Grace and Sacrament

In the Reformation of the sixteenth century, one of the key theological issues over which the Reformers and the papal hierarchy in Rome contended, was the doctrine of justification, God’s declaration of a man to be righteous in His eyes. The Roman Catholic Church and the Reformers agreed that justification was by grace on God’s part. Where they disagreed was over how man receives the grace of God. The Reformers insisted that man received the grace of God and was justified thereby through faith alone. At the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic Church declared this view to be anathema and said that justification was by faith and works of love.

I believe that the Roman Catholic Church made a terrible mistake in pronouncing this anathema at Trent and that in doing so they failed to uphold the doctrine of the Apostles, as recorded in the New Testament, explained by the Church Fathers, and traditionally held by the Church. In condemning the doctrine of justification by faith alone they pointed out that the New Testament does not qualify the word faith with the word alone in speaking of justification except to express disagreement in James 2:24. As true as this observation is it avoids the fact that when the Reformers spoke of “faith alone”, alone was shorthand for “and not by works.” It excludes works as a means along with faith of receiving grace. This is precisely what St. Paul the Apostle taught. It is the major theme of his epistles to the Romans and Galatians and is mentioned in one way or another in most of his other epistles. In Romans 4, where St. Paul answers James by asserting that the type of justification he wrote about, i.e., by works, was something to boast about and therefore not “before God” (v. 2) he declares that by faith God justifies the person who “worketh not” (v. 5), an extremely strong wording of this doctrine that approaches the border of antinomianism. The Roman Catholic argument that St. Paul was talking about “works of the law” rather than “works of love” defeats the very distinction it tries to make, because the difference between works of the law and works of love is precisely that the former are done with the motivation of earning justification from God for oneself whereas the latter are done with the motivation of pleasing the God one loves rather than obtaining something for oneself. Such works are impossible if they are also necessary alongside faith for receiving the grace of justification.

The error of Trent is one of confusing ends with means or, to use an analogy that was once common, putting the cart before the horse. Means are the methods and tools we utilize to achieve ends which in turn are the goals, goods, and purposes we seek to accomplish. Works are not the means whereby we either achieve or receive the end of our justification and salvation. Rather, salvation which includes justification, is the means whereby God takes us from our fallen, broken condition, and makes us into a new creation which responds to Him with works of love. To repeat, works are not our means for achieving the end of our salvation, rather our works are the end for which salvation is God’s means. St. Paul could not have stated this more clearly than he did in Ephesians 2:8-10.

This understanding is fundamental to the very idea of salvation by grace. For to say that salvation is by grace is to say that salvation is a gift, something that God bestows upon us freely rather than in exchange for something. Something that is a freely given gift can only be received, rather than worked for, because if it is worked for it is a reward or wage rather than a gift, a point St. Paul spells out for us in Romans 4. The understanding that salvation is the means and our works the ends is also vital to the realization that salvation entails more than a divine “fire insurance” policy, that it is a divine rescue mission in which we are lifted out of our fallen estate in which the image of God is broken and marred by sin and brought into a place where restored, we can once again reflect His goodness and grace, as we were created to do.

Rome was clearly in serious error on this point, although it needs to be said that their error was well-intentioned. They wished to guard against the danger of license, i.e., the idea that because one is saved by grace one can therefore feel free to sin without consequence. As good as that intention was it is no solution to the error rebuked by St. Paul in Romans 6 to fall into the error that the entire epistle argues against.

If Rome, to prevent against license, erred in adding works to faith as the means of receiving grace and salvation when in fact salvation is the means to the end of works, a tendency developed on the Protestant side of the Reformation divide to err by limiting the channels by which God’s grace comes to us that we might receive it by faith. I do not mean that they erred in saying that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour and that salvation is only found in Him. On this truth, Rome and the Reformers were in agreement. Jesus is Himself our salvation, and everything from His Incarnation through His Miraculous Conception by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, through His Life and Teachings, Passion, Death, Burial, Descent into Hell, and Resurrection to His Ascension back into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, is God’s loving, gracious, and merciful, gift of salvation to us. The channels of grace to which I refer are the means by which God’s gift to us in Jesus is brought to us that we may respond in faith and receive it..

I began my Christian walk with an evangelical conversion experience when I was fifteen. I began to attend and was baptized in a church in which the Word, written and spoken, was stressed as the channel by which God’s salvation in Christ comes to us that we might receive it by faith. This was how I had been brought to my conversion, having read the Gospel message about how God had given us His Son to suffer and die for our sins and then raised Him from the dead in Christian literature and heard it preached on Christian radio. Furthermore, this teaching is very much in accordance with St. Paul’s statement that “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Rom. 10:17).

