Salvation by the merit of Christ

[guanophore]

Does your daily effort to take up your cross and follow Christ merit salvation for you in any degree at all? Or do you believe your successful effort to take up your cross daily (in the degree that you are able to do it) is simply because of what Christ accomplished on your behalf through His life and death on your behalf? Therefore, is it by the merit of Christ they you are able to obey?

We can never “deserve” salvation by any actions of our own, but we can become worthy of the great calling by which we are called.

Eph 4:1
“I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called”

Phil 1:27
“Only, live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ”

When we cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit, we become fruitful for the purposes of God.

2 Peter 1:5-9
5 For this very reason, **you must make every effort **to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, 6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, 7 and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. 8 For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We “merit” in the sense that we become effective and fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord.

Both things are true, our ability to merit is based solely in Christ and His redemptive work, and we have an obligation to respond to His sacrifice by giving our utmost for His highest. we “make every effort” by His grace, in Him, with Him, and through Him.

 

[guanophore]

God does change those who are united to Christ over time; therefore, salvation is a journey and a process which a sinner is becoming more like Christ. Do you believe Catholic and Protestant theology agrees that salvation is ultimately by the merit of Christ alone?

Yes, we just reject the concept that Christ is “alone” in that salvation. He wants us to cling to Him as branches to the vine, and to follow His commandments. We reject the notion that He did everything, so we need do nothing.

Again, I don’t believe salvation is by faith alone, or faith (+) works done in Christ. When the circle is made to trace the source that we are able to do anything that pleases God, it seems to all come back to the life and death of Christ which merited everything for us, enabling us to do what pleases God imperfectly.

Yes. Apart from him, we an do nothing. But this is what works done in Christ is all about. The same grace that produces justification in us produces the good works that He has set aside for us to do.

Eph 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

The “way of life” that is defined by the good works done in Christ is not separated from the grace that saved us through faith.

 

[Catholic_Jay]

Salvation by the merit of Christ:

How do Catholics and Protestants understand salvation through the merit of Christ the same way, and what are our differences?

Protestant: Salvation is given to all who believe in Jesus through the merit of Christ.
Catholic: Justification is given to all who believe and are baptized in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit, and we can lose justification through mortal sin (a grave sin done with full knowledge of it’s gravity and full consent) which can be regained through the sacrament of confession or perfect contrition. And all grace/gift of salvation is through the merit of Christ. We believe he’s put different requirement for giving that merit to us than Protestants.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which Pope John Paul II called “a sure norm for teaching the faith” explains it:

1257 The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation.(Cf. Jn 3:5.) He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them.(Cf. Mt 28:19-20; cf. Council of Trent (1547) DS 1618; LG 14; AG 5.) Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament.(Cf. Mk 16:16.) The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are “reborn of water and the Spirit.” God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.
1258 The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.
…
1861 Mortal sin is a radical possibility of human freedom, as is love itself. It results in the loss of charity and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace. If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices for ever, with no turning back. However, although we can judge that an act is in itself a grave offense, we must entrust judgment of persons to the justice and mercy of God.
…
1446 Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance for all sinful members of his Church: above all for those who, since Baptism, have fallen into grave sin, and have thus lost their baptismal grace and wounded ecclesial communion. It is to them that the sacrament of Penance offers a new possibility to convert and to recover the grace of justification. The Fathers of the Church present this sacrament as "the second plank [of salvation] after the shipwreck which is the loss of grace."47

 

[KathleenGee]

It all gets down to we dying to ourselves and allowing the new life of Jesus Christ to enter into us…through our choice of free will in the act of faith of worshipping Him and receiving His actual life into our beings…

We receive His body, blood, soul, divinity, each day a walk closer in union with Him, so that if we do any good, it is not us but Christ working through us and enduring in Him to tne end of our lives.