Faith in Your Work

For Christians living in the modern world, there is a clear distinction between what we consider to be valuable and what the world considers to be valuable.

The world encourages pride, lust, greed, envy, anger, gluttony, and sloth.

Christians, on the other hand, value humility, chastity, charity, kindness, patience, temperance, and diligence.

Not only do these virtues improve the quality of life for ourselves and those around us, but they—most importantly—lead us towards salvation.

All Christians would agree that achieving salvation—not money, fame, or power—is the most important aspect of our lives.

For after all, money, fame, and power are all temporary; salvation, on the other hand, is eternal.

Where the disagreement sets in is how one obtains this pearl of great price.

At the heart of this salvation debate is the role that faith and works play.

In its simplest form, Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe that faith and works go hand-in-hand while Protestants believe faith alone saves.

Orthodox Christians and Catholics articulate the idea in slightly different ways but both emphasize the necessity of an active faith through obedience towards God’s will.

Protestants on the other hand preach sola fide—the idea that as long as one puts their faith in Christ, they will be saved.

But what does “faith” in this context mean exactly? As expected, every denomination seems to have a different answer.

Like I mentioned in The Prot-igal Son, Martin Luther interestingly emphasized the regenerative nature of baptism and hailed it as a necessity for salvation.

Because of this, Lutherans believe that although justification comes through faith alone, baptism is still necessary—not as a ‘work,’ but as the means by which God imparts faith.

Most other sects reject this idea, with Anglicans, Episcopalians, Baptists, nondenominationals, and more teaching that baptism is essentially optional and emphasizing baptism being an “outwards expression of an inwards faith.”

With regards to the question if one can “lose” your salvation or not, most Baptists (other than Free Will Baptists), Evangelical Anglicans / Episcopalians, most nondenominationals, and Presbyterians fall into the “once saved, always saved” camp, while Lutherans, Anglo-Catholics (not Catholic), Methodists, and Pentecostals believe that Christians can lose salvation either through leaving the faith or persistent and unrepentant sin.

For most people, it would seem entirely plausible that one can have genuine faith in Christ but then at some point discard it, likely to pursue the many vanities that the world has to offer.

Christians who believe salvation cannot be lost often argue that those who fall away never had “true faith” to begin with. This view is especially common among those in the Reformed tradition, following John Calvin’s teachings—most notably predestination, the belief that God has chosen the elect for salvation while consigning the rest to damnation, thereby ensuring that the elect cannot lose this gift.

A full breakdown of Calvin’s errors is imminent, but that is for another day.

While there is disagreement among Protestants about the specifics of what faith means and if you can lose it, they tend to agree with the idea that it is not good works that save you but the natural effect of having faith.

While a handful of canonical books point to the idea of justification through faith, none seem to do so more clearly than St. Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Catholics, on the other hand, believe that justification does indeed come through faith, but, like St. James says, “faith without works is dead” and “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.”

So which is it?

Before diving into scripture, let’s take a blast in the past, to see what the early Church was saying about faith and works.

You get the point.

Two conclusions that can immediately be made: they reject both the Reformers’ idea of sola fide and the idea that man can earn his way to salvation—despite most Protestants labeling Catholics as believing so.

The easiest way to refute this idea is the Church’s battle against heretics that genuinely believed in a works-based salvation.

At the council of Ephesus, while Nestorianism was the main heresy being refuted, Pelagianism was also denounced as well.

Pelagius was a lay theologian who taught that humans did not bear the stain of Adam’s original sin and therefore could achieve salvation without God’s grace. In other words, due to humans’ allegedly uncorrupted human nature, men could earn their salvation on their own merit simply through intense effort.

The Church obviously denied this idea with St. Augustine simply saying, “Pelagius taught that man could live without the grace of God…I deny this, and assert that we are justified only by God’s grace, not by our own nature or works.”

Despite the Church clearly rejecting Catholicism being a “works-based” faith, many Reformers still pushed this idea.

The Church defended its stance during the Council of Trent, proclaiming, “If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, let him be anathema (ex-communicated).”

To be fair, while there are clear differences between the Catholic and Protestant view of justification, they aren’t actually as far off as many believe.