St. Paul makes it clear in the context in which he says this that the role of the Word is essential. The Apostle does not say, however, that there are no other channels that supplement the spoken or written Word. That there were, in fact, other such channels was suggested to me early in my Christian walk by a story in one of L. M. Montgomery’s Chronicles of Avonlea anthologies, about a fallen woman on her deathbed who was unable to grasp the concept of God as a loving Father, freely forgiving her of her sins in Christ, no matter how the minister tried to explain it to her, until his nephew arrived and expressed the message in a language she could understand, that of the violin. A year or so after reading that story I read Johnny Cash’s autobiography Man in Black, in which he testified to more or less the same thing, that the Gospel message which spoke to his brother through preaching, had to come to him through the vessel of Gospel music. Perhaps the prominence of music in the services of virtually all Christian worship traditions also testifies to this.

The idea that the spoken or written Word is the sole means whereby Christ is brought to us that we might believe in Him is in conflict with St. John’s declaration in the first chapter of his Gospel that “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn. 1:14). The Word of which the Apostle speaks is Jesus Himself, the Living Word of God. If the Living Word of God had to put on flesh and live amongst men as a Man in order to reveal His Father to us is it reasonable to expect the written Word, the testimony of His disciples to Who He was and what He did, to bring Him to us without also being “made flesh” in a sense? For this is precisely what the church has traditionally said its mysteries or sacraments do.

St. Augustine of Hippo said that a sacrament is formed by the combination of the Word with a physical element so that the physical element, the water of baptism and the bread and wine of Holy Communion becomes a vessel in which the Word and the grace it contains is conveyed. The sacraments are administered, of course, by the church which was established by Christ through His Apostles and said by St. Paul to be the body of Christ. In his first epistle to the Corinthians St. Paul elaborates on that concept, explaining that the church is an organic collective whole, the members of which, with their distinct gifts and offices, are like unto the organs in the body with Christ Himself as the head. Earlier in the same epistle, he says “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16) Note that the King James Version just quoted uses distinct forms for the singular and plural second person pronouns as does the original Greek, and that the plural is used here. As temple of God is in the singular, the second person plural is a collective plural and so the verse expresses, with a different metaphor, the same basic concept that the church is a collective whole, collectively indwelt by the Spirit of God sent upon the church at Pentecost. The clear implication of all of this is that the church was established as a continuation of what began in the Incarnation. In Jesus Christ, the Living Word of God was made flesh and after He ascended back into heaven, He sent His Spirit to indwell the church that it might continue His ministry as His physical presence here on earth, and in the mysteries or sacraments of the church the written Word of God is likewise “made flesh” so as to be brought to the believer in a tangible way, that supplements and complements the mere reading, speaking and preaching of the Word.

The versions of Protestantism that rejected this understanding – and not all did, of course – and made the reading and preaching of the Word the sole channel by which God’s gift of grace to us in Christ is to be brought to us to be believed, had good intentions in doing so, just as Rome had good intentions in declaring its anathema on sola fide. These Protestants wished to guard against the danger of misplaced faith, of putting one’s trust in the church and its sacraments rather than in God and the Saviour He has given us in His love, mercy, and grace. This is a real danger and when a person falls into this error, making the church and its sacraments into steps one must climb to approach Christ, they can actually become a wall that keeps him from Christ. This danger must be warned against like that of license which Rome sought to avoid, but just as it is a mistake to stick the cart of works before the horse of salvation, confusing means with ends, so it is a mistake to throw the baby of Incarnational and sacramental theology, out with the bathwater.

If Rome, by declaring anathema the Pauline doctrine that grace is received by faith and not by works and that works are the end to which salvation is the means and not the other way around, brought its own curse down upon its own head, advanced Protestantism impoverished itself, by making preaching and reading the Word the sole channel of grace. For grace is not something we need once and receive once but something in which we are in constant need of. Faith is not, as much of North American evangelicalism unfortunately seems to think, a single act or decision, but a heartfelt response of confidence and trust in God and His grace as given to us in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that is ongoing and continual. Faith is formed in us by the very grace it receives, and since faith can weaken and falter, it is in constant need of being replenished and strengthened. This, of course, means that the believer needs to continually read and hear the Word, which is why the liturgy of the Word is an important part of the traditional worship of the church but how much more is the believer’s faith strengthened and replenished when the ministry of the Word is supplemented and complemented by the sacraments in which the church “makes the Word” flesh?

All of this has been on my mind recently as I prepared for and received confirmation by our bishop, in the orthodox Anglican church I have been attending for several years now. This was not a repudiation for me, of the church in which I began my Christian walk for the ministry of which I will always be grateful, but an embracing of the multiple ways in which God’s grace in Christ has been made available to the believer in the wider tradition of Christianity.

Confirmation, the ancient rite in which the bishop lays his hands on the believer’s head and prays over him for strengthening by the Holy Spirit as the believer reaffirms his baptismal vows of repentance and faith, is not considered by the Anglican Church to be a sacrament in the same sense as baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The Anglican Church differs from the Greek and Latin Churches in this for it, rightly I believe, reserves the term sacrament in its strictest sense for the rites actually ordained by Christ Himself. It recognizes a sacramental quality to the rite, however, and if as we have been discussing, the purpose of a sacrament is to make the written Word flesh so that the believer can receive it in ways other than by hearing and reading, then all aspects of the life of the church have a sacramental quality in one way or another to them. The calendar of the Christian year makes the Gospel story flesh, by re-enacting and celebrating Christ’s life and ministry, from the anticipation of His coming in Advent to His reign as Christ the King. The Gospel is made flesh in the images and decorations of the church, and, as L. M. Montgomery’s fictional story and Johnny Cash’s actual testimony referred to earlier tell us, music can tell the story in a language which can reach those who could not otherwise understand it.

This points to the truth upon which I will conclude these reflections. Just as salvation, in its fullest sense, is much more than “fire insurance” but is the rescuing of people from the brokenness of sin and restoring them to a harmonious relationship with God out of which works of Christian love grow as fruit so grace, in its fullest sense, embraces more than the giving of salvation but every other gift that God gives us as well, from the gifts of what the Calvinist divines call “Common Grace”, such as the rain which Christ said His Father sends upon righteous and wicked alike, to the superabundant blessings of God for the believer (Rom. 8:32). “The heavens declare the glory of God”, the Psalmist says and according to St. Paul the invisible things of God have been clearly seen from creation, “being understood by the things that are made” (Rom. 1:20). There is a very real sense in which all of the world and life itself is a sacrament, making flesh the Word of God, and conveying the grace therein to all who will receive it by faith.

The Grace of God

For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast – Eph. 2:8-9

God, Who is our Creator and Sovereign Lord, expects and requires many things of us. It is His just right, as our Creator and Sovereign Lord, to expect and require these things of us. First and foremost, He expects us to have faith in Him, to believe what He tells us and to trust Him. It is reasonable and right, that He who is true and does not lie, should expect this of us. Secondly, He expects us to love Him with all of our hearts. This is how He loves us, and it is to His love that we owe every blessing we have ever enjoyed in our lives, those lives, and our very existence. That we should love Him in return is only right. Thirdly, He expects us to obey His commandments. He created us and the world in which we live, He owns us, He is the Master, it is His right to be obeyed. The commandments He gives us are not like the laws of a human tyrant who uses his power for his own gain at the expense of those he rules. The commandments He gives us are few and simple, and are necessary for our own good. He commands us not to murder each other, not to steal each other’s property, not to cheat on our own spouses or with other people’s spouses, not to tell lies about each other, and not to sit around wishing we had what our neighbor has.

Do we meet God’s expectations and requirements?

Sadly, we do not. We have difficulty taking Him at His word, we disbelieve what He says and do not trust Him to take care of us, thinking that we must look out for ourselves rather than rely upon Him. We do evil to each other and then we blame Him for the pain and suffering we have inflicted upon ourselves. We do not love Him wholeheartedly but neglect Him, ignore Him, and think evil of Him. We break His commandments in our hearts and minds, and all too often in our words and deeds as well. In short, we sin.

As sinners, rebels who have rejected His authority and flaunted His laws, God rightly demands that we repent, i.e., that we abandon our bad attitudes, change our mind, turn from our sins to God, bend our knees and necks in submission to His authority, mend our evil ways, making restitution where we have harmed others, humble ourselves, confessing rather than hiding our sins, and meekly ask Him for forgiveness. The repentance God demands from us is a complete repentance, repentance from all our sins not just the ones we consider to be big, serious, or major, repentance from our entire attitude of sinful rebellion. The repentance God requires of us is sincere and true repentance in our hearts, not just a public show of tears. It is to be a repentance of contrition, sorrow for our sinfulness, and not just a repentance of attrition, sorrow for its consequences.

