Does Our Savior Need Us?

Jesus saves via the prayers and works of the members of His Body

Topics

Faith

There is only one Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Redeemer of the World. This is what the Catholic Church has always taught, since the first century AD, and still teaches — you can look it up.

Being God, He does not NEED anything. He does not NEED His mother Mary, nor all of his great-grands including David the King, Father Abraham, Adam. You see, since Jesus has a mother, He therefore has, according to the flesh, specifically-named great-grandmas like Bathsheba, Ruth, Rahab, Tamar, yes, human grannies going back to Eve.

He does not need any of that: angels, humans, Moses, Israel, Church, Apostles, brethren, disciples, anything. He can create and save a billion human souls per nanosecond if He wishes. But that is not, evidently, what He wishes. He created us “without us” but He evidently does not intend to save us “without us,” without associating us effectively with His singular, all-sufficient saving act. Since we are all members of the Body of Christ, He has chosen that we must need each other IN HIM.

Read all of what St. Paul wrote about our role as members of the Body of Christ of which He is Head. Use the search-word Body at BibleGateway, from “Pauline Epistles,” since these doctrines extend across four or five of Paul’s Epistles, and read them all at once. The impact is mind-blowing.

Notice especially the aspect of “need”:

1 Corinthians 12:21 — The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.”

The Head doesn’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”

Paul clearly sees that Christ, the Only Savior, is associating each one of us in His work of salvation, which we need to pray and work for, with Jesus, our Head:

Romans 10:1 — Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.

1 Corinthians 7:16 — Wife, for all you know, you might save your husband. Husband, for all you know, you might save your wife.

1 Corinthians 9:22 — To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.

1 Corinthians 10:33 — Just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, so that they may be saved.

1 Corinthians 15:1-2 — Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, IF you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.

1 Timothy 4:16 — Take heed to yourself, and to the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this you shall both save yourself and them that hear you.

In all of these quotes, who is doing the saving? Jesus Christ Our Lord.

In all of these quotes, through whom is He doing the saving? Through the prayers and works of the members of His Body, through the cooperation of all of us in Him. Which is to say: Jesus Christ Our Lord.

 

Julianne Loesch Wiley writes from Tennessee.

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