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Very convenient to have no role for free will. Reason and free will cause choices that lead to damnation.

Matthew 25:31-46 is totally clear that the ones who don’t DO the good works listed WILL go away into eternal punishment.

Matthew 7:21

James 2:24 and Galatians 2:16 appear on the surface to contradict themselves. Scripture can never contradict itself.

SO: both verses are true - not Galatians 2:16 instead of James 2:24.

How? the works referred to by St. Paul in Galatians are the dead works of Jewish law, not the good works required for salvation as set forth in Matthew 25.

Martin Luther got this very wrong by throwing out James 2:24 and misapplying Galatians 2:16 so he could get rid of the sacrament of penance.

The bible speaks for itself- Martin Luther garbled the correct meaning of Galatians 2:16.

More works (not the dead Jewish works) scriptures:

Colossians 1:10

Matthew 7:21

Revelations 20:12-13

Romans 2:6

Before one can do any “works” that matter to God (Matthew 7 and 25), one must have first done the WORK of God by believing “in the One He sent” (per Jesus) or, per Paul in Galatians, “believing what you heard” (ie. the Good News).

This is not hard at all...until you do it and then begin a new existence of being harassed in extremis by the World, the Flesh, and the Devil until you die, ha!

Those with the impressive resume of Matthew 7 were told they were, in fact, “workers of lawlessness”. We believers need to stop the verse-bound surface skimming and get down to the HEART of what GOD is about in Jesus Christ!

The righteous shall live by faith!

Luther didn't garble the Galatians verses, and Paul certainly didn't limit his comments on law keeping to Jewish law. Salvation is by grace through faith alone. Works, whether by observing Jewish laws and feast days, by obeying the 10 commandments, or by any sacrament established by the Roman church or any protestant denomination have no part in salvation by grace through faith in the blood sacrifice made once for all by our Savior. No mortal man can keep all of God's laws for all of his or her life. But the Son of God Himself, the 2nd personage of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, could and did. And his perfect, sinless life is credited to our account when we accept Him as Lord and Savior.

That doesn't mean that we can sin and not pay a price for it, we can't. We pay a price for breaking God's law by falling out of fellowship with our Lord and forfeiting, temporarily at least, the blessings of a close personal relationship with Him, but not by losing our irreversible salvation. My salvation was paid for in full on the cross in my precious Savior's sinless blood, and "PAID IN FULL" is written large over God's record of my sin debt. I strive daily to obey his laws with the aid of the ever present Holy Spirit, but I fail more often than I succeed. If not for Jesus' boundless grace I would be condemned to the lowest level of hell, but with Him all things are possible, even the salvation of my eternal soul.

>>Very convenient to have no role for free will.<<

Say what??? Our free will is the will of God through the Holy Spirit we have indwelling within us. Why would we will anything that would separate us? Catholics are required to submit their will to the magisterium. True believers submit their will to the Holy Spirit within.