The Bible and Catholic Salvation, #2b

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, Founding Pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. In Catholic salvation, air quotes for those of you listening on subsequent media, God only starts the work at baptism.

If you sin big, you lose big. For us, think about it this way, beloved, for us to know biblical salvation, to know Christ, to be in him, we realize that all of the threats of God's law have been removed and that we will never suffer this consequence and penalties that our sins deserved because we realize that Jesus Christ paid for them in full for us at the cross. And that's why we have peace.

We have an objective peace with God, an objective sense that the war has been settled. There is an eternal reconciliation that has taken place and God is no longer angry with us. Instead, we are in the blessed position of enjoying his grace and favor forever and ever. For Catholics, it's not like that. For Catholics, there's always a condition hanging over them. And even though they might think that they're good today, tomorrow there's no guarantee that they would sin and fall out of grace. And if they die in that situation, Catholic Church says, you're going straight to hell. It is sick and it is perverse when you understand the nature of biblical salvation.

Now, let's think about it this way. Let's say you're a Catholic, you're baptized, but you've committed a mortal sin. There's no real clear definition of what constitutes a mortal sin versus a venial sin.

And by the way, little sidebar here, that's a completely false distinction anyway. Mortal versus venial sins, serious versus non-serious sins, beloved, mark it. Every sin is a serious offense against God. James said that if you break one of the commandments, you've broken them all. Jesus said if you're angry or if you're lustful, you've murdered and committed adultery. There is no such thing as a small sin in the sight of a holy God. They dumb down the whole concept of sin and still condemn you over it. Well, anyway, you sin big after baptism. Catholics offer you a means of restoration when that happens. And it brings us to our third point this evening, the specific role of penance, of penance, P-E-N-A-N-C-E. Now, penance is one of the seven Roman Catholic sacraments.

Here's what they say about it. And, beloved, let's approach it this way. Let me back up. I like to try to keep our knowledge of salvation clear in our minds as we go through these things. All of you, those of you that are Christians here, you know the sense of sadness and sorrow and guilt that comes upon you when you sin as a Christian, right?

You know something about that. You feel the weight of it. Oh, I've sinned against God.

Why did I say what I said? And you feel the inner angst that David described in Psalm 51, you know, against thee, thee only I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Well, you know, as a Christian, you know from reading scripture that we go to God in confession. We go directly to God, not through a priest.

We go to God and we confess our sins to him. Lord, I said this. Lord, I did this.

Lord, I thought this. It was wrong. It was sin in your sight and I ask you to forgive me.

What's our position there? What's scripture do we lean on in that time? 1 John 1-9. If anyone confesses his sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive him his sins and to cleanse him from all unrighteousness.

There is a thorough washing, a thorough cleansing. The blood of Jesus, his son, 1 John 1-7, cleanses us from all sin. As we confess those sins that occur in our lives as we're walking through in our Christian life, we have the assurance that our loving Heavenly Father is gracious and always forgives us and restores us back to that sense of joy and fellowship that belongs to us as his children. That's our experience of confession and there's a sense in which it draws us even closer because we appreciate the fresh pouring out of grace on our souls once more as we remember God's faithful promise to forgive us when we confess our sins to him as a Christian.

Well, keep that in mind. Keep that blessed grace in mind in your own Christian life as we look at this abominable sacrament of penance according to the Roman Catholic Church. Paragraph 1446. 1446 says this, Christ instituted the sacrament of penance for all sinful members of his church above all for those who since baptism have fallen into grave sin and have thus lost their baptismal grace and wounded ecclesial communion. It is to them that the sacrament of penance offers a new possibility to convert and to recover the grace of justification. The fathers of the church present this sacrament as the second plank of salvation after the shipwreck which is the loss of grace. Don't miss that in that definition from their own source, they say that you have to recover the grace of justification. In other words, the justification that you received in baptism is lost. It has been taken away from you.

You have forfeited it. And so whereas one day you were in grace, you were justified, now the next day you're not justified. Think, beloved, about what that means. Think about that in terms of what we discussed with the doctrine of justification by faith on Sunday, whereby we said that God pardons all of your sins and imputes to you the perfect righteousness of Christ. For the biblical Christian, in true salvation, your salvation is rooted on something perfect and unalterable because it is rooted on Christ, not on your behavior. That's crucial to understand and that's why your best days spiritually don't improve your justification and that's why your worst days and your sins do not diminish your justification because it is not rooted in what you do. Justification is not rooted in your behavior, beloved. It is rooted in the perfect righteousness of Christ.

