Main news for 30 November 2018

If we really save ourselves "not by works of righteousness", does it mean that righteousness has nothing to do for our salvation? Or the apostle wants to say another thing? Probably, the keyword here is all the same "works". Indeed, after all, what is human righteousness? And before the coming of Christ many understood that the fallen man could not be a righteous man. Human righteousness was always perceived, as a reflection of God's righteousness, and righteous in the proper sense of the word was considered only God Himself.

Then it turns out that righteousness is a divine-human affair, that man goes on the way of righteousness not by himself, not by his strengths, that it is God Who leads him on this way, and from man is required only a complete trust in God and faithfulness to Him. Man can "deserve" nothing before God.

He can only not spoil what God makes with his hands. And the Kingdom is given to the one who seek, not for the works of righteousness, which he doesn’t have and can’t have, but for the willingness to remain faithful in spite of his own state of sin and to follow the One Who can deliver from all sin, when one allows it and asks Him for deliverance.

This is where God's mercy manifests itself: because mercy, as the authors of the biblical books understood it, implied the implicit willingness to do for another, what he doesn’t deserve at all; and what nobody is obliged to do for him. Only such a mercy can open to us the way to the Kingdom.