Accepting Christ

INTRODUCTION

That we can earn salvation if only we sufficiently exert our minds to somehow “accept” the “grace” Christ won for us on the cross, is so purposely fuzzy as to be misleading, is superficially and arrogantly pious, is fundamentally illogical, and is clearly contrary to Biblical verse as well as Apostolic Tradition as maintained by the Catholic Church since the earliest times.

EXISTENCE OF GRACE

The Catholic teaching is that only Christ’s grace can save us.  And this grace is both undeserved and could only have been made available to us by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ himself.   No amount of faith on our part, no act of Christian charity, no amount of begging or pious reflection on the infinite gulf between humanity and the divine could ever have been sufficient to bring it into existence.

The availability of grace is thus not something we can either reject or accept.  It is here now and will always be here no matter what we do.  No human action can make it go away or even alter its quality or quantity in the slightest.

The long standing Biblical teaching on the necessity of Christ’s sacrifice was that it redeemed mankind from original sin and thus made salvation possible.  And it further maintains this grace can be applied to accomplish the forgiveness of our individual sins.  But even though available, benefiting from it requires some kind of effort on our part.

OUR PART

Everyone agrees that salvation demands at least some act of mental exertion.  The Catholic requirement, for us to be sorry we sinned and to resolve not to sin in the future, would seem a logical necessity and at least a first step.

The Protestant position which limits our duty to simply accepting the idea that Christ alone made grace available to men of good will, without also requiring we intend or attempt to actually be men of good will, is at least illogical.

From Christian tradition since Apostolic times and Biblical verse and simple logic, saving grace is clearly not bestowed on men of bad will whether they will admit Christ died to redeem us or not.  Rather Christ condemned sin and the attitudes that foster sin in everything He taught.  Indeed Christ promised that those who sin in thought or deed are doomed to hellfire in the hereafter.

Because of what they do, not everyone is saved despite the miraculous existence of grace and no amount of begging or superficial piousness can change that.

DEFINING ACCEPTANCE

Protestants are notoriously fuzzy minded when describing what “acceptance” actually entails.  This obfuscation has only the advantage of hiding the illogic of the basic concept.  And unfortunately, there are now upwards of 30,000 distinct Protestant sects each with a relatively recent revision of what “justification” means.

In general terms, acceptance apparently means agreeing with the proposition that Christ alone made saving grace available.  But especially it demands that the very existence of grace makes salvation not just possible but certain for believers.  And this is without the necessity of any Christian attitude or Christian action on their part.  Grace is so freely available to everyone that the Ten Commandments or Christ’s demands for charity towards neighbors are totally inconsequential.

Rather, like an unexpected gift of money that some secret admirer puts into your bank account, there it is and there is nothing you can do about it.  You can’t accept or reject it.  It simply appears on your balance sheet.  And you don’t have to be grateful because your actions have no bearing on what already is.  And there the money stays even if you think ill of, or behave in an offensive manner to, your invisible admirer.

The truth is that “accepting” the fact of a positive bank balance doesn’t get you any more than what is already there.  And more than that, your invisible admirer is highly unlikely to keep “gifting” you if you keep doing things He hates.

If you honestly think about it, there is no logical requirement to “accept” a gift that appears magically on your doorstep.  It is there whether you want it or not, whether it is the right size or color, whether you even know where it came from, or how it got there.

Finally, a perfect gift, as we might expect from an infinite God, cannot require us to do anything.  This includes thinking anything, or believing anything, or saying anything, or especially doing anything.  Otherwise it is NOT a pure gift but earned wages of something however trivial.

UNRESOLVED PROTESTANT POSITIONS

In fact Protestants have no real answers to serious questions about the role of grace in justification, e.g.

1. If you once think that “By golly, the Bible says Christ’s death forgives my sins and that seems reasonable.” are you forever saved?  What if you later change your mind?  Is this sin automatically forgiven?

2.  Why is only “accepting” or agreeing with the idea, that Christ died to save us, sufficient?  The problem is that it is all too easy and all too common, at the same time, to intend to have fun sinning later.   Why don’t our actions, as described in the Bible as being un-Christian, count for anything?

3.  What about good people who have never heard of Christ but still scrupulously follow the dictates of their conscience.  Are they condemned through no fault of their own?

BIBLICAL VERSE

In James 2: 19-20 we have

“Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.  But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?”

The point of course is that devils have effectively “accepted” the gift of Christ’s grace in the Protestant sense.  From direct evidence, they know God exists and believe Christ created saving grace.  But they are hardly “saved” manifestly because of their attitudes and actions.

In the same manner, neither are Protestants saved by “accepting alone” or “faith alone” which is expressly condemned in the Bible.  It is all too easy to think all the happy thoughts one wants, and at the SAME TIME, intend to, and actually do, commit serious sin.  Because everyone is imperfect to some degree, the two actions are NEVER mutually exclusive.

CONCLUSIONS

A big advantage to Protestants of this nonsense is that if this grace automatically forgives everything, then we are free to do anything our animal lusts desire.  We can kill and plunder and steal and cheat and lie because all our sins, past, present, and future, are already forgiven.

In this Protestant view we don’t have to act like Christians at all.  We simply have to carry our bank book around and show the unearned gift deposit to St. Peter at the pearly gates to gain admittance.

On the other and, Catholics believe we have to lead our lives in imitation of Christ’s example as he commanded as recorded in the Bible.  The difference between that and only “accepting” the proposition that Christ was a good guy is the difference between day and night, reason and nonsense, good and evil, salvation and damnation.

This distinction is that our reception of grace is conditional despite its existence and availability being entirely unmerited.   Our actions are now sanctified by grace thanks only to Christ.  We are saved by what we do and not by what we think.