Faith and Works

Ever did any good deeds hoping to erase the effects of sin, like donating money or time to the Church or a charity as a self-prescribed penance? I know I have - one of the reasons I started this blog was to bring people back to faith, in return for the many I have taken away from faith. For me, it was a reasonable thought process - I have done something bad, now I want to correct it and hope that God would forgive me for what I have done. But now that I said it like that I sense something wrong with it, I feel something divine in that statement, as if I am doing God's job. St. Paul said it the best: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8,9), and I just did the opposite. I picked out some of the horrendous things I have done and tried to make up for it with time and money. But now I am confused - if I am to quit doing everything I have been doing since my "conversion" because none of that is required of me to earn good credits with God, then what is the difference between me of the old and me of the new. If I get up in the morning everyday, kneel down in front of the Crucifix and accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, then go on with my life as I have in the past, that would make me a good Christian, really?


Sometimes I just have to agree with the Protestant Christians, we Catholics do do a lot of stuff that is not on the books. We all, at some point, have made the mistake of actually praying to Mother Mary or one of the Saints, we have credited them with 'Favors Received', and we do a lot of things in the name of charity, in part, to make up for any of our transgressions. Sometimes we do forget that all the graces are from God and God alone, and that Mother Mary and the Saints only intercede for us - they don't grant us any graces. We also turn a blind eye to the fact that God's grace and salvation cannot be bought, not with anything that any of us have anyway. So what is it then; are we wrong and the Protestants right? 

It is important for all of us to understand that the Catholic Church never taught salvation by works. That is a heresy called Pelagianism named after Pelagius, who taught that moral perfection was attainable in this life without the assistance of divine grace through human free will. Saint Augustine, one of the most influential early Church Fathers, contradicted this by saying that perfection was impossible without grace because we are born sinners, with a sinful heart and will. Pelagianism was condemned by the Church in A.D 418, and the condemnation was ratified by the Council of Ephesus in A.D 431. 

In the early 1500s, a German monk with the Order of St. Augustine named Martin Luther, through his writings Ninety-Five Theses, argued that faith alone is needed for salvation. It is important to note that the 'alone' in 'faith alone' came from Luther, not from St. Paul. So the Church asked Luther to recant, but he refused. Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther in 1521, making Luther an iconic figure in the Protestant reformation. 

So salvation by works is a heresy and salvation by grace alone is also a heresy. But we also need to remember that a heresy is not always a total lie. A heresy can be a distorted truth or an over-emphasized truth that amounts to the exclusion of several other truths. While salvation by works is totally false, there is some truth to the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone. What Luther didn't say was that a person who has genuine faith "works out their salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). That means, there is a lot more to faith than just professing it, true faith require action. An individual with genuine faith is motivated to do good works. He doesn't do good works in order to be a follower of Christ, rather the good works are a result of him being a follower of Christ. By allowing himself to be open to the grace of God through faith, an individual gets transformed from the inside out. The good work he does is the result of him becoming "a new creation in Christ: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

We are saved by the grace of God through faith, and we practice our faith through obedience, good intentions and good works such as supporting the Church and charities, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison, and fighting for the oppressed. So next time when we get ready to perform an act of charity or fulfill a religious obligation, just remember this: "We can never redeem ourselves; we cannot pay God the price for our lives, because the payment for a human life is too great. What we could pay would never be enough" (Psalm 49:7,8 GNT). I no longer contribute to this blog to make up for any of my past mistakes, I do it to keep me from making the same mistakes again and to surrender to the saving grace of God which enables me to write through the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. I encourage all of you to do the good deeds not because you want God's love, but to show faith in a God who never stopped loving you.

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead (James 2:14-17).

(I thank Fr. Dwight Longnecker and his book "More Christianity" for much of the Theology in this post)