Do we repent completely in this wholehearted and sincere manner?

Alas, our repentance too falls far short of that which the God we have offended is perfectly just in demanding from us who crave His pardon and forgiveness.

If we do not trust God the way we should, if we do not love Him with the love He deserves, if we break His laws rather than obey His commandments and then offer Him what is at best a partial repentance, is there any hope for us who stand under His judgement all our lives and will one day be called before Him to give a final account of everything we have ever thought, said or done?

If we had to depend upon our own efforts to please God then clearly there would be no hope for us. Thankfully, we do not have to depend upon our own efforts. God, the Gospel message declares, has given us a gift, the gift of His Son Jesus Christ. God gave His Son to be our Saviour.

A savior is a person who rescues someone else from a difficulty, hardship, or peril from which they cannot extricate themselves. Imagine you are out on a river in a boat and the boat flips over. You are unable to swim, have neglected to put on your life-saving apparatus, and before you think to grab a hold of it the boat is carried away by the current. Your situation looks hopeless but a man on the bank of the river had seen all this happen and jumps in and swims towards you. He grabs a hold of you, swims to shore, and pulls you out of the water. Had it not been for this man you would have drowned and so he could be rightly called your saviour.

God gave us Jesus to be our Saviour from a peril far worse than drowning. He gave us Jesus to save us from the worst peril possible, our own sinfulness which separates us from God and places us under His condemnation now and for all eternity. It was not by His teachings that Jesus saved us, although He was also our Teacher, because even the best of us falls short of the righteousness contained in His teachings. It was not by His example that Jesus saved us, for none of us lives up to His example. It is by His death that He saved us. Christ’s death was an event could have been our ultimate condemnation. Human beings, blessed with the presence of God’s Son come down from heaven and incarnate as a man, took Him and murdered Him in a brutally cruel manner, by nailing Him to a wooden cross. God, however, used Christ’s crucifixion to accomplish our salvation. It was to die on the cross, that Jesus had come down from heaven in the first place. God placed the sins of the whole world upon Jesus as He hung upon the cross, and Jesus willingly bore those sins for our sake. By doing so, He became the one true sacrifice, the sacrifice which effectively took away the sins of the world. God raised Jesus from the dead, and He ascended into heaven where He is our High Priest, continually pleading the merits of His once-and-for-all sacrifice on our behalf, effectively securing for us pardon for sins, reconciliation with God, justification in the eyes of God, and everlasting life. All of these things are promised to all who believe in Jesus Christ, i.e., who trust Him as the Saviour God has given.

It is in Jesus that we are to trust and it is in Jesus that our hope is to be found.

The New Testament makes it absolutely clear that the salvation which Christ obtained for us by dying for us on the cross is a gift. It comes to us freely in Christ and not in return for our feeble efforts to please God. Our efforts to please God are to be a response of love to the God who has given us this great salvation, not an attempt to pay Him back or earn it. There is a word that is used in the New Testament to express the manner in which God freely gives us salvation. That word is “grace”.

Grace is one of the most important words in the New Testament. St. Paul repeatedly writes that salvation is by grace. What does this word grace mean?

The word that is translated “grace” in the New Testament is the Greek word charis. This is the word from which our English word “charismatic” is derived. The idea of giving or a gift is very much present in this word as in its Greek root. Charismatic, when the word is used in a theological context, points to the concept of spiritual gifts such as those mentioned by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12. In everyday English when we speak of a leader as being “charismatic” or possessing “charisma” we mean that he has the gift of being able to persuade people to follow him.

A dictionary entry for the word charis in Greek would be very similar to an entry for grace in English. The range of meanings of the two words is very similar and they have been used for synonyms for a very long time because our word grace comes from the Latin word which was used as the equivalent of charis. We often use the word grace in English, to refer to the way a ballet dancer or figure skater seems to generate visual beauty through her movements. One of the meanings of charis was very similar to this. It had the meaning of “that which causes pleasure or delight”, which was its primary meaning in the earliest Greek literature that has come down to us. Thus Homer frequently used the word charis to depict beauty, charm, strength and similar traits which made Achilles and his other heroes attractive. (1)

This is obviously not the meaning that St. Paul intended to convey in the New Testament when he used the word charis to describe the way in which we are saved. Another meaning of charis, as old as the first and which came to be the more usual meaning in later Greek literature, was that of “a kindly disposition towards others” or “favour”, particularly when that favour was expressed in the giving of gifts. A person upon whom a ruler looked kindly and granted permission to be in his presence would be said to be in the ruler’s grace or favour, and it was the word charis that would be used to express this. Charis could refer to the disposition of favour itself, and it could also refer to the gifts given out of that favour, and to the attitude of gratitude or thankfulness on the part of the person who received the gift. (2)

