Romans 4 is the heart of the Reformation. "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." For many Protestants that one word, credited, settles everything: God counts us righteous with Christ's righteousness, and nothing in us is the reason. So the Catholic Church, which says God makes us righteous within, has supposedly confused justification with sanctification.
But read Romans 4 to the end. The God Abraham trusted "gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist." When that God credits righteousness, is He keeping a ledger, or speaking a word that creates?
Short answer: Both, and the second explains the first. The Catholic Church fully agrees that God credits righteousness freely, apart from works, for the sake of Christ alone. What she denies is that God's crediting is only an external label laid over a sinner who stays unchanged inside. When God reckons a sinner righteous, the sinner is forgiven, washed, renewed by the Holy Spirit and "made righteous" (Romans 5:19). Christ's merits are the source; the righteousness God gives is truly ours because it is truly His gift.
Key verses on how God justifies
- "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." (Romans 4:3)
- "who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist." (Romans 4:17)
- "the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5:5)
- "so through the obedience of one the many will be made righteous." (Romans 5:19)
- "he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit ... so that we might be justified by his grace" (Titus 3:5–7)
- "you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." (1 Corinthians 6:11)
Scripture quotations are from the New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE), © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What Protestants Believe
The classic Reformed statement is the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646): God "freely justifieth: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; ... but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them" (11.1). John Calvin: "Thus we simply interpret justification, as the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as if we were righteous; and we say that this justification consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ" (Institutes 3.11.2, 1559).
The biblical argument: in Romans 4 St. Paul uses logizomai (to count, credit, reckon) again and again, bookkeeping language. God "justifies the ungodly" (4:5); He does not wait for them to become godly. David's blessing on "the person to whom God credits righteousness apart from works" (4:6) is that sins are "covered" and not recorded (4:7–8). So justification is a legal verdict, and the righteousness that counts is Christ's, an "alien" righteousness: God "made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21), and St. Paul wanted to be found in Christ "not having any righteousness of my own" (Philippians 3:9). Hence the charge that the Council of Trent, by making an inner righteousness that can grow and be lost the "formal cause" of justification, mixes justification with sanctification.
The Reformed do not teach that the justified stay unchanged. Westminster says they "are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ's death and resurrection, by his Word and Spirit dwelling in them" (13.1). Their point is that this renewal is not why God accepts us, a Christ-honoring concern the Catholic Church shares.
What Catholics Actually Teach
The Council of Trent (Session 6, 1547) names the causes of justification. "The meritorious cause is His most beloved only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies, for the exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, merited Justification for us by His most holy Passion on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us unto God the Father" (ch. 7). The formal cause, what justification actually is in us, is "the justice of God, not that whereby He Himself is just, but that whereby He maketh us just, that, to wit, with which we being endowed by Him, are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just" (ch. 7).
So justification "is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man" (ch. 7), and its source stays outside us: "no one can be just, but he to whom the merits of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ are communicated" (ch. 7).
The Catechism: "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). "With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts" (CCC 1991). And "Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ" (CCC 1992).
What Catholics do not teach:
- That we earn justification. "We are therefore said to be justified freely, because that none of those things which precede justification-whether faith or works-merit the grace itself of justification" (Trent, ch. 8). See Is Salvation by Faith Alone?
- That God does not credit or forgive. He does both. Trent rejects only justification "by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them" (canon 11). The key words are "sole" and "to the exclusion of."
It all points to Christ. The Catholic doctrine of justification is not "Christ plus me." It is Christ in me. Jesus does not merely lend sinners His record from a distance; He joins them to Himself, so that "whoever is in Christ is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Every bit of a Christian's righteousness was bought on His Cross and poured out by His Spirit. Christ "became for us ... righteousness, sanctification, and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30): He does not only stand in for us; He lives in us.
The Biblical Case
1. When God "credits," He is never pretending
God's word is never empty. "Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). "It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what pleases me" (Isaiah 55:11). Romans 4 itself calls Him the God "who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist" (Romans 4:17).
The question is not whether God reckons, but whether His reckoning is true. "We know that the judgment of God on those who do such things is true" (Romans 2:2). Calvin wrote "as if we were righteous." Reformed Christians rightly insist this is no legal fiction, because Christ's righteousness is real. The Catholic point is that God's verdict also reaches the sinner himself: when the Creator declares a sinner righteous, His declaration makes it so, the way His "Let there be light" made light.
