Editorial June 17, 1972 Issue

"Work out your own salvation"

Alan A. Aylwin

In the realm of spiritual growth students of Christian Science are do-it-yourself people. They know that no other person can do this growing for them. No one else, no matter how spiritually developed, can solve for them the problem of being and free them from material limitations. Obviously, they can have prayerful help from another, or profit from another's high example. But in the last analysis each one must find for himself man's unity with God, and in this understanding strive to reach the summit of Truth.

In other words, Christian Science teaches that there is no vicarious route to salvation from evil. It accepts without reservations the Apostle Paul's directive: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."^{Phil. 2:12, 13;}

Despite this clear Biblical teaching, there is a widely held theological belief that man's attainment of the kingdom of heaven is not primarily dependent on individual effort, but on faith in the cleansing effect of Jesus' blood shed upon the cross —and that by this act of sacrifice he mollified an angry Deity, and vicariously paid the debt of sin for all mankind. But when we refer to the record of Jesus' teaching and healing work, we find no evidence of this theory. Instead, we see proof after proof of a God who is unchanging Love—a God who needs no reconciliation with His children.

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