Into sin, finding the Righteousness of God through Grace and Justification!

Into sin, finding the Righteousness of God through Grace and Justification!

We must all take a look at the status of our sinfulness that may be corrupting the manner of our living in righteousness on a daily basis.  Righteousness means the rectitude of divine love.  “Justification is at the same time the acceptance of God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ.”  (CCC 1991.

Therefore, grace and justification are primary to finding our understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role in finding the way to forgiveness.  “The grace of the Holy Spirit has the power to justify us, that is, to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ and through baptism.”  (CCC 1987).  

“Justification is conferred in Baptism, the sacrament of faith. It conforms us to the righteousness of God, who makes us inwardly just by the power of his mercy.  Its purpose is the glory of God and of Christ, and the gift of eternal life.”  (see CCC 1992).  

“Justification is the most excellent work of God’s love made manifest in Christ Jesus and granted by the Holy Spirit.  It is the opinion of St. Augustine that the justification of the wicked is a greater work than the creation of heaven and earth, because heaven and earth will pass away but the salvation and justification will not pass away.  He holds also that the justification of sinners surpasses the creation of the angels in justice, in that it bears witness to a greater mercy.”  (CCC 1994).

“Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.  But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.”  (CCC 1995).  

“Our justification comes from the grace of God.  Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.”  (CCC 1996).

“Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love.  Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call, is distinguished from actual grace which refers to God’s interventions, whether at the beginning or conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.”  (CCC 2000).

Even though the theological premise gets a little deep for some, it shows how God, in his omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence had already gone well beyond anything a finite mind could ever imagine that saves you and me from eternal death.

We can understand  how many ignore the teaching of the Catechism due to reading and divesting the words of truth.  Yet, here we have the reasons so clearly portrayed for each of us to see the whys and wherefores of our faith.   It will bring our limited capacity to have an informed conscience and grasp the deeper truths our Church hands on to us and those we may be called to explanatory teaching.

Ralph B. Hathaway