Main news for 30 November 2024

If we are indeed saved "not by works of righteousness," does this mean that righteousness is irrelevant to our salvation? Or does the apostle mean something else? The key word here is still probably "works." After all, in the final analysis, what is human righteousness? Even before the coming of Christ, many understood that fallen man cannot be righteous. Human righteousness was always perceived as a reflection of God's righteousness, while only God Himself was considered righteous in the full sense of the word. And then it turned out that righteousness is a divine-human matter, that a person does not walk the path of righteousness by himself, not by his own strength, but that God leads him along this path, while from the person only complete trust in God and faithfulness to Him are required. And a person cannot "earn" anything before God. He can only refrain from spoiling what God is doing with his hands. And the Kingdom is given to the seeker not for works of righteousness, which he does not have and cannot have, but for the very readiness to remain faithful despite his own sinfulness and to follow the One who can deliver from any sin if only He is allowed to do so and asked for deliverance. Here God's mercy is manifested: mercy, as the authors of the biblical books understood it, implied precisely readiness to do for another what that other in no way deserves and what no one is obliged to do for him. Only such mercy can open the path to the Kingdom for us.