Salvation Is An Ongoing Event

We are being saved because grace has not yet fully transformed every area of our mind, emotions, desires, and will into the mind, emotions, desires, and will of Christ. Salvation is a past reality: We have been saved by the death of Jesus Christ. While we were still sinners, Jesus’ death cancelled the bond that stood against us (Col. 2:14). In other words, the guilt of original sin has been wiped away. God pardoned our sins. But being pardoned isn’t the same as being holy. Being pardoned gives us back our freedom to choose the road to holiness, to walk the narrow path. Right now, today, we are being saved. Grace is wooing us down the narrow path. We are becoming holy. Salvation is an ongoing event. We are saved for union with Christ. Or, to put it in more poetic terms, we are saved so that the two may become one. In God’s mysterious and progressive plan, our nuptial salvation is completed only with the resurrection of the body. It is then that body and soul will return to perfect unity, and in this perfect unity, we will enter into perfect unity with the Trinity. The two will truly and definitively become one—body and soul, God and man, man and neighbour.