The Sacraments and God’s plan for salvation

“Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” (Gen 1:31). God’s creation was “very good”, God wanted humanity to be joyful and to prosperous. He also wanted them to choose to love life over death, to choose to love Him and obey Him to gain eternal life versus choosing to follow death and destruction. As our creator, He chose to create us with a free will even if that meant that we can disobey Him.

However Man made the wrong choice and chose death over life and misery over joy. When God created Adam, He created him from dust. By sinning and separating himself from God, the true source of life, Man turns again to nothingness and emptiness. Man’s nature was corrupted and death entered into his life. (On the Incarnation Chapter 2)

Sin is the cause of human suffering in all shapes and forms. Sin is not something that was invented to scare people into a social norm but is something real that we all feel and experience. Sin is a fact that causes pain, suffering, greed, anger, hate, deceit, lust, wars, and the list goes on. Ask anyone who carries hate, anger, lust, envy, or any other sin inside them about what they feel. Can they control those emotions or are they driven like slaves by these emotions. Are they living a happy life when they are under the influence of these feelings? We all know the answer very well as we all experienced this type of slavery in one way or another and the horrible impact of sin on humanity can be seen all around us.

In Greek sin is ἁμαρτία (hamartia), which means “missing the mark”, which is to transgress against God’s commandment and to go in the wrong direction of self-righteousness and following one’s desires, not following God’s plan for me.

Sin has a lot of dimensions that sometimes we forget (or prefer to ignore).

1. Sin is a transgression against an infinite God [“How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?” (Gen 39:9)]
2. Sin is a separation from God since He is light and sin is darkness (what communion hath light with darkness?) (2Co 6:14) [see also Isa 59:2].
3. Sin is death “For the wager of sin is death” (Rom 6:23, 7:13)
4. Sin is a separation from my community (the church which is the body of Christ).

How can humanity solve the problem and reverse the result of sin? Time and time again, the Bible shows us that Man failed to live a righteous life no matter what the circumstances were. The solution needed to come from outside, it needed to come from God Himself.

As a loving Father, God has provided for us our salvation and victory over sin and death by Him paying the price on our behalf, I need to accept it and live accordingly.

Through the sacraments God recreates and sustains my spiritual life.

But what is a sacrament? The Sacrament is an invisible gift through visible means.  God gives something invisible like His body and His blood through the visible means of bread and wine.

Sacraments recreate my life. The Sacrament of Baptism washes away all of our sins as the old person dies and a new person is created in us, as a new creation that abides in Jesus  Christ (Rom 6:3-14). The Sacrament of Chrismation makes us a temple of the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and sanctify us (1Co 6:19). This also confirms us in Him.

However, this does not end our free will. Just as Adam and Eve made the wrong choice by disobeying God and eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, we also make wrong choices on a daily basis even after renewing our nature because we have a free will.

Out of God’s love and care, the process of renewal continues through The Sacrament of repentance and confession (1Jn 1:8-19) where the person confesses their sins to God in the presence of the priest. The Sacrament of Holy Communion in which Christ gives us His true body and true blood for eternal life (John 6:53). All these Sacraments can’t be performed without the Church and through the free gift that Christ gave to His disciples (John 20:23). Priesthood is a sacrament that serves all other sacraments.

The Sacrament of Matrimony is the way which a new family is created in the Church. That family is established by uniting the man and the women into one through the Holy Spirit and that the fruits of their life together might be sanctified [Eph 5:31-32].

Our body, soul, and spirit will become ill and require healing. The Sacrament of the unction of the sick is for the healing of the body, soul, and spirit (James 5:13).

All these sacraments were established by the Lord and practiced in the Church from the beginning. They are the means by which we receive the invisible grace through visible means.

God our Father, wants us back in His bosom, we can’t approach while we are stained with sin. His Only begotten Son came to reconcile us with the Father and to make us a new creation. The Holy Spirit sanctifies us and confirms us in the faith through His work in the sacrament. These sacraments are for our benefit and salvation; we need to live them in order to sanctify our lives.