My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.

SALVATION ACCORDING TO ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY
By Father Dumitru Staniloae (Romanian theologian)

What follows will be a brief description of the new life and power which the Incarnate Son of God, crucified, resurrected, and exalted, gives us, through the Holy Spirit, as the content of "salvation" according to the Orthodox understanding of that word. The Son of God communicates this life and power in their eschatological fullness to the humanity which He assumed, but He communicates them to us by degrees through His own humanity, and we receive them as a principle of growth, as a gift and a promise implying eschatological development and therefore hope. For as long as Jesus Christ is "full of grace and truth" and as long as He is the "perfect man", then we have only the first fruits of His fullness (2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:14), and we must grow in Him into the perfect man according to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13). The life and power communicated by Christ to His humanity are manifested In three directions: towards God, towards human nature as such, and towards His fellow human beings. This new life and power which the Son of God, through the humanity He assumed, communicates to those who believe in Him, are also manifested in the same three directions. And just as the Son of God communicated them to His assumed humanity through His Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension, He communicates them in the same way to those who believe in Him, that is, through the acts which He accomplished and the states, which He reached as man...

"...We shall now consider the new life and power which Christ has brought us, and the ways in which it is manifested through His Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension.

Even through His Incarnation the Son of God brings man a new life and power in his dealings with God, with himself and with his neighbor, Christ unites humanity with God through the incarnation in a manner which is most intimate and at the same time indissoluble, inseparable, and definitive. The Son of God made man becomes, even in His quality as man, the Son of God. His eternal and perfect filial love for the Father fills His humanity also, and therefore as Saint John Damascene says, "the incarnation is a modality of the second personal subsistence (τρόπος δευτέρας υπάρξεως) accommodated solely to the Only Begotten Son in such a manner that its personal individual attribute might remain unchanged..."
But of the three ways in which the new life and power of Christ are manifested it is much more by His death on the Cross that Christ has effected the restoration of the human nature. The Cross of Christ represents a new step in the work of our salvation. Without the Cross of Christ salvation would not have been achieved. In His death, Christ gives Himself to the Father not merely by an exemplary life but also by the very renunciation of life itself. As man He gives the Father everything and holds nothing back for Himself. In His death, the loving kenosis reaches its climax...
"...In this sense we too die in baptism in the likeness of the death of Christ, or better, we are rooted in the likeness of His death, and have been buried into His death (Romans 6:3-5). Thus we become righteous in Christ before the Father. This is not a righteousness of vainglory but of our surrender to God...
Since death entered into the world through sin and Christ committed no sin, it was on account of our sins that He suffered death. And through His death sin and selfishness are destroyed in their very roots together with the fruit which they produce, death. All men can escape these if they in turn are rooted in the death and sacrifice of Christ...
If Saint Cyril of Alexandria emphasizes the God-ward direction of Christ's Sacrifice and death--Saint Athanasius, Saint Maximus the Confessor and other Holy Fathers emphasize its man-ward direction, its power to heal and strengthen human nature, to overcome death and sin...Christ accepts death in order to destroy it in the resurrection, but this happens only because He is the Logos/Word of God. The Holy Fathers do not make the death of Christ into a saving event independent of the resurrection and incarnation...Christ does not become incarnate and die simply for the sake of an external reconciliation with us and in order to make us righteous before Him. The purpose of the incarnation was for our deliverance from eternal death, our complete and eternal union with Him in that condition of peace which is constituted precisely by the most complete loving union with Himself and us, a condition in which we live His entire righteousness and holiness in union with Him...

"...In His Resurrection, Christ raises up his entire humanity -- soul and body -- to a state of righteousness, of union with God, of perfect and eternal holiness. This is the state of complete surrender to the Father. In the Ascension the Righteousness of God, the very glory of the Father, is communicated to man. This glory is revealed perfectly through the incarnate Christ in the very moment when, as man, He offers perfect praise to the Father.

All who believe in Him will have a part in this peace, righteousness, holiness, and glory, and through the Spirit of Christ, they participate in the firstfruits of these gifts even in the course of this earthly life...

"...On the Cross, Christ has taken us all into His embrace, for His love has gone out to us all, drawing us all into His condition of self-surrender to God and to man, the condition in which He empties himself (kenosis) for the sake of both God and man. And in His love He gives us too the power to overcome ourselves with all our selfish impulses. (Source: Theology and the Church)

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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"-Saint John Chrysostom

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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God

+Father George