I cam across a question from a protestant that :Catholics believe "Faith without acts is dead"
That only faith is important that doing acts to “earn” God’s love,doesnt God loves us anyway? Isn’t faith alone essential than “doing things or performing things” to earn God acceptance and love? Something like in Islam,where Faith alone isnt enough but performing certain rituals and etc is important to gain God’s love…?
Thankyou…
The quote of Catholic belief is a direct biblical quotation. Look at James 2:14-26
For a protestant to reject this belief is to reject the Bible that they hold so dear.
Don’t get me wrong: your works be they charitable, be they evangelical (part of Charity) be they receiving the Sacraments: None of this can save you.
It is by the Grace of God, through the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross that we are saved. We accept and asscent to this salvation and accept our redemption by an act of Faith.
We live the Christian Live by remaining steadfastly faithfull to Our Lord and Saviour for the rest of our Lives.
What St. James is teaching us in his letter, is paralelled in the Gospel, it says that If I call “Lord Lord” but have not live how Jesus instructed me. If I claim to have Followed Jesus “Greatest Commandment”, but have failed to Love my Neighbour then my “faith” was never “Faithfull”. I never truly believed in Jesus.
I never Truly Loved God. if I did I would have been wholly convicted of my own Guilt in permitting the sinners around me to go unchallenged. Their guilt is mine unless I warn them
I would have been wholly convicted of my greed in having a Home, and Wife, a Car, Food, Clothes, a Job, while there are people freezing to death in the snow just a mile from my warm house - where my cupboards are bursting with unused spare blankets.
I would have seen the plight of the people in Haiti. in Ethopia. in Palestine. I would have seen the plight of the asylum seekers and “Down and outs” who are brutalised by my government and those who have died from their injuries after being “Restrained” by the thugs hired by my government to deport them.
There is too much in this world for any one person to fix. we must each of us listen to The Lord. He has a job for each of us to do.
“He has no hands but mine. No Ears but mine, No lips but mine”… to paraphrase an old prayer.
If I am not doing the Work of God, I do not truly have Faith in Him, only a mental ascent to an intellectual belief, or an attachment to a warm fuzzy feeling I get from a style of communal “worship” where I’m more interested in what feelings of fulfillment I get out of the “Prayer” than listening to the Gospel, and responding to its commands to:
Love God.
Love your neighbour
Spread the Good News to all men
Feed the Hungry, Clothe the Naked, Visit the Prisoner and the Sick.
Just paying for someone else to do these works is not enough (though it’s a start). God wants you to get directly involved.
If not, then you need to ask yourself if you truly are being Faithfull to Jesus, and what he told you to do.
It’s not the Works that save you, but if you are not heeding the call to these works, out of Love for your fellow man, then you do not have true Faith, or have an infant or sickly faith which needs much nurturing and healing.
