Journey Lesson 36 Salvation Through Jesus

By Marcel Gervais

This is lesson 36 of the Journey Bible Study Program series In this lesson we describe the teaching of Paul on the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ as presented in his letters to the Galatians and Romans. In chapter 1 we describe the teaching of Paul that we are united to God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by observance of the Law. In chapter 2 we describe the teaching in Romans that justification is a gift of God, received through faith in Christ and lived out in the hope of eternal union.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marcel Gervais
• Release date: Apr 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927766392

Marcel Gervais

About the Author Archbishop Gervais was born in Elie Manitoba on September 21 1931. He is the ninth of fourteen children. His family came from Manitoba to the Sparta area near St. Thomas Ontario when he was just a teenager. He went to Sparta Continuation School and took his final year at Saint Joseph`s High School in St. Thomas. After high school he went to study for the priesthood at St. Peter’s Seminary in London , Ontario. He was ordained in 1958. He was sent to study in Rome. This was followed by studies at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He returned to London to teach scripture to the seminarians at St. Peter’s Seminary. In 1974 he was asked by Bishop Emmett Carter to take over as director of the Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education. This Centre had been founded by Bishop Carter to provide a resource for adult education in the spirit of Vatican II. This Centre involved sessions of one or two weeks with many of the best scholars of the time. Students came not only from Canada and the United States but from all over the globe, Australia, Africa, Asia and Europe. By the time Father Gervais became the director Divine Word Centre was already a course dominated by the study of scripture to which he added social justice. This aspect of the course of studies was presented by people from every part of the “third world”; among which were Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Dery of Ghana. In 1976 the Conference of Ontario Bishops along with the Canadian conference of Religious Women approached Father Gervais to provide a written course of studies in Sacred Scripture for the Church at large, but especially for priests and religious women. This is when Fr. Gervais began to write Journey, a set of forty lessons on the Bible. He was armed with a treasure of information from all the teachers and witnesses to the faith that had lectured at Devine Word. He was assisted by a large number of enthusiastic collaborators: all the people who had made presentations at Divine Word and provided materials and a team of great assistants, also at Divine Word Centre. The work was finished just as Father Gervais was ordained an auxiliary bishop of London (1980). He subsequently was made Bishop of Sault Saint Marie Diocese, and after four years, Archbishop of Ottawa (1989). He retired in 2007, and at the time of this writing, he is enjoying retirement.

Book preview

Journey- Lesson 36 Salvation Through Jesus

by Marcel Gervais, Emeritus Archbishop of the diocese of Ottawa, Canada

Nihil Obstat: Michael T. Ryan, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

Imprimatur: + John M. Sherlock, Bishop of London

London, March 31, 1980

This content of this book was first published in 1977 as part of the JOURNEY Series By Guided Study Programs in the Catholic Faith and is now being republished in Smashwords by Emmaus Publications, 99 Fifth Avenue, Suite 103, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5P5, Canada ON Smashwords

Cover: Besides, you know 'the time' has come: you must wake up now: our salvation is even nearer than it was when we were converted. The night is almost over, it will be daylight soon — let us give up the things we prefer to do under cover of the dark; let us arm ourselves and appear in the fight. Rom 13:11-12

COPYRIGHT © Guided Study Programs In the Catholic Faith, a division of The Divine Word International Centre of Religious Education 1977. Reproduction in whole or in part is Prohibited.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 The True Gospel of God (Letter to the Galatians)

Chapter 2 Jesus the Saviour and Hope of All (Letter to the Romans)

Answer key to practice questions

Self-test

Answer key to self-test

Recommendations for group meeting on Lesson Thirty-six

About The Author

Psalm 145

Psalm 145 is a hymn which praises the triumph of God's constant will to save his creatures, a triumph called his Kingdom or his Reign. Composed after a long experience of God, it expresses his People's mature awareness of their supreme duty to praise God for works of mercy so many and so great as to escape their grasp. They have come to know God as full of tender love, merciful to sinners, patient and absolutely faithful in his will to save them (vss 8-9). They know his Kingdom cannot fail to come. In a final burst of praise, they confidently acknowledge God's nearness and invite all creation to join in their song.

Interpreted with Christian faith, this psalm becomes a prayerful expression of Paul's teaching in his letters to the Christians of Galatia and Rome. For the Gospel he explains to them, namely the death and resurrection of Jesus, reveals God's triumphant will to save his People, to forgive their sins and reunite them with himself. This final, saving act is the crown and the fulfilment of all those mercies which have been granted God's People in the past.

Paul is aware that somehow all creation is included in God's marvellous act of love and therefore owes him praise. How imperfectly we grasp God's loving designs in history. Now, union with God in Jesus Christ has become everyone's for the asking. All that is needed is faith. For God has simply made a gift to creation, to mankind and to each believer through Jesus of his own Holy Spirit, his own life and power. It is the Spirit who enters into believers, enabling them to acknowledge God's goodness and to utter as faithful sons Christ's own supreme hymn of praise.

Lesson Objective: To describe the teaching of Paul on the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ as presented in his letters to the Galatians and Romans.

Introduction

The two letters of Paul studied in this lesson have the same subject, namely, the role of Christ in God's great plan for our salvation and in the day-to-day life of the Christian. However, because of the respective circumstances of their writing, they are very different in tone and composition. Written about 55 A.D., obviously in the heat of the moment, Galatians is much shorter, a reply by Paul to an upsetting and dangerous turn of events among the recently-converted Galatians whom he had personally brought to the faith about 5 years before. Though it contains beautiful and profound passages, its style is uneven and emotional. Paul now reasons, now pleads, now reprimands. By contrast, his letter to the Romans is a more thorough, detached reflection on the same subject, addressed to Christians whom he hoped to visit but had never met. Composed a year or so later, it develops in a controlled and orderly way the great truths which, in his earlier letter, he was recalling in haste, indignation and grief. This is not to say that Romans will be much easier to understand. But the reasons for its special difficulty will be dealt with in their proper place.

The True Gospel of God (Letter to the Galatians)

Section Objective: To describe the teaching of Paul that we are united to God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by observance of the Law.

Paul had founded a group of Christian communities among the pagans of Galatia on his second missionary journey just before 50 A.D. (Acts 16:6). He had been warmly received and remembers this with tender emotion (4:12-15). However, after his departure, other Christian missionaries from Jerusalem arrived, claiming an authority and a gospel superior to Paul's. They taught that to be saved and to please God it was necessary to follow the prescriptions of the Law of Moses such as circumcision, the Sabbath, the dietary rules and so on. Hence they are known to us as Judaizers. Their preaching alarmed Paul because it confused the Galatians and actually led them to begin adopting the old observances. The success of these newly-arrived preachers was understandable for they came from the mother Church, Jerusalem, where Christians still followed the Jewish Law (cf. Acts 2:46). The great apostles were there and also observed the traditional regulations. Besides, these