How Do You Believe You Are Saved?

"Crucifixion" by Thomas Eakin

Yesterday, I received the following question:

Just out of curiosity..., how do you believe you are saved for eternal life & freedom from sin? As a very conservative Protestant, I believe in Eph. 2:8-9, among other verses. How do you reconcile salvation by works to these verses?

Besides the question about prayer to the saints that I addressed in yesterday's post, this is probably the most common question Catholics receive from other Christians. It is also the question around which the most powerful contentions have arisen between the Christian denominations--Catholic or otherwise. Presbyterians argue about it with Baptists, Baptists argue about it with Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Christians argue about it with Methodists...and on and on and on.

Interestingly enough, despite all this bickering and debate, all Christians actually agree on how we are saved. We are saved by grace. Scripture tells us this repeatedly, and there is no Christian denomination, to my knowledge, that holds any other belief than this: that we are saved by grace, alone.

"We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved..." (Acts 15:11)

"...it is by grace you have been saved" (Ephesians 2:5)

"For it is by grace you have been saved..." (Ephesians 2:8)

"So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (2 Timothy 1:8-10)

What is grace? It is the free gift of God's mercy. It is not deserved. It cannot be earned. There is nothing we can do to obtain it. Our works do not buy us this salvific grace. Nor is it earned through faith or profession of faith. It is given freely. It belongs to God, and he gives it to us as a gift. This is how every Christian receives salvation: by grace alone.

If Christians can agree on the fact that we are saved by grace, where we differ dramatically is in our understanding of how we are "justified." Some people have asserted that justification refers to how we are assured of salvation. This concept is utterly foreign to Catholics who do not speak of "assurance of salvation" but rather "hope of salvation" (Psalm 119:81, 1 Thessalonians 5:8) and of working out our salvation (Phillipians 2:12). For Catholics, salvation is granted by grace, but the process of living out that salvation is an ongoing process that God is working, in combination with the free will of man, in every Christian soul throughout his or her life and possibly continuing into death in purgatory. (Forgive me, but I think I'll leave discussion of purgatory for another day.) Protestants call this ongoing work sanctification and claim that it is done through works. For Catholics, the Protestant concepts of sanctification and justification are both addressed in the doctrine of justification.

Boy, that makes my head spin. To put it more simply: the Catholic doctrine of justification "denotes the transforming of the sinner from the state of unrighteousness to the state of holiness and sonship of God" (newadvent.org). Justification is considered both as an act--of God, carried out in conjunction with the free will of the Christian person--and as a state or habit, denoting "the continued possession of a quality inherent in the soul, which theologians aptly term sanctifying grace" (Ibid). As an act, Catholic justification may be compared to Protestant sanctification. As a state, justification may be considered to denote the same thing in both traditions.

This is why Catholics speak of being justified through faith and works. We never speak of being saved by either faith or works. Such a claim would be unbiblical and against the teaching of the Church.

Protestants often use the verses referred to in the original question as a proof text against justification through works. Let's take a look at the passage together (I will use the NIV translation):

"But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast" (Ephesians 2:4-9).

What are we dealing with here? The first few verses tell us that we are saved by grace. We have already addressed this point. I would encourage some of my Protestant brothers and sisters to consider this very closely: We are saved by grace, not by faith. Not even our faith can buy us salvific grace; it is purely a gift from God. I have encountered many non-Catholic Christians, even some ordained ministers, who merely pay lip service to the doctrine of salvation by grace but in reality, they are preaching salvation by faith. This is not Biblical.

Moving on to verses 8 and 9, we find the key text that Protestants have used for the past five centuries to argue against justifcation through works. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." This is pretty convincing stuff, and if this were all that Scripture had to say on the matter, we might consider the Protestant doctrine to be correct. However, the problem with proof texts is that they are taken alone, out of the larger context of Scripture. Catholic teaching has always been careful to avoid the pitfalls of using such strategies when studying Scripture. We must consider Ephesians 2:8-9 in the greater context of the Bible.

Interestingly enough, we get a clue from the very next verse, which the proof-texters all too often stop before reaching: "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10, emphasis my own). How do we understand Ephesians 2:8-9 when coupled with verse 10? We are saved by the free gift of God's grace. Through our faith (which is also a gift from God), we are justified. St. Paul makes it clear that we are not saved by works, or the Law, because we cannot earn salvation. Salvation is a gift. Faith is a gift. Work has to do with us. Salvation is from God, and not from us. Yet, in verse 10, we see that we were "created in Christ Jesus to do good works"--we are saved to do good works. Works are never separate from faith, but they are not a means to obtain salvation. We understand this more fully in conjunction with Romans 11:5-6, which says, "So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace." This is the point St. Paul is making in this section of the Book of Ephesians: not that faith is more important than works or that we are justified by faith alone, but that we are saved by grace alone, rather than by works, which was the previous understanding, according to the Jewish tradition.

The Book of James has a lot to say about the relationship between faith and works. Incidentally, when Martin Luther was compiling his own canon of Scripture, which differs in several significant ways from the Catholic Bible, he very nearly got rid of the Book of James because of this exact issue. I will quote at length from the epistle so that we can see that this was a very important issue in the early church, just as it remains today:

"What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, 'Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,' but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, 'You have faith; I have deeds.' Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,' and he was called God's friend. You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead" (James 2:14-26, emphasis my own).

James is very clear on this point, particularly in verse 24: A Christian "is justified by what he does and not by faith alone." Can there be any dispute over this? Clearly, there is, or Sola Fide, justification by "faith alone" would not be one of the two pillars of the Protestant Reformation (the other pillar being Sola Scriptura or "Scripture alone") and of all that followed. Yet, I fail to understand how such claims can be made in light of what Scripture so clearly says about justification, particularly by those who claim Sola Scriptura.

We know, not only from James 2:19 but from the Gospel accounts that faith is not enough. Consider Matthew 7:21-23:

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

Professing Jesus as Lord, even performing miracles in His name is not enough. Only those who do the Father's will will be permitted to enter heaven.

Mark 1:34 tells us that Jesus would not allow the demons He drove out of the sufferring to speak because "they knew who He was." Shockingly, the demon Legion who possessed a man whom Jesus healed addressed the Messiah by name when He approached the possessed man: "When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, 'What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don't torture me!'" (Luke 8:28). These demons knew Jesus. Legion proclaims Him to be the Son of God. Yet, they are not justified; they are not saved. Of course, they are also not human, but the fact remains, as St. James says in his epistle: belief, which is a gift from God anyway, is not enough!

This topic is so immense, I'm sure I could go on for pages and pages in responding to the question at the top of this post. Countless books have been written on this subject. The bloody battles of the Reformation were fought, in part, over it. Today, we encounter brokenness in the Body of Christ, and it is at least partially due to this point. Greater scholars and holier men and women than I have addressed it from both sides. But, I hope I have done some justice to this important doctrine and that I have clarified some misconceptions about what Catholics believe regarding salvation and justification.