When Catholics talk to Protestants about the Eucharist or confession or baptism,

or practically anything related to salvation, there is one verse that Protestants almost always bring up in response.

Ephesians 2, 8 through 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not because of works, lest any man should boast.

But Catholics fully agree with what Paul is teaching here.

So when Protestants bring up this verse, they end up misusing it and divorcing it from its original context.

For example, the Protestant apologist Ron Rhodes writes,

The Roman Catholic position seems to assume that human beings actually do things

that make them acceptable to God. But such an idea goes against the entire grain of Scripture.

God's grace, God's unmerited favor, is our only chance for salvation. But Ephesians 2 does not

conflict in any way with the idea that we do things in order to be saved. So let's take a

look at the context as well as what Catholicism teaches about salvation. So Paul begins Ephesians

by discussing how God predestined Christians. In him, according to the purpose of him who

accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will. We who first hoped in Christ

have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. The Catechism of the Catholic

Church agrees that God has a plan for every single person, because to God, all moments of time are

present in their immediacy. When, therefore, he establishes his eternal plan of predestination,

he includes in it each person's free response to his grace. None of us can choose to love God

through our own human ability, because without grace, we are dead in sin. Paul makes this point in

Ephesians 2, 4 through 5.

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us, even when

we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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