Sure-- most evangelicals believe something like, Christ’s sinless life and perfect death are “counted to our spiritual accounts,” as it were, when we trust in Him. When God looks at us, although he is obviously not deceived as to the actual only-partially-sanctified, continually-messing-up state of our souls, in another sense He sees us “through the lens of Christ,” so that His wrath doesn’t abide on us any more than it would on Christ. It’s as though we have lived and died as Christ did, and God “accounts us righteous for Christ’s sake.” When we stand before Him at the judgment, He will judge us innocent as Christ is innocent, because we are “clothed with” Christ (the “garments of righteousness” that Isaiah talks about.)
I underlined the portions where Catholic thinking/teaching would likely vary.
You note that when God looks at us He is obviously not deceived. For a Catholic, that truth is part of the way God sees us even He is looking at us “through the lens of Christ”. In other words, if we are sinful, He sees us that way at the same time He sees us as someone Christ loved and died for; as someone who believes in Christ. He does not see as as perfectly innocent if we are in fact not perfectly innocent. God is truth; to see us as innocent when we are not, would not be truth.
Catholic teaching is that we will not enter heaven until we truly ARE completely purified of sin, completely innocent. Since this is not always accomplished while on earth, further purification may continue after death (the state we call Purgatory). When God sees us as perfectly innocent, we **really will be **perfectly innocent/pure. That’s how powerful the life of His grace working in us is and will be.
Evangelicals ALSO believe in sanctification-- that the Holy Spirit immediately starts His major remodelling job on our souls, as soon as we trust Christ; that we really do change internally, become new creations, and that the newborn person inside us is in a continual struggle with the flesh, that is, our previous natures, that remain with us like a bad cold hanging on until our death, although gradually becoming less and less “dominant” in our lives.
We would be pretty much in agreement here. Just a point or two of further clarification regarding Catholic teaching where I know there is sometimes a difference in Catholic and non-Catholic understanding.
- regarding our “nature” - Catholic teaching is that the damage to our nature that resulted from Adam’s original sin (disordered passions/concupisences) is not “sin” that we incur *personal *guilt for. Altho these disorders in our nature do serve as temptations to sin, we are guilty of sin only when we freely choose to give in to those temptations and act contrary to God’s revealed will. (I think Protestant teaching sometimes considers the disordered passions themselves as sins in us.)
I guess this sanctification and new birth is the equivalent of the Catholic “infused righteousness.”
The infused righteousness of Catholic teaching is a reference to the supernatural life of God (sanctifying grace) that is infused into our souls at baptism. That is the moment of our new birth. It is the power of God’s life in us that makes possible our sanctification - if we cooperate with Him.
But no Evangelical would ever hope to stand before God on the basis of his own changed or sanctified heart-- it’s still only by Christ’s gift of completed righteousness that we can boldly come before the throne of grace, both now and at the judgment.
The terminology/manner of expression above is not “Catholic”, and yet it may well be that what you mean by it is very close (if not the same) to Catholic understanding. I’d probably just switch some of your phrases around.
No Catholic could every hope to stand before God if Christ had not died for us, making atonement for our sins, reconciling us to God, and meriting the restoration of the supernatural life of grace. It is only through Our Lord’s merits that we are enabled to stand before Him after death in a state of conversion and sanctification.
