But the Greatest of These is…

So often non-Catholics get caught up on the Catholic Church’s doctrine of salvation by faith and works. Most protestant denominations believe in salvation Sola Fide, or by faith alone. However, not only is this principle of salvation by faith alone not found in scripture anywhere, it is actually contradictory to scripture. Further, it would seem to me to also be very contradictory to reason as well.

This has been debated on a scripture verse-by-verse basis plenty of times in the past. I don’t want to recount that entire argument here, but, instead, hopefully get the reader to look at the issue from a little different perspective. It’s easy to take a scripture passage out of context and make it seem to say something that it really doesn’t say. Scripture always and everywhere must be taken in its entire context – not just the context of the paragraph, or the chapter, or the book, or even the entirety of scripture – but in it’s place in salvation history as the Word of God, the entire deposit of Faith, and natural law. In other words, how does it fit into all that is Truth, whether divinely or naturally revealed?

However, even just looking at scripture by itself as a whole, the written Word of God, the overwhelming message from God is very clear: Jesus redeemed every one of our sins, at no cost to us. There is nothing we can do to earn it. However, God doesn’t force it on us, but always respects our free will. We must accept this gift of salvation. In other words, it requires a response on our part. And what response does it ask of us? Catholics would say that this response is to be one of faith and works. Protestants would say that it requires a response of faith alone. What does scripture say?

Let’s look at it very simply from an overall perspective. Nowhere in scripture does it explicitly say that we attain salvation by faith alone. That passage simply doesn’t exist. However, scripture does say very explicitly that we are to respond with works. Here are a few of them:

“One came up to him, saying, `Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?’ And Jesus replied ‘If you would enter life, keep the commandments‘” (Matt. 19:16-17).

“He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21).

“But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will render to every man according to his works: to those who by perseverance in good works seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury” (Rom. 2:2-8).

“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:4-6).

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Jesus even goes so far as to make an even further distinction that acknowledging and believing in God is one thing…but doing the will of the Father is what will bring eternal salvation:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matt 7:21)

Looking at more scripture we see that there are still other things we need to do to be saved, including repenting and being baptized (Acts 2:37-38) – not just believing the gospel in our hearts, as many Christians falsely believe.

Many will quote Ephesians 2:8-9 as proof that we are saved only by faith, and not works. It says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God–not because of works, lest any man should boast.” And it could seem on the surface, when taken out of context, that it is saying just that – we are saved by faith, not works. But that’s not actually what it says, and it most certainly doesn’t say faith “alone.”

First of all, if we take that interpretation of it, then it is in stark contrast to all of the scripture verses listed above (as well as much of the rest of scripture) that do say some type of work is required for our salvation. So do we have the authority to pick and choose which verses we want to believe and which ones we don’t? Of course not. And scripture can not contradict itself. So this means we must look further into how all of these verses can make sense together – scripture as a whole.

Second, if we do look at the context of this scripture passage, it is easy to see that Paul is making a point about boasting about our works. He is saying that we can not take credit for them because they are not really from us, but are the grace of God working through us. And that is true, but it doesn’t say that these works are not still necessary for our salvation. Even simply continuing to read onto the very next verse we get some insight into this interpretation and the role of works.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God–not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:8-10).

The natural, reasonable conclusion after reading these scripture passages, taking them in their entire context and seeing how they can all be compatible (and not contradictory), we must conclude that salvation at least requires a response of faith and works. It’s not one or the other, but both. At least that’s what scripture as a whole clearly says. And these works are done entirely by the grace of God, of course, but still require the cooperation of our own free will.

So there is a huge difference between saying that we are “saved by faith” and that we are “saved by faith alone.” I can understand somebody claiming that we are “saved by faith.” That is entirely true and clearly scriptural. But, as we see in reading scripture as a whole, that is not the only thing required for salvation. Scripture clearly lays out more to the story, as seen above. So we can not be justified in saying “saved by faith alone”. Especially when such a principle is not only unscriptural, but it also contradicts large parts of it.

I think part of the problem is that too many people have an incorrect sense of the word “work” when used in this context. They automatically connect it to a sense of working to earn something, but this does them a great disservice. We are not earning anything. We are accepting a gift. We are cooperating with God’s grace. A work is simply something that we do, and in this case, it is something that God himself has asked us to do to attain our salvation. So if you have an issue with it, feel free to take it up with the big guy himself. But scripture, the Tradition of the Church, and Jesus himself are all pretty clear on it.

I sincerely believe that most non-Catholic Christians agree with the gist of this, and understand that what we do, our work, does obviously play a role in our salvation – that’s just reasonable, scriptural, and apostolically Traditional. Unfortunately, it seems that many of them are so set in their own tradition of protesting the Catholic Church on this matter that they will never even consider admitting that they believe it. I hope that with further dialogue we can all work past that and agree on the Truth and be that much more closely unified as Christians.

Overall, I think one of the greatest verses in the bible can reveal something very important to us regarding this issue. “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is…faith”? No. Of course not, that is not what the Bible says.

If “faith” alone was the only thing required for our salvation, shouldn’t the greatest of these most definitely be “faith”? It would seem so, but this isn’t what scripture says. Ultimately, the greatest commandments involve what? Having faith in God? And having faith in each other? No. They involve loving God and loving one another. And this makes sense since “God is love” and we want to be as close to God as possible. But love is not just a feeling, or a belief, it is much more than that…it is a work that we do from the heart…faith working through love – faith and works.

“So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”