This is the way in which charis is used in passages about salvation in the New Testament. St. Paul uses it, however, in a more limited sense than in earlier Greek literature. Charis, in the sense of the favour of the gods or of human rulers, was a familiar concept to the Greeks but it was not necessarily connected with the idea of being unmerited or undeserved. In fact if one of the Olympian gods or a human king bestowed his charis upon someone, it was usually because that person possessed a quality such as beauty or courage which the god or king admired, i.e., the other kind of charis.

St. Paul and the other New Testament writers limited the meaning of charis to favour which is undeserved or unmerited in his epistles by creating a contrast between charis on the one hand and law and works on the other and by connecting charis with the ideas of love and mercy.

In several epistles St. Paul writes about the contrast between “law” and “grace”, but it is in his epistle to the Church in Rome that he sets forth the contrast in a systematic manner. “Law” refers both to the Mosaic Law, the Covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai and especially the commandments contained in that covenant, and the principle of law. The principle of law is that the law-giving authority issues the rules which those under the law are expected to obey and are held accountable to, that those who obey the rules are considered to be righteous, and those who disobey are judged to be unrighteous and are punished for their trespasses. Works are the efforts of those under a law to meet its requirements.

St. Paul made it clear in his epistle to the Roman church, that law and works cannot make a person righteous in the eyes of God. In the second chapter of Romans, he demonstrated that no one lives up to the standard by which God holds him accountable. The Jews, who received the Law from God, did not live up to it, the Gentiles who did not receive the Law from God, but are held accountable by the law of their conscience, fall short of that law as well. Thus, both Jew and Gentile alike, can only be condemned by the law which is over them and by their works. This indictment of Jew and Gentile proceeds into the third chapter of Romans where it culminates in the declaration that “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (v. 23)

St. Paul then went on immediately to say “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. The word translated “freely” is the word dorean, an adverb formed from the Greek word for gift. By using this word with charis in this verse, St. Paul places emphasis upon the fact that the favour of God, by which He has given Christ to redeem us, is freely given and comes from the goodness of God’s heart and not in response to any merit in us.

A few verses after this, in the fourth chapter of Romans, the incompatibility of works and grace is declared:

Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. (vv. 4-5)

In other words, if the state of being justified, of being righteous in the eyes of God, is something which we receive as the result of our works, it is a reward for our behaviour. Grace would have nothing to do with it, because our justification would be our just due under the law. God would owe it to us. Justification in the eyes of God does not come to us in this way. It is freely given in Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him as their Savior.

The other way in which the fact that God’s grace or favour is given freely and not merited or deserved can be seen in the New Testament is in the way the idea of grace is connected with the ideas of love and mercy.

St. John writes frequently about God’s love. In his Gospel he records Jesus saying “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”. In this most famous of Biblical verses, God’s love is identified as the reason that God gave us His Son. This means that God’s love is the source of His grace. Now the word love can often mean a feeling of affection that arises in one’s heart because of the attractive qualities of the object of one’s love. This is not the case with the love of God. In his first epistle, St. John wrote that “God is love”, i.e., that love is the very essence of His nature. God’s love arises out of His own good nature and not out of some love-worthy quality in us. The word St. John uses for love in the verses cited is agape, a word which was already distinct from other loves such as philia and eros, but which took on a special meaning in the teachings of Jesus, the writings of the New Testament, and the early church. It refers to a kind of goodness of heart in which one is concerned for the well-being of others and willing to give of oneself to see to their well-being.

To Titus, St. Paul wrote “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Tit. 3:5). Mercy or pity, refers to compassion for those who are in need and suffering, and acts taken out of that compassion to alleviate the suffering and meet the need.

God’s grace, love, and mercy are three different aspects of the goodness of God, which compels Him to bestow good gifts upon sinners who do not deserve it, including the gift of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who took our sins upon Himself, that we might be reconciled to God and justified in His sight.