2. The psalm St. Paul quotes describes sin actually removed
St. Paul's second witness is Psalm 32: "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not record" (Romans 4:7–8). The NABRE note explains that the Greek for "credited" means "made an entry," and that Genesis 15:6 reminded St. Paul of Psalm 32:2, where the same term is applied to forgiveness of sins.
Read the psalm. "Blessed is the one whose fault is removed, whose sin is forgiven. Blessed is the man to whom the LORD imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no deceit" (Psalm 32:1–2). The very verse about non-imputation ends by describing the man's spirit. And David says what happened: "I said, 'I confess my transgression to the LORD,' and you took away the guilt of my sin" (32:5). Covered, here, means taken away.
Scripture always describes forgiveness this way: "As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us" (Psalm 103:12). "Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). God "will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing" (1 John 1:9). Snow is not scarlet painted white.
3. Genesis 15:6 was not the start of Abraham's faith
If "credited" names a one-time transfer when a sinner first believes, Genesis 15:6 is a strange place for it. Abraham already believed and obeyed three chapters earlier: "The LORD said to Abram: Go forth from your land ... Abram went as the LORD directed him" (Genesis 12:1, 4). "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance" (Hebrews 11:8).
And St. James says the same verse was "fulfilled" years later, at the offering of Isaac: "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? ... Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, 'Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,' and he was called 'the friend of God'" (James 2:21–23). God's crediting is not a single entry made once and never revisited; it is His true verdict on a living friendship that grows. (See Does James 2 Contradict Paul?)
4. In Romans, "reckoning" matches reality
St. Paul uses the same verb two chapters earlier: "if an uncircumcised man keeps the precepts of the law, will he not be considered circumcised?" (Romans 2:26). "Considered" is logizomai. He is counted circumcised because "circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter" (2:29), and he truly has it. The reckoning follows something real. Romans 4 contrasts gift and wage, not real and fictional.
5. The love of God is poured into our hearts
Romans 5 says what the justified received: "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1), and "the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us" (5:5). Trent echoes this verse directly: in justification "the charity of God is poured forth, by the Holy Spirit, in the hearts of those that are justified, and is inherent therein" (ch. 7).
6. "Made righteous" as truly as Adam made us sinners
"For just as through the disobedience of one person the many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one the many will be made righteous" (Romans 5:19). The Greek verb behind "made" in both halves is kathistēmi: to set down, constitute, render or make (Strong's G2525). It can also describe a standing: Thayer's lexicon files this verse under "to set down as, constitute ... to declare, show to be," and St. John Chrysostom took "sinners" here as "liable to punishment and condemned to death" (Hom. 10 on Romans). But the Reformed tradition itself says Adam passed on more than a standing: "the guilt of this sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature, conveyed to all their posterity" (Westminster 6.3). Adam constituted us sinners in standing and in nature. St. Paul's "just as ... so" demands that Christ do no less, and His grace is greater: "how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of justification come to reign in life through the one person Jesus Christ" (5:17).
7. Washed, renewed, justified
When St. Paul describes how we were justified, he describes a bath: "not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:5–7). Again: "you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:11). Three verbs, side by side, "in the Spirit of our God."
Objections Answered
(a) "Logizomai is accounting language. 'Credited' means counted, not made."
At its strongest: The NABRE note itself says the word means "made an entry." God "justifies the ungodly" (Romans 4:5), so the person credited is still ungodly in himself. And God was "not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Corinthians 5:19).
Answer: Granted: logizomai is accounting language, and justification is God's free act, not a wage. But when a banker credits an account, money actually moves; a credit with nothing behind it is fraud. When God credits righteousness, what moves is "the love of God ... poured out into our hearts" (Romans 5:5). God "justifies the ungodly" the way He "calls into being what does not exist" (4:17): the ungodly man does not stay ungodly. And "not counting their trespasses" is forgiveness, which Catholics affirm with joy; Psalm 32 shows that God's forgiveness "took away the guilt" (32:5). It does not hide it.
(b) "2 Corinthians 5:21 and Philippians 3:9 teach an alien righteousness, not our own."
