Works from faith

[Ric]

…as many of you here know that I am an avid supporter of our military troops fighting the war against terrorism. Here is a quick story that I can parallel to works from faith:

I was eating lunch last Friday at my favorite B-B-Q restaurant and the table where the hostess sat me was next to two soldiers that just got home from Iraq. I struck up a conversation with the two of them and we talked for about five minuets. When their waitress refilled their drinks I asked her to give me the two soldiers’ check. So I bought their lunch (just a small way to show my support to our troops).

Later that day I was thinking prayerfully and it hit me that my support caused my action of buying their lunch. Anyone can say that they support our troops, but the proof is in what you do to support your claim. Just like faith! If one truly has saving faith in Christ, one’s actions will come from that faith. No works for salvation will be of any use because there is no faith to begin with. If you haft to work for your salvation your actions are showing that you do not have the faith in what Jesus did for you and that you are then relying on your own works to gain entrance into Heaven. If you do have faith then you are assured of Heaven, so then your actions will show that.

I hope I was able to communicate this little parallel that I thought of without any confusion.

God Bless!

 

[Fidelis]

Ric:

No works for salvation will be of any use because there is no faith to begin with. If you haft to work for your salvation your actions are showing that you do not have the faith in what Jesus did for you and that you are then relying on your own works to gain entrance into Heaven.

Not to be rude, Ric, because I know you mean well, but…No DUH!! Who here believes they can get to heaven just by working their way there? Nobody here that follows the teaching of the Church which long ago condemned Pelagianism, semi or otherwise.The Protestant canard that Catholics believe in and follow a crass system of works-righteousness sometimes borders on an obsession.

**CCC 161 **
Believing in Jesus Christ and in the One who sent him for our salvation is necessary for obtaining that salvation. “Since “without faith it is impossible to please [God]” and to attain to the fellowship of his sons, therefore without faith no one has ever attained justification, nor will anyone obtain eternal life 'But he who endures to the end.(Mt 10:22; 24:13 and Heb 11:6)”

 

[Mijoy2]

Am I the only one who sees this; faith vs. works debate as:

I say tomayyyto and you say tomahhhto?

Protestants say, If you have a true Faith, your works will lend evidence. Yet it’s your Faith that justifies you. If you only posses a *said *Faith, you will likely not honor this Faith with works. If you truly love God you will work to please Him.

Catholics say, Mortal sin seperates us from God. We need to repent our sins and work, attempt to make progress, at not sinning further. If we do, we again repent. We repent to the God we have Faith in. Hence, our Faith follows with works.

I simply fail to see the difference. To me it seems like two children battle over the same toy, “it’s mine”, no “it’s mine”, when in fact it’s both of thiers.

Think of the Joy of one church amongst all Christians. Think of how it would strengthen the Faith of many. Yet we insist on word games.

 

[Teresa9]

Dear friends

There is no salvation by faith alone! There never was and there never will be because even though a person may have faith , they still can fall from grace by their actions. Faith in God brings about LOVE for God and when we love God we wish to keep His will, not ours and this is where our actions come in, in our very thoughts, in our very words, in our very actions we desire to please our Lord and though we may fall from grace by sin (sin is the going against God’s will) He gave us the Sacrament of Reconciliation so that by His Holy Will we can once again resume our grace by God’s will of absolution.

Yes by faith you are justified, but not by faith alone. Justification first starts with faith, but then we have to live out this faith in our daily lives however small the way we live it, each breathe of the day is a good work if we do it in Christ Jesus, each action of caring, each word we say. (try reading the book 'Story of a Soul, by St Therese and look at her ‘little way’ )

To seperate grace from faith is like trying to seperate God from His son and His son from the Holy spirit, they are intrinsic, they are inseperable.

If you have faith, then it is not based on mere feelings and emotions, it is an ACT of your WILL to join with God’s WILL and what follows is adherance and obedience to His laws and none of this is possible without GRACE from God.

To have salvation just by a confession of faith, is to reject the course of your life in friendship with God, your life is to be lived in accordance with His laws and His will; a striving to be like Christ Jesus, who in works and in faith served His Father in heaven in friendship and love even until death.

At the end of time when Christ comes, from His own words in Sacred Scripture, Jesus will ask ‘when did you feed me? clothe me? ( this is not just bodily feeding as in food, but spiritual feeding as in the Word of God or the kind word to help another…look at this whole passage and spiritual feeding clothing etc can be applied, it is not just the charitable work of physical care but also spiritual care) etc…as you did this for the least of these you did it for Me’ this is clearly the grace of doing good works, good works will not save you alone without faith and faith alone will not save you without good works, both are intrinsic to each other and both are required for salvation. BOTH must be done in first LOVE of God our Father and secondly in LOVE of each other. You cannot love God if you do not love each person He created, all are His children.

