Live 4 The LORD

I AM CATHOLIC AND I AM BEING SAVED

I am Catholic: In response to the anathema’s from Trent (see them below)

Justification and sanctification are tied together (not separate) if one fails the other is failing. We are justified and sanctified as we walk through by Grace through Faith in loving obedience (works) it’s not just imputation it’s transformation journey. (See car analogy below)

Works are given by God to us to do. He will to work in us. We are working out salvation - Jesus gave us some of the cross, we are to carry it every day. We are God’s fellow builders in the kingdom. We each have a vocation from God. Suffer with him gets the crown. This is not just faith-this is concrete blood sweat and tears from us. 

Confidence in divine mercy and cooperation with his will in my life. He has given me a mission. I must choose to act and then do it. Saying I have faith but not doing is dead faith. He can empower but I still have to move myself (I am a second cause)

Faith and choosing to cooperate with God merits something. It’s his power, but our choice to obey that merits when we do it. Faith without works is dead faith. Not just fruit of Holy Spirit though he offers it , i still need true choice to happen to obey - work. 

All sin has temporal punishment. I am required to amend my life and make restitution not just blotted out under the blood. 

God has chosen for us to be active causes. God gives grace, I accept and choose cooperation and then do or not. 

Reformed: passive recipient, don’t take responsibility 

Catholic: active cause, we are responsible for our doings (he will not save us without us)

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Summary of how I am saved:

Be HIS

Jesus Christ

IS GOD

IS ALIVE

IS LOVE

He wants to Heal Your Immortal Soul

He wants to live within You to guide you into communion and holiness, His design for living. 

You were made By God and For God, to know, love, and serve Him. 

Worship: give God Glory for being our Everything-The Giver of All Things

Covenant Relationship: Father and Child the exchange of giving of whole selves

Purpose: Serve - Doing His Will to Advance The Kingdom of God on Earth

Mission: Witness of Transforming Love so others will come 

Goal: To live in happiness with Him forever in heaven. 

Covenant of exchange:

He loves me (unconditionally)

I let him in (my response to his love is trust and acceptance)

He transforms my heart (shows the beauty of holiness and freedom from sin)

I want to do his will (I see his ways are purity and freedom)

He gives strength to do his will (surrendering to him he empowers me to do right)

I give glory (it was all his work, I bring a yes)

He is not threatening to leave, He is loving you into freedom. 

We corrupted the design for living by our first parents rebelling against His design. 

Now:

The world is corrupt 

Our flesh desires harmful things 

The devil tries to make us believe lies

We need God to know right and wrong, to decide which way to go, and the power to do right. 

Salvation

God, by His sheer Grace, through the Intercession of the only Savior, Jesus Christ, draws all humanity to Himself and offers to make them one with Him, sending His Holy Spirit to transform them and enable them to respond to His love. This salvation offered by God, by His Grace, requires a free response and acceptance from humanity, which is what faith consists of. 

Sufficient for All Man

Grace is the divine initiative that empowers us, and our cooperation is our free response to that empowerment, allowing God's life to transform us into Christlikeness leading us to holiness, or we can decide not to cooperate, resist and reject it. The ability to say "yes" is indeed a gift of grace, but it is a gift that can be freely rejected. 

If Yes, we receive the gift of Faith. Through faith in God and who He says He is, a person freely commits their entire self to God, responding to God's prior and superabundant love of giving His whole self to me, with concrete obedience to God through the Holy Spirit. God works within us to will and to do, we are still called to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling". This implies that our will remains free to either accept or neglect God's grace. The more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom.

The refusal of grace is attributed to the obstinacy of the human will, not to a deficiency in God's offer. He wants true love, not robots. He will not take free will away.  Human freedom remains essential. While God extends the gift of grace to all, enabling them to say "yes," the actual acceptance of this gift depends on the individual's free cooperation with divine grace. 

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Car Analogy:

Justification and sanctification are merely different parts of the same process (one process)

Justification is the remission of our sins and our entrance into the Christian life. We are initially justified at baptism and then each time we go to confession and finally in our final judgment.

Sanctification is the growth of grace and charity in a person. Once our sins our forgiven we must grow in holiness and will continue to do so throughout our lives until our final judgment.

They are subtle parts of the same process. For example, justification is your father giving you a car (righteousness/salvation) and sanctification is you and your father maintaining the car (cooperation with grace). You need to have a car to maintain a car, and you need to maintain a car to keep a car. The gift and the maintenance are intrinsically linked to each other in the ultimate goal of possessing the car.

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Anathema’s:

This is the position of the Catholic Church

Some relevant cannons from the council of Trent 1563 the gavel came down with these following cannons. 

• If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, Let him be an anathema 

• if anyone says that men are justified either by the sole imputation of the righteousness of Christ or by the sole remission of sins. Let him be an anathema 

• if anyone says that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in divine mercy, which remit sin for Christ sake, or that it is this confidence alone that justifies let him be anathema

• if anyone says that the righteousness received is not preserved, and also not increased before God through good works, but those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not the cause of the increase, Let him be anathema

• if anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, but no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened. Let him be anathema  

• if anyone says the good works of the one justified are in such manner, the gifts of God that they are not also the good merits of him justified, or that the one justified by good works that he performs by the grace of God and merits of Christ does not truly merit an increase of grace and eternal life. Let him be anathema.