Can Justification be lost

 A quote:

Can Justification be Lost?

St. Paul warns us that justification and sanctification are a life-long process, and we should be vigilant not to turn against God and lose our justification. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews is particularly powerful, “For if we sin willfully after having the knowledge of the truth, there is now left no sacrifice for sins, But a certain dreadful expectation of judgment, and the rage of a fire which shall consume the adversaries (Hebrews 10:26-27).” Paul assures us that those who take justification of grace for granted and continue to rail against God and defy cooperation with grace can lose their justification. Paul also warns Christians to be vigilant, “But I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway”. Paul tells us that he himself must resist the temptations of the flesh lest he be cut away from the Body of Christ.

Like St. Paul, we must constantly guard against mortal sin, the sin of will against God. Mortal sin is that which cuts us off from Christ. Those who have been justified through the grace of baptism can still sin against the Lord. Grace does not take away the gift of free will and because of this a Christian can still choose to sin.

Sin takes two forms; that of mortal (deadly sin) and venial sin(sin that offends charity). The Catechism of the Church tells us “sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity (CCC 1854)” and that there is a distinction between sins, that of mortal and venial sin. “Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him (CCC 1855).” Venial sin is a sin of less serious matter that weakens charity and impedes the exercise of virtue. The bible testifies to the differentiation between mortal and venial sin. St. John’s epistle tell us “there is such thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray (1 John 5:16)”. The Tradition of the Church affirms that mortal sin destroys sanctifying grace of the soul and cuts the sinner off from the body of Christ. Scripture again affirms Tradition when Jesus compares the Body of Christ, the Church, to a vine. The members of the Church are warned by Christ, “Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned (John 15:6).” Indeed St. Paul writes, “Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, Nor the effeminate, nor liers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Thus a mortal cuts us off from the Body of Christ until the sinner is moved to repentance in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

http://www.readability.com/articles/m5sjaxdh

and from comment 13 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/12/justification-catholic-church-and-the-judaizers/

 As I said before, all the Scriptural warnings about persevering would be heretical if past justification guaranteed future justification. Nothing in your immediate paragraph above resolves that problem. If “initial justification” determined our “future justification”, all the Scriptural warnings about perseverance and apostasy would not only be misguided; they would be heretical, i.e. contradicting the doctrine that initial justification guarantees future justification.

For fifteen hundred years (and to this day) the Church believed that justification can be lost. The Orthodox also have always believed that justification can be lost. There are many places in the Fathers where we see that justification can be lost. Here’s one example from St. Augustine:

If, however, being already regenerate and justified, he relapses of his own will into an evil life, assuredly he cannot say, ‘I have not received [grace],’ because of his own free choice he has lost the grace of God, that he had received.” (On Rebuke and Grace, chpt. 6:9)

But we can find the same teaching clearly in the New Testament. Jesus tells us:

“Anyone who does not remain in Me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.” (John 15:6)

also earlier in the comment:

 The person who by acts of love (agape) increases his justification is subsequently “different” only in that it is a greater participation in the divine nature. But, there is no part of our justification that is from us, as though justification could be divided into parts. The conjunction of divine and human causality in the increase in justification is not part/part, as though God does part and we do part. God justifies us, but not without our free consent. Likewise, our actions in a state of grace are gratuitously meritorious, because it is God who freely and graciously granted us this grace, and every subsequent good act, done by us in agape, is a divinely-granted gift of participation in that divine movement of justification we received through our baptism.

and:

 And in his letter to the Galatians he says:

“You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.” (Gal 5:4)

That verse makes no sense if it is impossible to be severed from Christ and to fall from grace. Again in Galatians St. Paul tells us:

Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal 5:18-21).

and:

 Notice the warning. He is speaking to Christians. If Christians cannot lose their salvation, then there could be no warning about not inheriting the kingdom of God. It would make no sense. The warning is an actual warning, because it is truly possible (through committing the mortal sins he lists there) to lose one’s salvation, be cut off from Christ, and not inherit the kingdom of God. He gives these lists of mortal sins frequently: (Rom 1:28-32; 1 Cor 6:9-10; Eph 5:3-5; Col 3:5-8; 1 Tim 1:9-10; 2 Tim 3:2-5).

And in the book of Hebrews we find the same doctrine about the real possibility of losing one’s salvation.

“For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt (Heb 6:4-6).

These enlightened persons have tasted the heavenly gift and become partakers of the Holy Spirit (through baptism, which was early in the Fathers called the sacrament of illumination/enlightenment), and then rejected Christ. But it would be impossible for them to fall away if they were never regenerated (and hence justified) in the first place. And yet they do fall away — the warning is not merely hypothetical. Such persons cannot be restored to repentance by baptism, because in baptism we are crucified with Christ (Rom 6), and Christ died only once. (But they can be restored by the sacrament of penance.)

Later in Hebrews the author writes about the apostasy of Christians in chapter 10:

For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb 10:26-31).

The writer speaking as a Christian to Christians, says that if “we” sin deliberately [he's speaking of mortal sin] after receiving the knowledge of the truth, we face the fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire. How do we know he is talking about justified people? Because he explicitly says that a man who “was sanctified” by “the blood of the covenant,” who then profanes this blood and outrages the Spirit of grace, will deserve much worse punishment than those (Israelites) who violated the law of Moses and died without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses. Then he says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Under what condition is it fearful? Under this condition: when we who are sanctified by the blood of Christ, then sin deliberately [i.e. commit mortal sin]. Such a person forfeits all the benefits of the grace of the New Covenant, and, if he dies in that condition, is punished in the eternal fires of Hell. Yes, that’s something to fear. The Christian is not told not to fear this possibility because he can never lose his salvation. Rather, the warning (about falling into the “fury of fire” [i.e. Hell]) is precisely to Christians. The warning implies the real possibility of Christians losing their salvation.

That is part of the gospel taught in Scripture, and it is the same true gospel handed down by the Apostles and laid out in the dogmas of the Catholic Church.