While Protestants uphold the principle of faith alone, if asked whether a person who never engaged in good works would be saved, they would answer no—just as Catholics would. In this sense, Protestants acknowledge that works have a role in salvation, though not in a causal way.

When diving into scripture, the previous New Testament excerpts from St. James and St. Paul seem to be contradictory on its surface.

Because of St. James emphasis on works, Luther actually threatened to remove the book from the Bible, hinting that it lacked canonicity and labeling it an “epistle of straw.”

But James was not the only one to reference the idea of works playing a central role in our salvation.

Even more interestingly, St. Paul also echoes this sentiment in none other than Romans.

Seeming to contradict himself in back-to-back chapters, Romans 2:6 states that God “will repay everyone according to his works,” a direct reference from Proverbs 24:12.

Now, with this in mind, Protestants have two options: either the Bible is contradictory or there are different referents when the word “works” is being used.

Obviously, the former choice is impossible, so it’s clear that the latter is correct.

When Paul mentions that we are not justified by “works,” he is referencing works of the law, specifically the laws that Jews had been accustomed to rigorously following for many years. Salvation no longer came in the form of keeping the 613 Mosaic laws, but rather embracing the New Covenant and receiving the grace that Christ bestowed on us through His death and resurrection.

On the other hand, when the idea of “works” is discussed as necessary for salvation, this is referencing works of love, with the most important being an obedient love towards God.

The idea of obedience being a prerequisite for salvation is ubiquitous in the Bible, especially in the New Testament.

But what about Romans 10:9-10? Won’t everyone who professes Christ as Lord and believe in Him be saved?

Yes, of course.

However, the important distinction to make is that belief in Christ is not merely an intellectual assent. One cannot simply utter the words “Christ is Lord,” accept the fact that Christ rose from the dead, and think the job is done.

The concepts of belief and obedience are intertwined and rightly so. For how can one believe that God came down in human form, died on the cross, and rose from the dead, only to refuse to obey His commandments?

John 3:16 is likely the most popular Bible verse in America—if not globally. But another in close proximity that is overlooked is John 3:36, as John perfectly displays the idea of belief and obedience being interchangeable:

So coming back to Romans 10, it’s clear that one cannot simply say Christ is Lord to enter into the kingdom, but rather have an active belief in Christ that manifests itself through obedience.

But what about the idea that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ? Also, isn’t salvation a free gift given to us by Christ’s death? How can works play a role if that’s the case?

Catholics undeniably affirm that we are saved by grace through Jesus Christ. However, with that being said, since we have free will to choose to follow Christ or not, we must cooperate with this grace through having an active faith working through love.

Similarly, the Church teaches that while our salvation is indeed a free gift that cannot be paid for or earned in any way, we must still actively choose to accept this gift by working out our salvation with fear and trembling as well as persevering until the end.

Another question arises: isn’t it impossible to be perfectly obedient to the Father’s will? Is it not inevitable that at some point we will fall and be disobedient?

The answer is of course.

But due to God’s infinite love and mercy, he provided us with the Sacrament of Confession as a way to be reconciled with Him after we inevitably walk away from His grace.

1 John 5:16-17 delineates the difference between deadly (mortal) sins and non-deadly (venial) sins, with the former leading you on the pathway to spiritual death.

In addition to this excerpt, other scriptures detail that although falling into sin is inevitable, there are certain sins that can lead to damnation, with Paul referencing more than a few:

Also, Christ Himself tells us in Matthew 5:29 that sin can lead us to hell, urging us to pluck out our eye if it causes us to sin; for it is better to enter into the Kingdom maimed than to burn with both eyes intact.

Because we are fallen creatures, we will likely consciously engage in serious sin and be in need of God’s forgiveness.

Christ specifically gave His apostles the ability to forgive sins, telling them whosever sins they forgive will be forgiven and whosever sins they retain will be retained. This authority did not simply end with them but rather was continually passed down to their successors: Catholic priests and bishops.

And while many non-Catholic Christians will maintain that they can simply go directly to God with their sins, scripture says otherwise. Christ specifically bestowed this privilege upon the apostles and St. James instructs us to “confess your sins out loud to one another” in the context of presbyters’ (priests) role in the Church. This makes it clear that going through the Church for confession of sins is not only Biblical but also the ordinary pathway for forgiveness.

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Thanks for reading and until next time.

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