With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:6-8
The following is from the Joint Decaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, published in 1999:
“We confess together that all persons depend completely on the saving grace of God for their salvation. The freedom they possess in relation to persons and the things of this world is no freedom in relation to salvation, for as sinners they stand under God’s judgment and are incapable of turning by themselves to God to seek deliverance, of meriting their justification before God, or of attaining salvation by their own abilities. Justification takes place solely by God’s grace….The Catholic understanding also sees faith as fundamental in justification. For without faith, no justification can take place. Persons are justified through baptism as hearers of the word and believers in it.”
Aren’t we [essentially] saying the same thing? Granted, Catholics believe that justifying faith is granted at baptism, yet all the while maintaining that salvation is solely from God; that Christ, the perfect Son of God, died for the sins of mankind; that Christ was raised to life, defeating death; that salvation is all a gift of God by his grace; that mankind is incapable of attaining to salvation by any work, but only through faith. Again, isn’t that [essentially] what we mean by “belief in Christ.”? Or—is also believing that God applies that salvation, solely won through Christ, to an individual through a sacrament, destructive to the point of counting it all as unbelief?
