Can Christians rely
on faith alone as their personal plan for salvation? The "reformers"
of the 16th century implied that they could. Martin Luther even
added the word "alone" in Romans 3:28: "a person is
justified by faith [alone] apart from works of the law". A look
at the entire Biblical message, however, shows that this faith alone
thinking is in fact unsupported. It also shows the inseparable
relationship between faith and works.
St. Paul wrote to
Christian communities where some members claimed that one must first
become a Jew to be a Christian. All of his "works of the law"
statements refer to the Jewish statutes. He thus emphasized to the
Gentiles in those communities that their initial justification is
based on their faith in Jesus (similar to Abram and his faith
response to God in Genesis) rather than on works of the (Jewish) law,
particularly circumcision, but he is not implying that the works
which accompany and manifest their Christian faith are of no
consequence. The Epistle of James agrees and points out that
Abraham's works in conjunction with his faith continued the process
of justification.
Note that St. Paul
makes other statements in Romans such as "justified freely by
His grace" and "justified by His blood", which show
that justification comes from more than faith alone. James makes it
even clearer by stating that believers are justified by works and not
by faith alone, and that faith without works is dead! Jesus
tells us that it is not enough to profess "Lord, Lord" and
expect to be saved without doing the will of the Father in Heaven,
and in His talk about the final judgment He makes it quite clear that
works are an integral part of our faith life that leads to salvation.
In Matthew 16:27 Jesus states, "For the Son of man will come with His angels in His Father's glory, and then He will repay everyone according to his conduct." The Catholic Church
has always taught that we are saved by grace through faith in
conjunction with works of charity. Thus it is that the corporal
works of mercy such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked,
visiting the sick, etc., play a primary role in completing the
justification process that helps us attain the goal of our faith, the
salvation of our soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment