A Note on Justification
It's interesting to note that the beginnings of my search on the Catholic Doctrine of Justification, I am finding that they teach the same thing I argued for in 8th grade when debating the doctrine of Eternal Security. Essentially, that salvation does not depend on faith alone (sola fide), but also upon your obedience to God (which they refer to as works of grace).
The only difference lies in perspective, where as I stressed that your obedience (which is a work, or action) flows naturally from faith, the Catholic perspective seems to stress that faith justifies initially and that good works (including obedience) perfect and complete that justification. Not necessarily that one flows from the other, but that we must make a conscious decision to do good (James 4:17). At least, this is what John Salza teaches on his website and in The Biblical Basis for the Catholic Faith.
... Actually, looking at what I've written I'm not sure there's much of a difference at all. The reason that we would consciously choose to do something which we may not really feel like doing at the time is because of what we believe. Aka, our faith.
But the demons believe and tremble. They have a belief in God, they have faith that he exists, but they have no desire to please him. Hmmm......
posted by She who is by birth... at 9:30 AM
1 Comments:
Justification is not simple to understand because it talks about predestination and most when confronted by predestination recoil slightly but although it is difficult to understand it is vital to accept it. Paul in Romans 8v30 talks about God calling and its important to understand that it is God that calls us "and those who he calls he also justified"
Faith and works do not play a part and even when you read James on this we can see James is saying "works are a fruit of the spirit and not as an add on or as a way to gain but we do good works because of faith and not to gain faith"
A few passages that help us to grasp this are Rom 3v26 Rom 3v28 Rom 5v1 Gal 2v16
Justification comes to us entirely by God's grace, not on account of any merit in ourselves. Rom 1:18-3:20
He goes on to say we all fall short of the glory of God and it by his grace as a gift(free gift)through Jesus we are saved.
Grace=unmerited favour
The idea that obediance flows naturally from faith can only be true insofar as we are in a right relationship with God.
Justification and adoption go together. We are adopted into God's family. He chose us, we did not choose him and this is the difficult part......Even our acceptence of Christ is a gift of God in that he turned our hearts to accept Jesus.
If I was to say that one million could read the bible and understand it but only one person would be changed, not because they understood it more or done anything more but out of God's grace, God decided they would be saved and the others God decided would not, would we think that unfair of God?
Or would we praise him as saved christians even more because of his grace.
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