At its strongest: Christ did not become a sinner in Himself; our sin was counted to Him. So "we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Corinthians 5:21) by having His righteousness counted to us. St. Paul wanted "not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith" (Philippians 3:9).
Answer: Every word of that is Catholic until someone adds "only." But Philippians 3:9 contrasts a righteousness "of my own based on the law" with "the righteousness from God." The contrast is about source (from me by the law, or from God through faith), not location (inside me or outside me). Trent agrees: our righteousness is not "established as our own as from ourselves" but is "of God, because that it is infused into us of God, through the merit of Christ" (ch. 16). And in 2 Corinthians 5:21 we "become" God's righteousness "in him," four verses after "whoever is in Christ is a new creation." The NABRE note calls it "sharing and exchange." You share what you actually receive.
(c) "Trent confuses justification with sanctification."
At its strongest: Justification is God's once-for-all verdict; sanctification is the lifelong process that follows. By making inner righteousness the formal cause, able to increase and be lost, Trent puts our progress inside the verdict, so the verdict is never settled.
Answer: Two separate stages with a wall between them is a theological system, not a line St. Paul draws. He lists "washed ... sanctified ... justified" together (1 Corinthians 6:11) and says we were "justified by his grace" through "the bath of rebirth and renewal" (Titus 3:5–7). Even if "sanctified" there means set apart, as Reformed readers answer, it is done in the person, in the same breath as "justified." Growth is biblical: Genesis 15:6 was "fulfilled" again in Genesis 22 (James 2:21–23). Loss is too: St. Paul warns the justified Corinthians, "Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers ... will inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). Trent does not confuse the two. It refuses to tear apart what Scripture joins, and it keeps the cause of everything in Christ alone.
(d) "Then no Catholic can have peace with God (Romans 5:1)."
At its strongest: If my justification rests on something in me that can be lost, I can never rest. Westminster gives real peace: the justified "can never fall from the state of justification" (11.5).
Answer: Catholic peace rests where all Christian peace must: on Christ. Trent says "no pious person ought to doubt of the mercy of God, of the merit of Christ, and of the virtue and efficacy of the sacraments"; it denies only that anyone can "know with a certainty of faith, which cannot be subject to error, that he has obtained the grace of God" (ch. 9). St. Paul: "I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord" (1 Corinthians 4:4). He told believers to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). Peace and holy fear live together, and the Catholic also has Christ's own absolution in confession. (See Can I Know I'm Saved?)
(e) "The earliest Christians taught imputed righteousness."
At its strongest: Pope St. Clement I (St. Clement of Rome, c. AD 96) says we "are not justified by ourselves ... or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men" (1 Clement 32). The anonymous Letter to Diognetus (2nd century; date debated) asks, "For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness?" and exclaims, "O sweet exchange! ... That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!" (ch. 9).
Answer: Catholics affirm every word. Not by works but by faith: Trent says nothing before justification, "whether faith or works," merits it (ch. 8). The sweet exchange: Trent says Christ "made satisfaction for us." Neither text says the exchange leaves us unchanged within. St. Clement, in the same letter, says Christians are "justified by our works, and not our words" (ch. 30), and right after chapter 32 asks, "Shall we become slothful in well-doing?" His answer: "God forbid that any such course should be followed by us!" (ch. 33). That is not the Westminster formula. It is the Catholic balance.
The Early Church Agrees
- St. Clement of Rome (First Letter to the Corinthians 31–32, c. AD 96): we are justified "not by ourselves" but by faith (ch. 32), yet Abraham was blessed "because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith" (ch. 31). Faith first and free; righteousness lived.
- St. Irenaeus of Lyons (Against Heresies, c. AD 180) reads Genesis 15:6 as Romans 4 and James 2 do together: Abraham, "without circumcision and without observance of Sabbaths, 'believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness; and he was called the friend of God'" (4.16.2). St. Paul's verse and St. James's "friend of God" sit in one sentence.
