The View From St. Peter’s In Roman Catholic teaching, justification isn’t just an act, an extrinsic declaration of righteousness, but also includes an ongoing process that is continually making a Christian righteous. Justification isn’t just a change in stature but a change in human nature itself. What Protestants understand as sanctification—the fruit, the personal subjective experience of justification—Roman Catholics subsume under the name of justification, which includes not just what God does for us but what He also does in us. This difference isn’t mere semantics; on the contrary, it gets to the heart of the most crucial teaching in all Scripture: How are we saved? According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “justification includes the remission of sins, sanctification, and the renewal of the inner man.”6 Justification, in Rome’s opinion, is what happens inside a person as well as outside. Christ’s merits, the merits that He wrought out in His perfect life by His perfect obedience to the law, are not just credited to a person but are actually infused into the life of the believer through the sacraments administered by the Roman Catholic Church itself. Rome teaches that this saving merit doesn’t remain outside of us but becomes something that happens inside a person, a change that gives that person merit before God.#Dennis kiogora
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 07:36:43 +0000