That a person is a state of grace is heaven-bound is true by definition.
The difference, as I understand it, is that an evangelical of the "Once Saved, Always Saved" variety, would say that once you're saved, you're good to go, no matter what you thoughts, words and deeds subsequently may be. You can stop believing, stop praying, and stop walking in the way of the Lord and still be saved: Blessed Assurance.
(Because if that is not your belief, then please explain what a person would have to do or fail to do, to lose their salvation.)
In contrast, a Catholic would say that in order to remain in the Lord, one should continually ask the Lord to increase their faith, their hope and their love. One should live more and more "in Christ," coming to more and more resemble Him, coming to think as He thinks, act as He acts, advancing in wisdom, age and favor before God and man, as He did.
That's going to include the other "conditions" connected with, e.g. being invested ("clothed") with a scapular. This is just an outward reminder of this process of clothing yourself in Christ:
(Galatians) For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ....(Colossians) put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.
This is similar to another sacramental, which even you may use: a wedding ring. It does not produce or obtain marital fidelity. It is an outward sign. It symbolizes it and reminds you of it. It might even help you, in times of trial, to remain faithful to your wedded vows.
Do, or your wife, wear a wedding ring?
All we need is a yes or no answer to metmom's question.
The apparition made a specific statement with specific conditions.
I disagree with your understanding. Metmom, care to refute that argument, AGAIN.
Which shows several things.
First off it's a complete misunderstanding of the new birth and the changed heart and mind that accompany it.
So technically, while true that nothing you can do or not do can cost you your salvation, the believer would ask, *Why would I want to*?
And stop believing? How is that going to happen when God has given you His Spirit, the One who works in us to will and do to do according to His good pleasure?
Catholics as a whole do not comprehend what a new nature does in a person. They seem to think without motivation the believer will not press on in their Christian faith and growth.
IOW, they can't be trusted to do it on their own out of love and gratitude, so Roman Catholicism throws the burden of maintaining the person's salvation on them with threats of hellfire and brimstone for failure to do so.
It's salvation and sanctification under coercion with threats of eternal punishment and the fear of it being the motivating factors for compliance.
All of which goes to show that Catholicism misrepresents God's mercy, grace, and forgiveness.
They teach that God's mercy must be begged for and groveled for, that His grace must be earned aka *merited*, and that forgiveness is conditional and must be paid for even when we are told time and again that salvation is a FREE GIFT.
We don't have to merit grace or forgiveness because while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't demand we clean up our act first and become good enough to *merit* grace and forgiveness.
What Catholics fail to understand is that even the best Saint in its stockpile still deserves to go to hell...The only way any of us could deserve heaven is to become completely sinless...But that won't work either...Because we were born in sin...
Rom 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Rom 6:2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
There's the answer but Catholics and many others don't accept what they are reading...The truth is far beyond the comprehension of those not born again...
You'll notice Paul DID NOT SAY, Why shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therin?
Paul said HOW shall we....And the answer is, we shall not live any longer therein...How's that possible, you say???
Rom 6:3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? (Not into his life...Baptism doesn't give us life)...
Rom 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Rom 6:5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
Rom 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
We no longer have a body of sin...
Rom 6:7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Get it yet???
Rom 6:8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
Rom 6:9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
Rom 6:10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Rom 6:11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This is how we will end up at the 'Bema' judgment seat of Jesus Christ and not be penalized for any sins we committed...The record of those sins will be burnt up...
Have you ever kissed the pope's ring?
That is held by a few too many in the present, but it is not what either Luther or evangelicals have historically taught. And substitute "once you are baptized as a Catholic" for "once you're saved" and you pretty much have what Rome conveys via her treatment of even proabortion, homosexual public figures, who at least die identifying as a RC.