- St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Romans 10; Homilies on 2 Corinthians 11, c. AD 390s). On Romans 5:16–17, St. Paul "shows that it was not that the sins were done away only, but that righteousness was given" (Hom. 10 on Romans). On 2 Corinthians 5:21: "'For the righteous,' says he, 'He made a sinner; that He might make the sinners righteous.'" And: "For this is [the righteousness] 'of God' when we are justified not by works ... but by grace, in which case all sin is done away" (Hom. 11 on 2 Corinthians).
- St. Augustine of Hippo (On the Spirit and the Letter, AD 412). The "righteousness of God" is "not that whereby He is Himself righteous, but that with which He endows man when He justifies the ungodly" (ch. 15), "and it is called the righteousness of God, because by His bestowal of it He makes us righteous" (ch. 18). Trent's formal-cause sentence echoes him. And: "For what else does the phrase 'being justified' signify than being made righteous,—by Him, of course, who justifies the ungodly man, that he may become a godly one instead?" (ch. 45). In the same chapter he allows that "They shall be justified" can also mean "They shall be deemed, or reckoned as just." But "made righteous" comes first, and "justification precedes them as doers of the law."
None of these Fathers teaches a merely external verdict over an unchanged sinner. All teach that justification is free, by faith, through Christ alone; all teach that God's justifying grace makes the sinner righteous.
Conclusion
Romans 4 does say "credited," and Catholics say it with St. Paul. But the God who credits "calls into being what does not exist." When He counts a sinner righteous for Christ's sake, He pours His love into that heart, washes it and renews it by the Holy Spirit. That is the Gospel taken at its word. (See also Romans 3:28: Did Luther Add "Alone"?)
Come home. The righteousness Romans 4 promises is not a label but new life in Christ, and the Catholic Church is where He gives it, from the bath of rebirth to the absolution of the confessional. Christ did not found many churches. He founded one, on St. Peter and the apostles (Matthew 16:18), and that Church is the Catholic Church. "It is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained" (CCC 816). If you are a baptized Christian, you already share "a certain, although imperfect, communion" with her (CCC 838). Every truth you already hold is a call to the rest of the way. Christ is calling you into the Catholic Church.
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FAQ
Can Protestants be saved? The Church does not judge any individual soul, and she rejoices in what Protestants truly have: "All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians" (CCC 818), in "a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church" (CCC 838). But there is no salvation apart from the Church: "all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body," so "they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it" (CCC 846). The Church's hope for those outside her visible bounds rests on ignorance that is no fault of their own: those who "through no fault of their own" do not know the Gospel or the Church yet seek God sincerely "may achieve eternal salvation" (CCC 847). That is a "may," not a promise, and ignorance that can be overcome is not invincible. Membership alone saves no one either: one "who does not however persevere in charity is not saved" (CCC 837). The gifts found outside her "are in themselves calls to 'Catholic unity'" (CCC 819). So the Church's word to Protestants is not "stay where you are," but an invitation into full communion.
Sources
Scripture (NABRE, bible.usccb.org): Genesis 1:3; Genesis 12:1, 4; Genesis 15:6; Psalm 32:1–2, 5; Psalm 103:12; Isaiah 1:18; Isaiah 55:11; Matthew 16:18; Romans 2:2, 26, 29; Romans 4:3–8, 17 and note; Romans 5:1, 5, 17, 19; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 1 Corinthians 4:4; 1 Corinthians 6:9–11; 2 Corinthians 5:17, 19, 21 and note; Philippians 2:12; Philippians 3:9; Titus 3:5–7; Hebrews 11:8; James 2:21–23; 1 John 1:9.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (vatican.va): 816, 818, 819, 837, 838, 846, 847; 1987, 1991, 1992.
Church documents: Council of Trent, Session 6, Decree on Justification (1547), chs. 7, 8, 9, 16 and canon 11 (Waterworth trans., Hanover College).
Church Fathers and early writings: Clement of Rome, First Letter to the Corinthians 30–33; Letter to Diognetus 9; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.16.2; John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 10; Homilies on 2 Corinthians 11; Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter 15, 18; ch. 45 (NPNF, ccel.org).
Protestant sources: Westminster Confession of Faith, chs. 6.3, 11.1, 11.5, 13.1 (Orthodox Presbyterian Church text); John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.11.2 (Beveridge trans., ccel.org).
Greek lexicon: kathistēmi, Strong's G2525, with Thayer's lexicon (Blue Letter Bible).