A Poem about Salvation

While studying Buddhism for my World Religions class this afternoon, I came across an interesting poem inspired by one of the principles of Theravada Buddhism:

No one saves us but ourselves; no one can and no one may.
We ourselves must tread the Path; Buddhas only show the way.

Replacing the word Buddhas (or Enlightened Ones) with words like prophets or angels, there is some truth to this. We must work out our own salvation, to the extent that we can. We ourselves must tread the path, though we may need and receive help along the way.

Yet, it's not true that we save ourselves. While it's theoretically possible for a person to be so perfect that they are justified according to the laws of justice, all of us fall short of such perfection. Thus, we need to be saved by Jesus' grace and by the law of mercy. Jesus doesn't "only show the way." He opened up the way. In fact, He is the Way.

We know that it's by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. We must do as much as we can, and we may have to do some of it alone, but we can't do it all by ourselves. We need both grace and works. We need to tread the path, but we also rely on Christ to keep it open.