No single piece of Sacred Scripture should be taken out of it’s context but in the context of the WHOLE plan of God which is laid out both in the New Testament and in the Old Testament.

NOTHING at all is possible without God’s grace, the gift of grace to have faith, the gift of grace to do good, the gift of grace to persevere and sustian your faith, the gift of grace to live, etc etc, everything is under his hand and everything is from His generosity and love and no person can sustain anything without His grace and this grace comes about from the joining of your WILL with God’s WILL, this brings faith and it brings a good and just life by thought, word and deed.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[Teresa9]

Mijoy2:

Am I the only one who sees this; faith vs. works debate as:

I say tomayyyto and you say tomahhhto?

Protestants say, If you have a true Faith, your works will lend evidence. Yet it’s your Faith that justifies you. If you only posses a *said *Faith, you will likely not honor this Faith with works. If you truly love God you will work to please Him.

Catholics say, Mortal sin seperates us from God. We need to repent our sins and work, attempt to make progress, at not sinning further. If we do, we again repent. We repent to the God we have Faith in. Hence, our Faith follows with works.

I simply fail to see the difference. To me it seems like two children battle over the same toy, “it’s mine”, no “it’s mine”, when in fact it’s both of thiers.

Think of the Joy of one church amongst all Christians. Think of how it would strengthen the Faith of many. Yet we insist on word games.

It is not the same to my mind as how do you have the strength by yourself without God’s Will and absolution, to stand again in full grace before Him if you do not feel you require the saving grace of the Sacrament of reconciliation because you are simply justified by your faith???

It is not a case of people arguing over the same thing, it is a case of people rejecting the Will of god and one party constantly bearing witness to the Full truth of Christ. Protestants are not without Christ nor are they without truth, they are without the fullness of truth.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[Mijoy2]

Teresa9:

It is not the same to my mind as how do you have the strength by yourself without God’s Will and absolution, to stand again in full grace before Him if you do not feel you require the saving grace of the Sacrament of reconciliation because you are simply justified by your faith???

It is not a case of people arguing over the same thing, it is a case of people rejecting the Will of god and one party constantly bearing witness to the Full truth of Christ. Protestants are not without Christ nor are they without truth, they are without the fullness of truth.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

Teresa,

I understand your point. I’d be at a loss without the Sacrament of Reconciniliation. The Graces I receive from confessing my sins through the Sacrament of Reconciliation have been of tremendous value. My point was more that we are not at odds on the most basic fundamental of Justification as the misuse of words would seem to imply.

–Mike

 

[Teresa9]

Dear friend

Faith is faith whether you have a deep, knowledgeable and devout faith or a faith that is simple, less knowledgeable but still fixed in Christ. It is still faith, having faith does not then deem that you will live a just life, on both counts we have to committ our will to God’s law. It is not sufficient to just believe, it requires a dedication of life and our thoughts, words and actions. To say because someone sins they do not have faith wipes out all who have faith, because we all sin. It does not therefore naturally follow that once a person has faith then they will be without sin and perform good works as a matter of course, this is why justification by faith ALONE cannot stand, it has to be of works and constant repentance in faith.

While both parties ( Protestant and Catholic) deal with the same subject they are not differing on wording or a similar concept, they are differing in a TOTAL doctrine on faith and justification. It is two differing slants on the same subject and only one can be right and truth on this. St Paul speaks clearly on justification (this is the sole topic of faith he addresses and does not address at that time as Jesus already has done …works) because of faith and Jesus speaks clearly on works the both are married and inseperable and faith is measured by the practice of both belief and deeds of mind and act. In no single place in Sacred Scripture does it say we are justified by faith ALONE. The word ‘alone’ never appears. It is a combination of the two.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[Mijoy2]

Teresa,

I hope you can bear with me a bit longer on this. Your knowledge is much deeper then mine and I have an opportunity here to learn.

If I may, let me try to very concisely state what I understand I should believe and follow as a Catholic:

#1 First and foremost, a belief in God and a belief He sent His Son to die for my trangressions on the cross 2000 years ago.

#2 I, to the best of my ability chose to walk with the Lord, in (as you say) dedication of life and our thoughts, words and actions.

