Why Does God Save Us? Series

Christmas 2022

Why did God save us, anyway? In the beginning, He created man and woman as the summit of His work of bringing everything into being out of nothing. Unlike the false gods of Greece and Palestine, the true God does not need us at all. He is Being itself, and continuously creates and sustains everything both visible and invisible. He is totally sufficient in Himself. So lets get it out of our heads that He needed us for anything. He doesn’t become more divine when we praise and thank Him.

St. Paul gets us started in his letter to Bishop Titus in Crete. God saved us because of His mercy. Now even on Christmas we need to remember something. Jesus Christ, Son of God and son of Mary, got nothing out of being born as a human being and laid in a feed box in a smelly combo limestone cave and cattle shelter. God was seriously inconvenienced by becoming human, living, healing, teaching, suffering and dying for our salvation. He poured Himself out, as St. Paul writes to the Philippians, and exhausted all of his glory in the Incarnation and Redemption. But for whom did He do this, and is He doing it today?

No matter what your history books tell you, the Roman Empire was not a great place to live for most of its inhabitants, especially on the fringes like Palestine. The society was more stratified than the U.S. is today. There was a rich class of the privileged Jews and Gentiles, less than 1% of the population, a small middle class, mostly made up of people who supported themselves by cheating the poor, and then there was the vast unwashed in the cities and countryside. That latter was the class Joseph, Mary and Jesus belonged to. They eked out a living off the land or by building things for the rich and powerful. Joseph was a carpenter, likely helping to build a Roman city close to Nazareth. Jesus apprenticed Himself to His earthly father. Things were bad, and people generally had fallen into bad habits, maybe just to stay alive.

Looking around us today, we see that there’s a lot more technology but the same old human hearts. People live by their passions, enslaved by bad habits. In the extreme, those involve addictions to alcohol, drugs, video games, gambling, pornography and marital infidelity. Why would God save us? After Adam and Eve turned their backs on their Lord’s plan in the garden, why didn’t God just dust off His hands, admit that the experiment with these rebellious humans was a failure, and not even save Noe and his family from the flood? Wash it all away and maybe not even try again?

Yes, He called Abraham not long after Noe, and promised him that because of his obedience, he would be the father of many nations, uncounted humans. But Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, whom God also selected, was such a rebel himself that God renamed him Israel, which means “the one who fights God.” God brought their descendants out of Egyptian slavery and they were so ungrateful that they rebelled in the wilderness because they didn’t like the free food given out of divine mercy. In the land of promise, they revolted time after time, for dozens of generations very few people could be found who were faithful to the divine law.

So why did God save them? Why, despite His Church’s frailty and the frequent sins of its leaders, does He continue to show mercy, giving grace through His sacraments, His divine word, His eminent saints and preachers? Why does He want to save us, who lie and cheat and steal and kill millions of babies before birth? Don’t we deserve harsh punishment?

There is only one answer to that. He loves us, even though He is injured in the loving.

The divine action can be summed up in one sentence: God gives us what we need, not what we deserve.