That is its ground, its base, its foundation. That is what we stand on and it never changes. You can see, therefore, that anyone that is teaching a justification that can be lost is not teaching biblical salvation. They are teaching something that in some way or another is rooted in human merit, in human righteousness, because when that righteousness goes away, the justification goes away. That's why as much as they object to it, it is proper and fitting to say that Rome teaches a method of salvation by works, because if your works aren't adequate, you do not get saved.

That's the basis on which we say that. Now, going back to their idea of recovering the grace of justification, James McCarthy said this. He's a Protestant writer critiquing Catholicism when he says this. He says to Catholics, I quote, mortal sin is a death blow. It kills the soul as surely as a fatal disease kills the body. When a Catholic who has received sanctifying grace through baptism, commits a mortal sin, he loses that grace.

You hear it? He loses that grace. Though by baptism he had been justified, because of mortal sin, he forfeits the grace of justification or it might be said is de-justified.

He becomes a child of wrath and destined for hell. And just as a dead body has no capacity to restore life to itself, the Catholic Church teaches that a soul struck dead by mortal sin cannot revive itself. The sinner must turn to the church and to the sacrament of penance, end quote. What is penance? What is the sacrament of which they speak? Well, it is a sacrament in which the sinner expresses contrition, makes verbal confession to a priest, and he also has to make satisfaction. That is, the priest assigns something for him to do in order to make amends for his sins. So what happens in penance is this. The Catholic discloses his sins verbally to a priest. Can you imagine, can you imagine a young girl having sin going to a priest on the other side and disclosing the depths of the blackness of her heart to her?

You can see how perverse this is. But that's a whole other issue. The Catholic discloses his sins verbally to a priest and the priest judges whether the sinner is sorry enough and decides whether to forgive him. If he absolves him, another word for forgiving him, if he absolves the sinner, then he also imposes acts of penance for the Catholic to do.

Paragraph 1424 of their catechism. The disclosure or confession of sins to a priest is an essential element of this sacrament. It is called the sacrament of forgiveness, since by the priest's sacramental absolution, God grants the penitent pardon and peace. In other words, beloved, if you want pardon and peace, if you've sinned as a Catholic, you have to go to a priest, tell him what you've done, maybe he forgives you, maybe he doesn't, maybe he absolves you, he says, I absolve you of your sin.

That's bad enough. There's nothing in the Bible about confessing sins to a priest. So you know, that's weird and unbiblical. But then further, the priest gives you things that you have to do if you want to seal the deal on your pardon. This is nothing other than putting the sinner in the position of making himself his own savior by what he does. He has to perfect his own pardon by going out and doing something, saying a few prayers or doing other deeds that are assigned to him.

You have to go out and you have to finish the deal on your own. So through the priest, God grants pardon, but that's not all. There's more to it, as I've already been saying. Here's what they say, paragraph 1459. By the way, we're going to get to some scripture before the night's over. Paragraph 1459 of the Catholic Catechism. I quote, Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for sin. He must make satisfaction for or expiate his sins. Paragraph 1460.

What does he have to do? The penance can consist of prayer and offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all, the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear. Such penances help configure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins once for all. This is just double talk there at the end. They say Christ paid for our sins once for all. They don't believe that. They don't mean that because they've just been saying at length what you have to do in order to get forgiveness.

They talk out of both sides of their mouth. It's intrinsically self-contradictory. The point for you tonight is to realize that when you've sinned seriously as a Christian under the Catholic doctrine, you've got to go out and you've got to get to work in order to get back to it. That's why you see in some of the more heavily dominated Catholic countries, you'll see news stories of people flagellating themselves with whips or being crucified on it. They are suffering as a penance to help pay for their sins, thinking wrongly that the more that they suffer, the more they can pay and the more likely it is that they can get a final pardon.

They have no concept because the Catholic Church has not told them that there's no need to go out and whip yourself. There's no need to go out and suffer to pay for your sin because as we sing so often in communion, Jesus paid it all. His sufferings were a perfect atonement for sin. His offering was sufficient. It was everything that God required and you can't add to it without canceling your involvement. If you're trusting in your own suffering to forgive your sins and you're not trusting in Christ, you're not looking to him by faith alone.

And so these aren't, beloved, these aren't simply little differences of opinion. Say, well, I think sin is forgiven this way and you think sin is forgiven this way. I think it's by faith alone.

