Take Care Not to Fall

Under Argentina’s military dictatorship of the late 1970’s, a young man was imprisoned for six years. No charges, no explanation, and no civil rights were granted. He was allowed no lawyer, no contact with his family, and his case never went to trial. His arrest was never reported. He was disappeared. The man was held for long periods of time in solitary confinement and brutally tortured. The young man suffered the worst that could be thrown at him, but he never broke, he never gave up hope, he never let despair get the upper hand.

Interviewed after his release from prison, he was asked if he was bitter about his treatment. His reply shocked the interviewer. The young man said ‘I do not regard those six years as lost. I took advantage of them to strengthen my character and to deepen my relationship with God.’ He walks out of the prison a better man with a deeper Faith. For many, this would be a soul-crushing experience, a source of life-long bitterness, and an impediment to loving both God and neighbor. But this man’s case proves that it need not be so. It also proves what St Paul teaches in Romans 8:35-39.

St Paul asks the question “What will separate us from the love of Christ?” Paul assures us that anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword have no power in and of themselves to separate us from the love of Christ. Many think that once we enter Christ’s love we will always remain in Christ’s love no matter what, the idea of ‘once saved always saved.’ But this is not what Paul is teaching. We all know people who undergo some affliction that separates them from Christ. Those who embrace the false doctrine of ‘once saved always saved’ claim such people fall away because they aren’t true Christians, that God did not grant them the strength and the grace to endure, to persevere.

This is not the Gospel, for it places the blame for the damnation of souls entirely upon God. He’s responsible because He’s the One withholding the strength and the grace. They fall away because God is stingy with His grace. With false teachings like this, is it any wonder some people want nothing to do with such a seemingly arbitrary and uncaring image of God? In first Corinthians, Paul teaches that “God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it” (1Cor 10:13). Paul tells us that God will supply the strength and the grace we need to endure any trial, that we will be subjected to no trial beyond our ability to bear. And he is not presenting this as a teaching only for the elect, because the previous verse poses the following challenge: “Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall” (1Cor 10:12).

Indeed, to “take care not to fall” requires something from us. It requires that we are diligent and it also requires that we make a choice to be faithful empowered by God’s grace. No one said that this would be easy, and we need only look at the example of the young man from Argentina. Everyday he was faced with the choice to let the anguish, the distress, the persecution, and the peril of torture get the better of him and allow these things to separate him from Christ.

Notice also that the things listed by Paul that cannot separate us from the love of Christ are all outside of us. Indeed, we ourselves are not listed in the things that cannot separate us from the love of Christ because we do have the power to reject Christ’s love through sin.

Paul teaches that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). Freely chosen sin brings death, but freely choosing to accept the gift of grace brings eternal life. Unless we understand that a gift is not a gift unless it is freely given, and unless we understand that a gift is not a gift unless it can be rejected or forsaken, we will never reconcile the fact that some will not be saved with the fact that God “wills everyone to be saved” (1Tim 2:4).

So, anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and the sword have no power in and of themselves to separate us from the love of Christ. Indeed, only we can separate ourselves from Christ’s love. But what if we are not subject to anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or the sword? Does this mean that we get off Scott-free? Of course not. So long as we are able to choose evil instead of good, so long as we are able to sin, we must still “take care not to fall.”

—Fr Booth