Now comes the part of which I Hope I am on the right track: I will fail to do the second part perfectly because I am a sinner. These failures (sin) if mortal will seperate me from Jesus. For this reason I go to Confession to make things right again, to be forgiven, to receive Absolution, so that I may once again have a positive relationship with Jesus. The number of times or the extent of which, I fall is not what matters (70 times 7). What matters is that my efforts are true and sincere and I constantly humble myself and ask for forgiveness.

*** I’d love comments on the above ****

Having said this, and assuming a certain degree of agreement on the above, let me see if I understand where we and many Protestants may be in disagreement.

Protestants are in full agreement of #1 from above. Where we differ is in #2. Protestants do not believe they can fall away from the Lord if they commit a mortal sin. Hence (I suppose) the concept of mortal sin (since they cannot fall away) does not exist.

What I do not understand then is this: I’ve heard many Evangelist Protestants (mostly a respected radio personality with his own popular show) state, when questioned about Protestants who may have sinned in a grevious manner (murder, adultry, assault etc) that these Protestants likely never had a “true” Faith. He goes further to state that they likely had a “said” Faith and therefore had no Faith at all. Hmmmm as I type this I think I may have just seen your point. You are saying that even if thier faith was “true”, they still have seperated themselves from the Lord. And this is the point where we and the Protestant may be in disagreement.

Although I think both parties do agree that it all comes down to Grace and just how much Mercy we will receive. Wouldn’t this be true?

 

[Teresa9]

Dear friend

Even on the first point we differ in that Protestants say that faith alone justifies, while Catholics say in our faith we are justified in faith in Christ but we must also live a Christ-like life.

You are right in that we will fall, but we INTEND not to and this is what matters, sometimes after an event we realise we have sinned or whilst it is happening, sometimes we are mean in spirit and think badly of another or wish them ill, these are sins in as much as going up and hitting someone or commiting murder is, but they are not as severe, they are venial the latter being mortal.True contrition and repentance and sorrow is what is required for absolution and a desire not to commit these sins again with the help of God’s grace. Protestants as you have rightly said do believe that someone who sins grieviously could never have had true faith, this is not so, people who sin grieviously can have at the time true faith, but even commit a mortal sin. We as Catholics believe someone can have belief in Christ and fall from God’s grace by committing a mortal sin and this is why Christ gave us absolution in reconciliation because we know we have committed a grievous sin and are no longer in the grace of God, therefore we can restore this, there is no room for this in Protestantism.This clearly illustrates faith and works as inseperable and there is no justification with one of these elements alone, but the two together. We should try and intend with all our hearts, mind and souls not to sin because we have faith and because we love God, but if we do, He will absolve and forgive, in Christ there is no past, what is bound on earth is bound in heaven.

Reconciliation is not a ‘get out’ clause for committing sins and then being able again to stand in grace, we first should desire NOT to sin, but if and when we fall, the grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation will make us stand in grace before God again.

We all rely on God’s mercy but His mercy is freely available in reconciliation for all those who seek it, also those who are merciful themselves will be treated mercifully by the Lord.

To strip Sacred Scripture in one element must therefore mean that all elements are stripped and if we do that then why do we pay any attention to the bible at all, indeed if any piece of scripture is read and taken on it’s sole context it doesn’t make sense alone, it has to be read and discerned in it’s whole truth, which is the bible entire.

Fundamentalism of Protestantism leaves no room for Christ to be salvific after His death and ressurection, in that reconciliation is not recognised, nor the Real presence of the Eucharist, it is an act of the past, and not of the present and future as well as the past as we as Catholics see it. I suppose they may as well be reading a history book, this is the problem with Sola Scripture thinking…for us the Gospel is the LIVING Word, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, that reveals itself constantly throughout the ages and this is why Catholic doctrine and dogma develops under the Majesterium of the Church and the Popes Infallibility. A further problem with Protestant takes on Scripture is that there is no sole head figure that decrees all as we have in our Pontiff, so there are sects within sects and division within division.

But as I have said Protestants are not without Christ or the truth, they have it, but they do not have the FULLNESS of truth, that is only found in the Catholic Church. Protestants love Christ as much as Catholics do, their worship as sincere, but they do not have the Truth in all it’s elements.

I hope this is the sort of explanation you were looking for.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

 

[Mijoy2]

Teresa9:

I hope this is the sort of explanation you were looking for.

God Bless you and much love and peace to you

Teresa

It went a long way toward helping, yes.
Thank you and God Bless