Salvation by Christ’s Life

Faith is not merely a passive intellectual acceptance of a teaching or proposition. It is inseparable from love, and love means obedience to Christ and the desire to follow him as a disciple. As the Lord said: “If you love me, keep my commandments” (Joh 14:15); “Anyone who serves me must follow me! Where I am, there will my servant also be” (Joh 12:26).

Moreover, it is not only our imitation of Christ’s life that saves us, but the entire economy and mystery of the Lord’s incarnation, from the Annunciation to the Ascension and the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. As St Athanasius summarizes:

It is manifest that the Savior has raised his own body, and that he is the true Son of God, having his being from God as from a Father, whose Word and Wisdom and Power he is. He it is who in these latter days assumed a body for the salvation of us all and taught the world concerning the Father. He it is who has destroyed death and freely graced us all with incorruption through the promise of the resurrection, having raised his own body as its first-fruits, and displayed it by the sign of the cross as the monument of his victory over death and its corruption. (St Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 32)