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dcdurel
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We will be glad to show you the biblical witness to each of those if you bring each one up separately in a different and separate thread.
Actually, the teaching handed down from the apostles is that the specific moment we are made right in God’s sight is when we are baptized. In other words, it is not when we are converted that we are justified by grace, but it is when we are baptized the we are justified by the grace Jesus merited by His death and resurrection.
We can’t submit to God’s will without grace. We receive God’s grace through prayer, the sacraments, and by further obedience.
In the sacraments, we receive grace Jesus merited on the cross. Baptism is the beginning and the Eucharist is the greatest source of that grace. Look up all bible verses on eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus. The greatest prayer is the mass in which we receive more of the victory that Jesus won on the cross, the grace of salvation.
The the New Testament teaches over and over that we can lose God’s grace and salvation by serious, mortal sin. That is why we must repent, in confession when we commit mortal sin.
God bless you.
If you don’t understand some Catholic teaching. Please feel free to ask. But, do it one at a time. Many teachings are answered on the home page on the left side of the page, in the library section.
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
Church Militant said:
Or:
Every scripture is…Every inspired writing is…
All inspired writing is… ##
Wrong question - because that arithmetical method, with its weighing of good works against bad, is not how we are saved. We are not judged by a system of Divine book-keeping, for God is not an accountant: we are saved by grace - not by something akin to the weighing of the soul in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Grace, unlike salvation by good works, is non-quantitative - it is qualitative instead: and therefore it leaves no room for man to boast; for man does good works at all, the good works he does are not things he presents to Christ to show how virtuous he is, but things he can do only because Christ works through him to do them. So boasting on man’s part is entirely excluded.
Man does not, and cannot, save himself; no more than he can fly by pulling on his shoelaces. To be saved at all, requires the saving act of God, judging sinful man, and granting him the grace of His salvation. This is not a reasonable mode of action for a God Who abhors all unrighteousness - so only God can so act. Grace is beyond reason, and not reducible to it.If man could save himself - he would not need God at all.
A mere legal approach has no room for grace, so it is disabled from understanding how the God of grace saves, from the outset.
Grace takes away any reason for man to boast, so it destroys his pride and self-sufficiency - but it also destroys any need for him to worry whether he is doing enough to save himself. He can never do enough, because he is finite and sinful and corrupted in all his faculties - whereas God is not holy, but is Holiness without limit. To be saved, man must reject all means of salvation that are from him, because all are useless: he has to receive salvation as a free gift from Another - as something not due to him, but due solely to the gracious initiative of the God to Whom he is entirely subject, whether he chooses to be or not. For to be subject to God, is to be a creature. ##
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