that God had prepared for us. Again, we can say that God's plan was not the death of Jesus, God's plan was the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is why John wrote: “Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified”561 since Jesus, before his execution, had not yet tested all his faithfulness and obtained for us the perfect love, the Holy Spirit, of which to make us the gift. Therefore, the gift of love at the cost of one's life was the full and perfect manifestation of the true nature of God in Jesus. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us,562 for when we were his enemies, he gave his Son for us; love always takes the first step,563 it moves to meet what is weak in order to remedy its weaknesses. To those who wandered in darkness, dead because far from God, the light of life revealed itself and not only showed God's love but gave it as a gift.
1 John 4:13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.
20.5. Receiving grace
God's gift of grace is what is offered to all, because God wants everyone to be saved,564 but to receive this gift it is necessary to respond with faith (emunah), that is trusting faithfulness. It is first necessary to trust and surrender to the one who offers this gift, for how could we ever receive anything from someone we do not trust? Our heart would remain closed and mistrustful towards him, which is why Jesus often rebuked his disciples.565 Thus, if we do not trust Jesus, if we do not recognise ourselves in what he said, in what he did, and in his values, we would never be willing to go to him, to open our hearts to him, and to unite ourselves spiritually with him in order to receive the gift he wanted to make us partakers. His whole life, preaching and example, served to gain the trust of those who, though still far from God, in their hearts desired to know the truth, for it is trust that enables identification and spiritual union.
By “justified by faith” Paul means how we are made whole through faithfulness. This faithfulness involves trusting in Jesus in such a way that one commits oneself to following Jesus’ way of life. The desire and ability to follow this way of life come from having hearts transformed by God’s love.566
Once the heart has been opened and the gift of the Holy Spirit has been received, it must be guarded and nourished, for it is as precious as it is fragile and can be saddened and lost;567 it is therefore necessary to persevere in faithfulness to love, in loyalty to its principles, putting into practice everything that Jesus taught.
1 John 3:24 Now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.
20.6. The salvation process
One of the fundamental points for the understanding of salvation is that it is an ongoing process, it is not a single event, but a journey that begins with grace, like a mustard seed thrown into the earth, and evolves throughout a person's life into a great tree where many can find rest and refuge.568 There are various stages that make up the journey of salvation, which are not linear, but rather simultaneous and circular, feeding into each other; it is perhaps the multiplicity of these aspects of salvation that is the reason why we find so many different images and metaphors in the Bible to describe it, in order to represent this complex multidimensional process. In summary, we can identify the main stages of salvation with the followings:
Graphically, the process could be depicted as follows:
Each stage requires our participation, and they are not acquired forever, at any moment we can withdraw from grace and find ourselves in a similar, if not worse, situation than before. The rejection of grace, once experienced, risks distancing the person from God forever; when one refuses the light, all that remains is darkness, eternal separation from God, which the ancients described as God's wrath, but that we in fact decree for ourselves.
John 3:36 He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
20.7. Children of God
In all the stages of salvation just mentioned, the indispensable work is that of the Holy Spirit united with the spirit of man. The gift of the Holy Spirit was made possible by the perfect life led by Jesus, culminating in the perfect sacrifice for the sake of mankind. Jesus' sacrifice must not therefore be understood as an offering that rises upwards from below, aimed at changing God's attitude (God does not need any change), but as a gift that descends downwards from above, aimed at transforming man (it is man, in fact, who needs to be changed). It is God who in Jesus empties himself of all his divine prerogatives, in total self-denial.569 Only in this way is the perfect gift of love, the Holy Spirit, possible and it is thanks to this gift that salvation is made available.
However, liberation, justification, sanctification, etc., are not ends in themselves, but have as their ultimate goal that of generating children of God, not only created in his image and likeness, but also endowed with that Spirit of love which makes us sharers in his nature, through which we cry out: “Abba, Father.”570 The first and last purpose of creation is the union of God with man through the Holy Spirit, so that whoever receives him may become the Son of God. It is the fruit of the tree of life that was in the Garden of Eden, which Adam and Eve did not enjoy, and it is the same fruit revealed in the book of Revelation.571 It runs through the whole biblical narrative, but could not be conquered, because love can only be donated, not deserved, and was given by grace, as God's total sacrifice in Jesus.
