Salvation by Suffering

“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me”

There is a common misconception that Jesus came to save all men. Church thinkers as prominent as von Balthasar and Bishop Barron want to believe all men will be saved. The consecration at the English mass actually used to say that Jesus came “for all,” a mistranslation of the previous Latin. This is of course what everyone wants to believe. It is reassuring.

But in this Sunday’s reading, Jesus plainly says otherwise. He came for a certain subset of mankind, who belong to the Father.

And this is the consistent message of the gospel. For example, at the very outset of the gospel, when some of the Pharisees come to the Jordan to be baptized, John rejects them, saying

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

They were refused as unsuitable for salvation. They were refused Christian initiation.

So on what basis are some saved?

The passage implies good works: “they have kept your word.” Yet it also says this group belonged to God before any such justification by works. Score one for the Lutherans?

The passage indeed implies faith: “they have believed that you sent me.” Yet it also says that they belonged to God before any such justification by faith. So much for the Lutherans. Score one for the Calvinists? Some are simply predestined to be saved, regardless of any justification?

Perhaps, at least based on this passage.

But perhaps there is a further clue in the phrase “out of the world.” Those selected by the Father, those for whom Jesus came, are those who are in some sense separated from or alienated from the world.

And this tallies with Jesus’s own clear enumeration of those who are his people: in the Beatitudes.

The people whom Jesus came to save are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the peacemakers, the merciful, the pure-hearted, the persecuted. Such people do not fit in this world, and suffer in it.

And the rest, Jesus almost as much as says, can go to hell.