Happy Sunday, everyone! In my reflection for today, I want to focus on the last few lines of the second reading from Paul’s second letter to Timothy.
In these closing verses of the second reading for today, Paul tells us that we must die with Jesus, persevere in our faith, and not deny Jesus. Essentially, Paul is giving us the formulation for salvation. In baptism, we are buried with Christ (Romans 6:4), and then we must persevere in the faith. If we deny Christ, he will deny us, but we have consolation in the fact that even if we are unfaithful, Christ is still faithful to us. That doesn’t mean that we can’t “lose our salvation”; what it means is that even if we deny Christ, he is still faithful to us in the sense that he will keep his promises to us. We can still turn back to him. As I said in yesterday’s post, God is love, but he is also justice. If we deny Christ, he will give us what we want, and we will spend eternity separated from him; but if we persevere in our faith and cling to him, we will spend eternity in glory.