The bottom line is that God wants all people to be saved. That is why Christ came (cfr 1 Timothy 2,3-6). We learn in the Scriptures how we are to be saved and become the “adopted children” of God. Above all, this is possible through baptism and through the subsequent striving to follow God’s will, with his help.

At baptism, the grace of the Holy Spirit forgives us our sins, making us adopted children of God and giving us membership of Christ’s body, the Church. Put another way, baptism bestows upon us God’s righteousness and justice. It is “righteous” and “just” to be baptised because we are God’s creatures and, being the One who is righteousness himself, the One who is justice himself, he wants what is best for us. What is best for us is to be united with him.

But we need faith if we are to be justified, otherwise our salvation would be assured and God’s justice would be worthless. What is that faith in? Ultimately, our faith is in Christ and what He has done for us. We say that our faith flows from the “merits” of Christ’s saving work, that is, of his dying and rising again.

Our salvation depends on our cooperation with God’s grace. The good works that we carry out on earth gain their merit in God’s sight through the power of Jesus’s own merits (cfr 2 Timothy 4,7; Revelation 2,23).

Justification then is the greatest work of God’s love. It offers to us the very life of the Trinity. We become “justified” when we fully cooperate with God’s justifying plan to save us. No-one is saved against his or her will: that would be the ultimate injustice. On the contrary, justification respects our freedom to choose or to reject God.

We ‘merit’ our justification by our good works. Through them, we cooperate with God’s saving work (cfr Colossians 3,23-25), even “making up for what is still lacking”, as Saint Paul says, in Christ’s own work (cfr Colossians 1,24). In practice, this means seeking the sacraments of the Church and striving to lead lives that bear witness to the Christian call to holiness.