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St. Thomas On John 8:24, “You Will Die In Sin” Without Faith In Christ
In his commentary on John 8:24, St. Thomas again expresses his position (which is the teaching of the Church) that faith in Christ is required for salvation. Like other saints and doctors, he correctly teaches that people cannot be freed from original sin without faith in Christ. (The act of faith through which original sin is removed is the Sacrament of Baptism.) Thus, to be excluded from salvation it’s not necessary for people to reject Christ. Rather, regardless of whether they’ve heard of Jesus, people remain in original sin and are excluded from salvation unless they come to faith in Him (through baptism, etc.).
St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary On The Gospel of John (8:24): “‘I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.’ Then, in order not to entirely exclude all hope for their salvation, he proposes the remedy, saying, ‘For if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sin.’ He is saying in effect: You were born in original sin, from which you cannot be absolved except by my faith: because, if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sin.”
This explanation, that people remain in original sin without faith in Christ, is also rooted in the words of John 3:36. St. Robert Bellarmine has a good passage about this, as we covered in this video/article: How Is One Saved “By The Name Of Jesus Christ”? (Acts 4:12).
St. Robert Bellarmine, De Amissione Gratiae et Statu Peccati, Book 6, Chap. 2: “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him [John 3:36]… Correctly St. Augustine observed… that it was not said [in John 3:36]: ‘The wrath of God will come on them’, but ‘remains on them’, in order that we would understand faith in Christ to be necessary not only so that we would not fall into the wrath of God, but even that we might be freed from the wrath into which we have fallen through the disobedience of the first man. Concerning which it was stated by the Apostle to the Ephesians, chapter 2: For we were also by nature children of wrath…”
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