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Twenty-Fifth Sunday of the Year
21 September 2008
The Fourth Principle of Evangelical Catholicism is:
“Through Word and Sacrament we are drawn by grace into a transforming union with the Lord Jesus, and having been justified by faith we are called to sanctification and equipped by the Holy Spirit for the good works of the new creation. We must, therefore, learn to live as faithful disciples and to reject whatever is contrary to the Gospel, which is the Good News of the Father’s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.”When Protestants want to explain what they perceive as the primary mistake in Catholic teaching on salvation, they often charge that we believe in “works righteousness” by which they mean that Catholics vainly believe we can earn the favor of God and be rewarded with eternal salvation by doing good works as opposed to being justified (or made righteous) by faith. But to frame the conversation in this way presents a false choice between faith and works because we are not saved by either faith or works; rather, we are saved from sin and death by Jesus Christ alone, and this work of salvation is pure grace—the free and unmerited favor of God. The question, then, is how Christ extends this offer of salvation by grace to us and how we respond to that offer, and to answer this question we must first acknowledge that in ordinary circumstances all grace is mediated, which is to say that God’s grace is given to us through instruments that correspond to our nature as rational animals: words that we can hear and read, food that we can eat, the touch of human hands that we can feel. This is what it means to say that “through Word and Sacrament we are drawn by grace into a transforming union with the Lord Jesus.”
The rest of this principle goes on to insist that once we are justified by saving faith (itself a free gift of God infused in us by Baptism), we are also called to real holiness of life—a call for which we are equipped by the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit. This is what Christ the Lord teaches us in the Sermon on the Mount when He declares that “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father…” And what is the will of Our Father? We are commanded to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick and imprisoned. Those who do these things will be welcomed into the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world, while those who do not do these things will be cast away into eternal punishment. (cf. Matthew 25: 31-46)
This is not works righteousness; this is living by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ under the obedience of faith in His Gospel. Only because we have first received God’s grace of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (justification), do we strive to live by grace the life of the new creation (sanctification) so that we may inherit through grace the everlasting life first promised to us at our Baptism (glorification). Justification necessarily leads to sanctification which is made perfect in glorification; only together do these three moments of grace constitute what we mean by salvation: sharing by adoption the life and glory of the Triune God by our communion with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Father Newman