RE: Pride Goeth Before Destruction
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There is a tendency for some Christians to wear their faith like a crown to lord it over others rather than practice it as a way of living. I see this as a form of pride.
I have been learning, Catholic teachings or course, that none of us are assured salvation. The wages of sin is death, referring to justice. However, Christ's sacrifice is God's mercy that we are not punished for our sins. And, ultimately, His grace is what may grant us a place in heaven. It has taken some time to learn about what the Catholic guilt thing is really about. It is humbling to discover, talking about pride, that there is little we can do to save ourselves, instead relying entirely on God's grace. This softens my heart a bit when seeing others fall as it is a reminder that I am also fallen. It becomes more self-reflection of my own wrongdoings, which seem never ending.
Oh that's a can of worms for sure!
While I do believe we are saved by grace through faith, that doesn't mean...Once saved, always saved. That makes zero sense. It's as you said, Christ died for our sins, so how can we know this, accept Him yet continue to live in sin?
We should change our character and life, based on His sacrifice and the love we have for Him. I do agree with what you stated for sure, not sure if it's Catholic doctrine or not but hey, we agree on something LOL
That's never the case for Catholics. We can't ever claim to be saved. That implies that it is our choice to make, when it is clearly not as we are constantly falling short, remaining reliant on mercy and grace.
Why wouldn't it be our choice? God is love, and free will is the purest form of love we can have. If God didn't give us a choice, we'd all be robots without the ability to choose.
Does God know who is lost and saved? For sure. But I don't think He pulls the strings. He lets us choose Him. The falling short is because, human nature....The fall of man, etc. We are a fallen species which is why we need a Savior.
It took me a while to wrap my head around it. It takes a while for me to walk through it.
The reasoning is, how I understand it explained, God is perfect. We are not.
To be in His presence, we must be perfect.
Being human, there is no way we can make ourselves perfect. This does not mean we should not try. Our main vocation is the universal call to Holiness.
Circling back, our imperfection demands punishment, justice. But Jesus has granted us mercy, having paid for our sin. But that does not clean us to be in God's presence, to be saved.
For that we are entirely reliant on His grace. It is presumptuous to think that we can force Him to save us by any of our actions. We can't save ourselves by works.
It's the other way around. God's grace transforms us into better people. We can only cooperate with His transformation. Grace is His gift. We can't earn it. It is His grace that pushes us to perform those works, should we choose to accept it.
Therefore, it is still a personal choice to accept his gift of salvation, or reject it. But it is not we who drive our own salvation, we can only accept salvation by doing His will. In other words, good works aren't ours, they are His. We are merely His agents.
To me, this is a huge responsibility, not only to carry out His works, but to be receptive and discerning of His grace when He calls us to action. We are the driven, not the drivers. It's a free ride to salvation, if we choose to hop on the wagon and don't fall off, which we invariably will. But we can always hop back on.
Right, so it's a choice that God gives us. That's what I'm saying. I know there is nothing we can do ourselves, all have sinned and sin is the transgression of the law.
1000000% on Christ's righteousness, not ours.