What is Grace and how does it work?

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lagerald24

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I’ve been wanting to start a thread on grace for a while. Over the past several months, I’ve been talking with my Protestant friends at school about apologetics and the topic of grace comes up often. One of my friends is a Presbyterian/Calvinist and has some interesting views about grace. This friend is concerned that we Catholics earn grace and I was wondering what does it mean to earn grace? Also, this friend believes that the Sacraments don’t convey or give us grace but rather are manifestations of grace. Anyway, I’m open to thoughts and some more questions and comments. Thanks!
 
With the Calvinist view, they have to fit their view of the sacraments around their view of grace. They believe in the irresistibility of grace. In other words, once God gives you his grace, you are justified and saved. Then your sanctification begins, but there’s nothing you can do to reject that grace.

In light of this view, if they believed that the sacraments conveyed God’s grace, it would logically follow that all you had to do to be saved is to be baptized.

As I understand it, they believe that the notion that you can seek God’s grace before receiving it, even if that seeking is literally just asking for it, amounts to the notion that you have to earn it. In their view, God decided from the beginning of time to whom he’d offer his grace. If he offers it to you, you will accept it. If he doesn’t offer it to you, there’s nothing you can do to seek it.
 
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That’s a good point. This friend said in our written dialogue that, “The work that Jesus did was done once and for all and nothing that we do affects that. We are reconciled to God, and it is solely a work of God and not of our own. Repeated action for the forgiveness of sins achieves nothing, Jesus died and paid the price for all of our sins, forgiveness is given to us when we receive him as our saviour. We do not need anything that Jesus did not give us when we are saved, we can do nothing to add to what he did, or receive more of it.”

As Catholics, we would agree with some of the points brought up. However, I was interested when she said that “Repeated action for the forgiveness of sins achieves nothing.” So basically, in my friend’s position, once a person accepts Christ and asks for forgiveness of their sins, all sins are forgiven, past, present, AND FUTURE. I was kind of bugged by that, obviously. What are your thoughts?
 
Yeah, that’s basically my understanding of their beliefs. Once saved, always saved is a Calvinist position.

There’s a problem there: there is absolutely no way to reconcile OSAS with having moral commandments. If you publicly reject God, marry and divorce seventeen people of both sexes in succession, urinate on a Bible, and go on a seven-state killing spree, that wouldn’t lose you your salvation. Depending on the school of thought, they’d say that it proves that you were never saved to begin with, or that you’re already forgiven even for those actions, and while you might face temporal punishment, it doesn’t affect your standing with God.

I don’t understand how there are any Presbyterians who aren’t completely antinomian. Unlike Luther, who at least taught that we have to keep the faith, they literally don’t think any decisions we make matter, because they’re not actually decisions we make. If God doesn’t give us his grace, we’re thralls to sin. If he does, we’re thralls to God. Either way, we’re nothing more than puppets on a string, some of whom God has simply decided to damn for all eternity.
 
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Grace is Jesus John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
 
She defended her position with several verses that spoke about the forgiveness of sins. She pointed out that these passages didn’t just speak of the time that the sins were committed, they just spoke of the forgiveness of sins in general. With this reasoning, she defended the idea that all sins, past, present, and future were forgiven.

This friend went on to say that we do still sin, even after being saved, and that we should repent from those sins. She explained that Jesus is always making intercession for those who have been saved (Hebrews 7:25), and He has already paid that penalty for her sins. She said that repentance is really for her own sake, which confused me.
 
lagerald24 said:
She defended her position with several verses that spoke about the forgiveness of sins. She pointed out that these passages didn’t just speak of the time that the sins were committed, they just spoke of the forgiveness of sins in general. With this reasoning, she defended the idea that all sins, past, present, and future were forgiven.

This friend went on to say that we do still sin, even after being saved, and that we should repent from those sins. She explained that Jesus is always making intercession for those who have been saved (Hebrews 7:25), and He has already paid that penalty for her sins. She said that repentance is really for her own sake, which confused me.
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If you continue to push into that line of reasoning, you’ll eventually come to the idea that if you are saved you have no choice but to repent, and if you are not saved you have no choice but to not repent.

I think this is their idea of sanctification vs justification. You’re already saved and there’s nothing you can do to change that, but sins still damage your soul. You are compelled to repent to repair the damage to your soul.
 
grace can be lost like Samson ,he didn’t even know it ,st Paul also says of himself ,1 Corinthians 9:27 but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.

Philippians 2;12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

1 Peter 4:17 For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And

“If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinners?”
 
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Yeah, they tend to really separate sanctification and justification, even though the distinction isn’t biblical.
 
But it’s definitely necessary to defend OSAS, because it is obvious that justification, as the Catholics define the term, is not completed when you are forgiven of sins, because we don’t know anybody who gets saved and then spends the next 50 years never sinning.
 
Good point. I guess basically in the Reformed tradition, you both can’t do anything to gain salvation AND you can’t do anything to lose it. VERY UNBIBLICAL.
 
This is exactly right. Everything is predestined. God has decided who will be saved and who will be damned, and that’s that.

Kind of makes you wonder what the whole point of existence is.
 
They really hate it when I describe salvation in its past, present, and future aspects. They think of it as a solely one time thing and that’s it. The rest is sanctification, which at the end of the day, doesn’t really matter.
 
HopkinsReb said:
Kind of makes you wonder what the whole point of existence is.
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Yeah, for sure. They tend to say that God sends some to hell to show His Glory and justice, all based off a mistranslation of Romans Chapter 9.
 
lagerald24 said:
She explained that Jesus is always making intercession for those who have been saved (Hebrews 7:25), and He has already paid that penalty for her sins. She said that repentance is really for her own sake, which confused me.
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through the sacraments ,confession and intercession during the Mass
 
As if creating people, not allowing them to seek Him, then torturing them for all eternity for not seeking Him could describe a just and glorious God.
 
The Calvinist viewpoint tends to make us humans too passive, which I think leads to a lot of problems. From what I’ve seen, they say asking for forgiveness after you’re saved is just really for formalities, because all your sins have already been washed away when you first were saved. I can see this view leading to a presumption of final perseverance and, unfortunately, a very unhealthy view of how devastating sin can be.
 
They say they don’t do that. They claim that we have completely free will, but we are so depraved that we all freely choose not to seek God. Then that God’s grace is so powerful that we freely choose to follow it. It’s a really unconvincing attempt to square the circle. They say that when we say that we sometimes reject God’s grace, that would imply that God is not omnipotent (as if an omnipotent being is incapable of giving us what we need to do something without compelling us to do it).
 
HopkinsReb said:
If God doesn’t give us his grace, we’re thralls to sin. If he does, we’re thralls to God. Either way, we’re nothing more than puppets on a string, some of whom God has simply decided to damn for all eternity.
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It’s sad, really.
 
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