Sola Fide is to refer to effectual faith being what is counted for righteousness. Luther stated that saving faith is,
a living, creative, active and powerful thing, this faith. Faith cannot help doing good works constantly. It doesn’t stop to ask if good works ought to be done, but before anyone asks, it already has done them and continues to do them without ceasing. Anyone who does not do good works in this manner is an unbeliever...Thus, it is just as impossible to separate faith and works as it is to separate heat and light from fire! [http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt]
This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]
“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
All believers are like poor Lazarus; and every believer is a true Lazarus, for he is of the same faith, mind and will, as Lazarus. And whoever will not be a Lazarus, will surely have his portion with the rich glutton in the flames of hell. For we all must like Lazarus trust in God, surrender ourselves to him to work in us according to his own good pleasure, and be ready to serve all men.. And although we all do not suffer from such sores and poverty, yet the same mind and will must be in us, that were in Lazarus, cheerfully to bear such things, wherever God wills it.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:25]
“This is why St. Luke and St. James have so much to say about works, so that one says: Yes, I will now believe, and then he goes and fabricates for himself a fictitious delusion, which hovers only on the lips as the foam on the water. No, no; faith is a living and an essential thing, which makes a new creature of man, changes his spirit and wholly and completely converts him. It goes to the foundation and there accomplishes a renewal of the entire man; so, if I have previously seen a sinner, I now see in his changed conduct, manner and life, that he believes. So high and great a thing is faith.”[Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:341]
“For it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Savior, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present. Therefore man knows by the fruits what kind of a tree it is, and it is proved by love and deed whether Christ is in him and he believes in Christ...” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:40]
“For if your heart is in the state of faith that you know your God has revealed himself to you to be so good and merciful, without thy merit, and purely gratuitously, while you were still his enemy and a child of eternal wrath; if you believe this, you cannot refrain from showing yourself so to your neighbor; and do all out of love to God and for the welfare of your neighbor. Therefore, see to it that you make no distinction between friend and foe, the worthy and the unworthy; for you see that all who were here mentioned, have merited from us something different than that we should love and do them good. And the Lord also teaches this, when in Luke 6:35 he says: "But love your enemies, and do good unto them, and lend, never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil." [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:101]
...if obedience and God’s commandments do not dominate you, then the work is not right, but damnable, surely the devil’s own doings, although it were even so great a work as to raise the dead......Peter says the grace and gifts of God are not one but manifold, and each is to tend to his own, develop the same and through them be of service to others.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 1:244]
In addition, upon hearing that he was being charged with rejection of the Old Testament moral law, Luther responded,
And truly, I wonder exceedingly, how it came to be imputed to me, that I should reject the Law or ten Commandments, there being extant so many of my own expositions (and those of several sorts) upon the Commandments, which also are daily expounded, and used in our Churches, to say nothing of the Confession and Apology, and other books of ours. Martin Luther, ["A Treatise against Antinomians, written in an Epistolary way", http://www.truecovenanter.com/truelutheran/luther_against_the_antinomians.html]
wrote:
Rather than the easy believism Catholics (with a church half full of liberal members) associates with sola fide, in Puritan Protestantism there was often a tendency to make the way to the cross too narrow, perhaps in reaction against the Antinomian controversy, as described in an account (http://www.the-highway.com/Early_American_Bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period:
“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’”
Among evangelicals today who profess OSAS, Reformed evangelicals affirm the Westminster Confession which states that faith,
it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but works by love. - Westminster Confession of Faith, CHAPTER XI. Of Justification
And the "P" in their TULIP acronym stands for Final perseverance of faith, so that those who die in impenitent sinful lives are relegated to having never been saved (However, I believe believers are warned against falling away: Gal. 5:1-4; Heb. 3:12; 10:35-39).
The SBC states that faith,
In its broadest sense salvation includes regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification.All true believers endure to the end...All Christians are under obligation to seek to make the will of Christ supreme in our own lives and in human society...
And the testimony of survey statistics from many sources invariably show that it is evangelicals, and not Catholics, who most strongly believe that faith without works is dead.