The religious education books and some liturgical texts in our prayers are full of the word “Savior” or “our salvation.” Perhaps the title of Savior dominates the other titles of the Lord Jesus in our religious education. After that comes the word “Redeemer” or “ransom,” and these words describe the work of the Lord Jesus toward fallen man.
Despite the fact that these words carry real and historical meanings, they emphasize the negative aspect of the divine plan, which is salvation from the old reality of man through the precious ransom, which is the death of Christ on the cross. Perhaps that old reality means to most people the reality of man condemned before God because of his fall and sins.
But to our theology and Orthodox teaching, these words seem insufficient to fulfill the mystery of the divine economy, as if they were unable to contain the most important things that happened in the economy. These biblical expressions are particularly dear to the Apostle Paul. He was conveying the experience of the Church in its early days, the experience of liberation from the life of the law. Paul was thus expressing the feeling of Christians at that time of how the “ransom” of Jesus became a gift that freed them from the power of the old religion and made them share in the mystery of his crucifixion and resurrection. But the Apostle Paul, despite his repeated use of this term – Savior, seems to be more interested in images and words that speak of the renewal of life, that is, those that depict the work of Jesus from its positive point of view. Jesus appears as the giver of new life.
The Eastern Fathers use more and prefer the terms renewal and new creation to describe the work of Jesus from his birth until the cross. There, yes, there was redemption and salvation, but the deepest event within these events is the renewal of human life for which all these events were accomplished.
There are two types of creation: the first is creation from nothingness to existence, which is the work of God, and the second is creation from ordinary existence to birth in the kingdom, that is, existence in God and the Spirit. This second birth is what we call renewal, for which Jesus came and completed everything (it is finished).
St. Gregory the Theologian speaks of three “tremors” or “earthquakes” in human history in which important shifts in the mystery of the economy took place. They are as follows: First, an earthquake at the time of the giving of the law to Moses on Mount Horeb, and an earthquake at the cross of Christ. The third earthquake remains, which will take place at the Second Coming. These are the moments that have been fulfilled and we await them, in which the face of the relationship and promise with God will change. God’s work with humans is not limited to the characteristics of the relationship between the two parties in a moral way, meaning that the changes in the covenant are not only moral, but there are existential changes. The Book of Revelation tells us of a new heaven and a new earth in which the quality of human moral and physical life is new. “Salvation” or “the mystery of the economy” or, to put it more clearly, renewal does not only include changing laws, but is the divine work to renew human life itself. Therefore, the subject of renewal is not a matter that pertains to the commandments or a new religion alone, but rather it means more than what the word salvation or redemption means, and one of the most important of these deeper meanings is “the deification of man.” That is, to receive what was in Christ by grace. The word “deification” expresses the meaning of the mystery of the dispensation perfectly and better than the words “salvation…”
Jesus initiated the question of the deification of man, when he, God, united himself with our skin. Humanity has succeeded in achieving the desired renewal in his person. But this general truth remains a possibility for each individual case. We can say that there is a new generation, the generation of those who are deified, and this descends from Christ, the second Adam. This generation corresponds to the old generation from the first Adam. But the generation from Jesus is not achieved by nature and inevitability, but by will and freedom. Man possesses this lineage and the grace of this new generation by virtue of his free and committed decision to renew his life.
Therefore, our Christian faith is measured by a profound standard, which is the extent of the influence and effectiveness of this faith on the renewal of man. Faith is the leaven that changes the dough and the whole being. He who believes, and truly believes, feels every day that his faith transforms him, changes him, and, in a clearer word, revives him.
“Our salvation is now at hand,” says the Apostle Paul. It is the awaited change in our existence and being, to which Jesus came, died, and rose again to call us and to share in its realization. We go to Him and He revives us, because by His wounds we are saved, that is, we are healed!
Amen