God’s grace is not an excuse for us to forget about pleasing God by trusting Him, loving Him, obeying Him, and repenting of our sins. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” (Rom. 6:1-2) Our hope and our faith are not to rest, however, in our efforts to please God (3), but in God Himself, in His grace, and in the gift of a Saviour He has given us in His grace, our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1) In Greek mythology, there was a trio of goddesses who were calles the Charites – the Graces. Each of these was a personification of something which was the cause of pleasure or delight. Thalia personified abundance, Euphrosyne personified joy, and Aglaea personified beauty. Note however, that the things they personified were also considered to be divine gifts. The ideas of charis/grace as “that which causes delight or pleasure” and charis/grace as “gift-giving favour” were never entirely separate from each other.

(2) When we refer to the act of thanking God before a meal as “saying grace” we are echoing the use of charis as gratitude.

(3) The word grace, as I explained in the text of this essay, can refer both to the act of giving and to the gift given. The gift of God that saves us in the sense of reconciling us to God, pardoning our sins, and making us righteous in His eyes, is Jesus Christ our Saviour. God has also given, to those who believe in Jesus Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit by Whom we are united with Christ, partaking through our baptismal union with Him in His death and resurrection life, and with other believers in the body of Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells our hearts and empowers us to live the new life. All of this is part of grace as well. Our faith and our hope of everlasting life and justification must rest in Jesus Christ, what He has done for us on the cross, and His gospel promises. It is Christ and His sacrifice that made it possible for the transforming and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

The Gospel Tradition

On this, the Lord’s Day, Christians are meeting together, as we do every week, to remember the death of our Lord and to celebrate His glorious resurrection. The Christian message, that the Savior Whom God had given His fallen world, had atoned for our sins in His death by crucifixion, and then was raised by God from the dead on the third day, was called the “euangellion”. In English this word is translated by “Gospel” or “good news”.

The choice of this term as the title of the Christian message invokes the language of the prophet Isaiah, who wrote:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! (Isaiah 52:7)

The Gospel is indeed “good news” to repentant sinners in any day and age for it announces that God has provided salvation for sinners, mercy and forgiveness of sins, free and without cost, to all who will put their faith in the Savior Who is at the heart of the message. Since we, in the words of St. Paul, “have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23) and every day are in need of God’s forgiveness for our sins, the Gospel remains “good news” for us. As Arabella Katherine Hankey put it:

I love to tell the story for those who know it best
Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest.

The Gospel is also a tradition. Some well-meaning Christians may cringe to hear that, misapplying Jesus’ warnings to the Pharisees about the misuse of tradition, but the Scripture itself declares it.

St. Paul, in the 15th chapter of his first epistle to the Church in Corinth, declares unto the Corinthians “the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.”

He writes:

For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. (1 Cor, 15:3-8)

In this passage St. Paul declares the Gospel he has been preaching – Christ’s death for our sins and His resurrection, both attested to by Scripture, and by visible evidence, His burial for His death, and a multitude of witnesses for His resurrection.

Note however his introductory words “For I delivered unto you, first of all that which I also received”. This is the essence of a tradition. A tradition is something which we have because we have received it from others, and which we pass on to others. The English word tradition is derived from the Latin word trado, tradere, which means to surrender something unto others, to bequeath something, to hand something down to posterity. Tradition comes from the fourth principal part of this word – traditum, the stem on which the perfect, passive participle is built – thus: that which has been handed over, that which has been surrendered.

In St. Paul’s day, the Gospel he was preaching was being passed on to others by people who were contemporaneous with the events of the Gospel. Today, two millennia later, the Gospel comes to us, with its message of hope, salvation, and forgiveness of sins, through generations of faithful believers, who have passed on to us, that which they first received from Christ’s Apostles.

Most traditions are particular, which is to say that they belong to a particular society in which a particular people pass them down to their descendants. The Gospel is particular in the sense that those who hear and believe the Gospel message become a particular spiritual community, God’s Church, His ekklesia or “called out assembly”, and that spiritual community passes the Gospel tradition down through the ages. The Gospel is also a universal tradition. It is universal in the sense that it speaks to everybody, it calls everybody to believe, and comes with the commandment of the Lord that it be preached to everybody.

St. Paul said that the Gospel is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). This literally describes the order in which the Gospel was preached. The Apostles began preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem to their own people and then took it to the Greek speaking people throughout the Roman Empire. St. Paul in particular went throughout Asia Minor preaching the Gospel to the Greeks.

It is also, however, first century shorthand for saying “everybody in the world” and St. Paul clearly meant it in both senses. Nobody is to be excluded from the grace and mercy of God, from the forgiveness of sins and salvation that the Gospel of Christ brings to the sinners of the world, except that they exclude themselves by rejecting the Gospel.

To those reading these words, may you believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ and receive therein the forgiveness of your sins and everlasting life.