John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.
John 20:22 And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Man, created in the image and likeness of God, but by nature imperfect and inferior to God, is now called to share in his divine perfect life and nature572 through the Holy Spirit who is infused into the human spirit. This is the foundation of salvation, the Spirit of Jesus Christ in us.573
20.8. Salvation in communion
Let us now turn to another topic, which is very important because it closes the circle of what we have seen so far about salvation and the nature of the Trinity. It is a subject that is often ignored or given very little space, perhaps because it has little appreciation among many Christians. We will speak of salvation in communion, understood as the connection of people united by a common bond, the bond of fidelity to Jesus. We have seen that the nature of God consists in a union of three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God's existence, his nature, his innermost essence, is constituted by a relationship of mutual satisfaction among different subjects who live in what we call communion; each lives not for himself but for the good of others, putting everything at the service of the Trinitarian community. Similarly, the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, being God one and triune, cannot but yearn for the same kind of communion with men and manifest through them the same community life; this means that love finds full manifestation and realisation only when men live the same form of communion with one another.
The overflowing love of God given to us in Jesus Christ and shared with us by the Holy Spirit draws us out of ourselves and into life in right relationship with God and others. Human beings are created in and for relationship. We bear witness to the triune God by our life in relationship. […] If God’s life is in communion, then human life, too, created in the image of God, is intended by God to be life in communion. […] God wills all creation to participate in this triune life of communion.574
Love is a communion, we are not saved alone or to be alone; that love which liberates, justifies, reconciles, purifies and sanctifies, finds full and perfect manifestation only in relationships. I am sorry to disappoint all those who think that salvation can come through solitary mystical meditation, this can certainly result in important experiences, but the love that saves is the one shared, not the one kept to oneself, it is not of its nature. It is in the community, in the Church, in the family, wherever there is a union of purpose and any relational basis among individuals that love, the Holy Spirit, can manifest all his essence and power. What changes the world is connection and communion, not isolationism or exhibitionism. When a handful of Jesus' disciples began to live in communion, sharing everything, they changed the known world and turned one of the greatest empires in history upside down.575 They were not particularly gifted or intelligent, they were not rich and famous, and they lived in a remote province of the Roman Empire; they did not even get along all the time, but they provided the ideal ground for the Holy Spirit to manifest the life of God on earth, the Church. Whether we like it or not, we are saved in the Church, not as a cold religious institution, but as a communion of individuals who have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, faithfully keep his commandment to love one another, and abound in good works for the weakest and most marginalised.
In Christian faith, hope, and love, we are united with God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. In our common worship, common prayer, and common service of our neighbor, we are being formed and nurtured in the overflowing love of the triune God. […] We take part, always imperfectly and provisionally, in the overflowing, self-giving, community-forming love of God that is the mystery of the Trinity. The triune God who is and calls us to take part in life in communion is the object of our faith, the basis of our love, and the goal of our hope.576
20.9. The theory of Vital Identification
We have now gathered sufficient elements to be able to outline our own theory of salvation. Above all, it is necessary to speak of incarnation, since the first step in the process of salvation consists in this act of identification of God with humanity; God became flesh in order to become like his creatures, to conform himself fully to them; not only that, but by going through suffering and death, he became a full sharer of every human condition. For there is no trial or pain that he did not endure, and there is no man who could say to the suffering Messiah that he cannot understand his afflictions. The second step of salvation is the identification of men with God, not with the invisible, abstract and omnipotent God, but with the visible, tangible and fragile God manifested by Jesus. This ends man's illusion of omnipotence, who is now faced with the humble and rejected God, a loser God we would dare to say. In this way, access to revelation is denied to those whose hearts are filled with pride and vanity, while revelation is made available to the humble, the simple, the oppressed and al