You can cherry pick Bible verses all you like. But there is no such thing as a “clear meaning of scripture.”
His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:16
That might be too hard for your Mormonism-lite faith to handle.
The Protestant Reformers, however, impatient with metaphysics, preferred not to cope with such an entity and denied its existence.(5) To them it seemed simpler to say that grace is something wholly in God, namely, His favor towards us. But then, if grace is not something real in man, our “justification” can no longer be conceived as a real change in us; it will have to become a sheer declaration on God’s part, e.g. a declaration that, thanks to the work of Christ, He will henceforth consider us as just, even though we remain inwardly the sinners we always were. Hence, the Protestant doctrine of “forensic” or “extrinsic” justification. Now watch what happens to our own act of faith: it ceases to be the foundational act of an interior renewal and becomes a mere requirement, devoid of any salvific power in its own right, which God arbitrarily sets as the condition on which He will declare us just. Whereupon, watch what happens to our good works: they cease to be the vital acts wherein an ontologically real “new life” consists and manifests itself; they become mere human responses to divine mercy—nice, but totally irrelevant to our justification—or else they become zombie-like motions produced in us by irresistible divine impulses, whereby God exhibits His glory in His elect.
Now, again, few Protestants have thought these matters through. Most do not realize that the theology they have inherited derives historically from nominalistic assumptions, which led Luther and Calvin to deny the existence of sanctifying grace. Rather, they feel that they are simply reading St. Paul. “By grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8f). They feel that an extrinsic, purely declaratory justification is the obvious meaning of such passages. Catholic apologetics, therefore, must show the opposite. It is no use arguing metaphysics until we break down that lively conviction by which the Protestant feels that St. Paul is his home turf. We must show that St. Paul’s real position is far closer to that of Trent than to that of Luther.
I’m sure that’s true for you.
HaHaHaHaHa...Did God teach you that or did Satan???
His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 2 Peter 3:16
But yet you post scripture as tho the meaning is clear...(so go figure)...
Regardless, the verse you posted is very clear, but yet somehow you bumble that all up...
Paul's letters contain SOME THINGS (that means a few) that are hard to understand...
BY WHOM???
By ignorant and unstable people...
That's pretty simple, clear and plain scripture...
Interestingly tho, you classify yourself with that group of the ignorant and unstable since you claim you can't understand Paul's scripture...But you make the mistake of assuming we are all ignorant and unstable like you claim you are...
Where you apparently miss the boat is that you don't seem to realize that an unsaved person can't make hide nor hair of the scriptures...But saved persons do not have that handicap...
1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
You can't get it with a secular understanding of scripture...