The Story of Salvation

The story of salvation is the greatest story ever told. It begins with the creation of everything out of nothing. It is a story of the covenants between God and his creation. It’s a story that tells of man’s fall from grace and his salvation and redemption. The greatest thing about this story is that you get to be part of it.

It all starts, as the bible says, “In the beginning.”

In the beginning God created everything out of love so he could share his love. He made the world and all it holds. He created man and gave him the responsibility to care for creation. He was to name the animals and till the ground. The last thing God created was woman. Then God decided to enter into a covenant with man and woman.

Let’s talk about the difference between a contract and a covenant. A contract is the exchange of goods and services for a cost and a specific period of time. I give you so you will give me. When the exchange is complete, the contract is over and we go our separate ways. A covenant is the total giving of self for the total reception of the other for as long as both parties are alive. For example – marriage is a covenant. Prostitution is a contract. The service exchanged is the same, but one is ordered properly to God and the other is not.

A covenant promises specific benefits, rewards or blessings for the people who are faithful to the covenant, but it also threatens punishments if they are not faithful to the terms of the covenant. Covenants need to be formally ratified and are usually sealed with a blood sacrifice. For the Jews, blood is a sacred thing. The life is in the blood. When the blood is taken from a body the life is lost. A blood sacrifice is the highest form of sacrifice and therefore holds the greatest significance. A covenant also has an outward sign that reminds both parties of the covenant and their promise. We recognize six major covenants since the world began.

The first covenant was with Adam and Eve. They were given life on earth and were given the command to be fruitful and multiple. They were given a vegetarian diet. God gave them every good plant for food. The promise was that they could have this as long as they did not eat from the tree of life. The punishment was the promise of death if they did. The outward sign of the covenant with Adam and Eve was marriage.

The second covenant was the covenant with Noah. When man fell from grace and were thrown out of the garden of Eden he continued to move further and further from God. The earth became an evil place. So evil, in fact, that God decided to destroy everything. There was one righteous man on earth and that was Noah. We all have heard the story of Noah’s ark. God had Noah build an ark and then he put a male and female of every creature on that ark. God sent a flood to destroy all life not on the ark. When all had been destroyed the flood waters dried up and Noah and the creatures of the ark left the ark to repopulate the earth. God made a covenant with Noah where he promised not to destroy the earth with water ever again as long as Noah and his descendants followed seven commandments known as the seven laws of Noah.

Those laws were –

1: Do not worship idols.

2: Do not curse the Lord your God.

3: Do not commit murder.

4: Ensure Justice.

5: Do not commit sexual immorality.

6: Do not steal.

7: Do not eat the flesh torn from a living animal.

The rainbow was given as the sign of the covenant to remind both man and God that God would never destroy the earth with water again.

The third covenant was with Abraham and his descendants. Abraham was a righteous man in a land of unrighteousness. Abraham and his wife Sarah were 100 years old. Sarah was baren and never produced an heir for Abraham. God promised Abraham to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

Sarah laughed at God because she was too old to have children and she had been barren her entire life. Not trusting in God’s promise, Abraham and Sarah sinned against God. Sin is taking for yourself that which God does not give you. That is the essence of all sin. Because they did not trust God, Sarah gave her slave to Abraham to have a child with and Ishmael was born. But Sarah also became pregnant and bore him the son Isaac.

There are always consequences when we sin. Sarah became jealous of Ishmael and his mother and cast them out into the wilderness to die. God took pity on Ishmael. He had promised to make Abraham’s decedents as numerous as the starts in the sky and he would do it through two families. He made Ishmael the father of the Arab nations and Isaac the father of the nation of Israel. The two nations have been at war with one another ever since, even to this day.

There are always consequences to our sin.

Abraham came to trust God when Sarah became pregnant. God tested Abraham’s faithfulness by asking him to sacrifice that one son to him. God instructed Abraham to sacrifice his son to him. This is known as the binding of Isaac.

It is Jewish tradition that Isaac was thirty-three years old when this happened. He was strong enough to carry enough wood up the mountain to burn a body. When God saw that Abraham was going to be obedient to the command he stayed his hand. They sacrificed a ram whose head was caught in a thorn bush instead.

As Catholics we believe that the binding of Isaac was not stopped, only delayed. God told Abraham that they would make the sacrifice together but God would offer his son in place of Isaac. Jesus is believed to be thirty-three when he was crucified and he wore a crown of thorns.

God entered into a covenant with Abraham.

This covenant promised three things –

1: That he would make Abraham the father of a great nation. The Jews believe this to be Israel. The Arabs believe this to Arabia. Both are correct.

2: That is descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

3: That he would be given the land of Cannan for his off-spring and that all would be blessed through him.

The sign of the covenant was circumcision. Circumcision was viewed as an abomination among the people of that time so it became the outward symbol that set God’s chosen people apart from the rest of the earth.

The fourth covenant was the Mosaic covenant or the covenant made with Moses and the tribes of Israel. The Hebrew people had been enslaved by the Egyptians for four-hundred years. God heard the cries of his people and chose Moses as his representative to free them. The Hebrews lived among a people who worshipped many false gods, so the first thing God did was return them to monotheism or the worship of the one true God.

It was from this that the Shema came from – Hear O’ Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Through Moses, God led Israel out of bondage and into freedom. God replaced the seven laws of Noah with the first Ten Commandments, but Israel fell into idol worship before these laws could be given to them. The Ten Commandments were replaced with the 613 laws called the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law was a strict law that Israel was to follow to live in a right relationship with God. The promise of this covenant was a reciprocation of relationship. I will be your God and you will be my people.

The sign of this covenant was the Passover of Death.

That brings us up to the last Old Testament covenant, the covenant with the Kingdom of David. The tribes of Israel were not content with being just a people of God. They wanted to be a great kingdom like the other kingdoms of the world. So, God gave them a king. Because he was not a good king God replaced him with King David. King David was a man after God’s own heart, even though he was a thief, a rapist, an adulterer, and a murderer. God favored King David because he was both merciful and repentant. God promised David that his kingdom would last forever and that he would make a royal dynasty of David through his descendants.

The outward sign of this convent was the Davidic throne.

The last covenant God made with his people was when, in the fullness of time, the second person of God humbled himself and became the man we know as Jesus. Jesus came to fulfill the Mosaic law; to bring it to the fullness of perfection. He came to pay the price for our sins, a price that we could never pay on our own. He brought us salvation from death and redemption, restoring humanity to the relationship God had intended to have with us from the creation of time. Eternal life with God in heaven was promised if we had faith, that is trust, in Jesus.

The sign of the new covenant is the Eucharist, the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus, given to us under the appearance of bread and wine.

The first covenant God made was with two people, Adam and Eve. The second covenant he made was with a family, Noah and his family. The third covenant was made with a tribe, Abraham. The fourth covenant was made with a people, the Hebrews, the tribes of Israel. The fifth covenant was made with a kingdom – the kingdom of David. The last covenant was made with the entire world through Jesus Christ. Each covenant God made with us grew larger and incorporated a larger population until it included everyone.

The story of man begins in a garden where a woman selfishly takes the fruit off a tree for herself. Salvation came into the world through a garden, when a woman selflessly took the fruit of her womb and placed it back on a tree for all humanity.

The story of salvation will end when Christ the King returns to earth to usher in a new age. Eternity in heaven with God is promised to all those who are found to still be in covenant with God. Eternal damnation in hell await those who have who have broken the covenant.

Each of us gets to write our own chapter into this story. How yours will read is in your hands.

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