Why does your church say you're
saved by works, not by faith?
If you don't know about many fundamentalist theories, let me shed some
light on them for you briefly. Protestants follow Martin Luther's idea
that the moment you take Christ as your savior, you are saved and therefore
have guaranteed yourself a place in heaven. Protestants believe you
are saved by faith alone mainly beacuse one day Martin Luther read
a scripture passage in a letter from Paul to the Romans which stated:
"For in it is revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith; as
it is written, "The one who is righteous by faith will live." (1:17)
As Catholics we believe that we can never earn our way into heaven,
it is by God's graces alone that we can get there. The cathecism states
very clearly:
"Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free
and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children
of God, adpotive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life." (No.1996)
Now the Catholic Church believes we are saved by grace alone, but we're
not saved by faith alone. The bible even states in the letter of James:
"See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone...[F]aith
without works is dead." (2:24, 26)
or how about in Matthew:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven." (7:21)
(There are more, email me if you want those too.)
So what you say is....
-
Catholics believe that salvation
comes through acceptance of and cooperation with God's freely
given grace: That's Faith.
-
Catholics believe that what Jesus
told us is true; Our actions affect our salvation.
-
Catholics believe that the good
that we do is important in regard to our salvation. But we also
believe that our "power" to do good has nothing to
do with us, and everything to do with God.
-
There's simply no support for the
fundamentalist view of faith and works in the Scriptures. Jesus
and Paul both indicate that we'll be judged, in part, by our
earthly actions. And when Paul speaks of obedience to the Law
as being powerless to save, he's talking to Jewish Christians
about the replacement of the Old Covenant with the New Covenant
through Jesus.