You say you've got to do some works in order to do it. You know, I'm sure it just kind of all sorts out in the end. No, there is only one way of salvation. There is only one name given to us by which we must be saved. And if you don't go the God appointed route, you are still in your sins.

You're still lost. There's only one way that God has given. With that in mind, turn to Romans Chapter 10 just to help reinforce that point.

Romans Chapter 10 here, there's more to say about penance. I am so glad I'm not a Catholic. Truth of the matter, building on something similar that Martin Luther is known to have said, if Roman Catholicism were true, I would hate God intensely. If Roman Catholicism were true, it's not, but if it were, contrary to fact statement, if Roman Catholicism were true, I would rather go to hell than to spend eternity with a God who devised such a manipulative, dirty system as what Roman Catholicism is.

I wouldn't want anything to do with the God of Roman Catholicism. That's how bad this is. And as Luther just shortly before the reality of justification by faith alone dawned upon him, he had the same sense. He hated God intensely because he was viewing God through a works-based lens. And he said, I can't keep this. And the harder I try, the worse it gets. And there's just so much frustration and guilt and there is no relief to it. That's what Catholicism does to those who take it seriously and try to follow it, who understand what's going on.

It's bondage of the worst sort. And it lays on the sinner the responsibility of doing that which is necessary to save his own soul. The whole point of needing salvation is, I can't save myself. I can't do this.

I need help from outside myself. That's why, beloved, the gospel is so great and so glorious. The gospel is the announcement that Jesus Christ says, I've done it.

Believe in me and I'll cover it all for you as a gracious gift, not to be bought with a price but received by simple faith. That is music to the sinner's ears. That is the sweetest sound a guilty soul could ever hear. There's a way for my burden of guilt to be removed and I don't have to pay for it.

Someone else will save me. That's sweet. That's precious. That brings joy and satisfaction to the human heart. To tell a guilty sinner you've got more to do is to just throw boulders into a backpack that was already causing him to stagger and collapse. That's why we say it's demonic. It's demonic because it leads the sinner away from the only true salvation. It leads him away from faith in Christ and leads him and brings him to trust in himself and his own works. Romans 10 verse 1.

Paul speaking about the Jews, echoing what modern day Christians would say about Catholics. Brethren, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation. For I testify about them that they have a zeal for God but not in accordance with knowledge. Here's the thing that Catholics are trying to do. For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.

They make up their own rules and they pursue their own rules and they try to establish righteousness according to rules that they made up based on things that they do themselves. And that currency, that money doesn't pay in the economy of God. The only thing that God receives is faith in Christ.

Everything else is monopoly money. Nothing else can pay. Christ, faith alone in Christ alone or you're on your own. The first thing is not to try to get your salvation. The first thing to say is what does God say? What does God say?

How can a man be saved? He's made that known in scripture. If you try to avoid, if you neglect scripture and establish your own, you're working out a false salvation that can only damn you in the end.

The consequences of this are eternal. Well, Lorraine Bettner sees through it all in his book on Roman Catholicism. He says this, In all Roman Catholic catechisms and theological books which deal with this subject, it is taught that God grants forgiveness only to those who on their part try to atone for their sins through worthy fruits of repentance. This false teaching that forgiveness is only partial and that it is given only for a price is the real basis of the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation and must always be kept in mind in any effective controversy with Roman Catholics." Let's summarize here and then I want to give you some scriptures to refresh your heart before we close. What is the Catholic system of salvation? Well, initial forgiveness comes through baptism, but that state can be lost through mortal sin, but you can get it back through penance, but you have to work for it, but even then you may still spend a long time in purgatory before you ever get to see the pearly gates.

Catholicism, Roman Catholic salvation is like Lucy and Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown trying to kick the field goal. They put the ball down and you go up and you try to kick it and they go, whoops, that's not it. Try again. Try here. Whoops, try again. Whoops, try again.

Whoops, try again. It's a shell game. It's a con. It's like trying to get your salvation from the con artist who has three cups and one ball in it and moves it all around so that you can't really follow because of the slate of hand that's going on.

Say, which cup do you think it's under? The baptism one? No, sorry. No, sorry, purgatory.

No, sorry. They never let you see it. No wonder 500 years ago, almost to the hour, not quite, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door at Wittenberg. He said, let's dialogue about this and no wonder after a thousand years of that kind of dark slavery in the midst of other social things that were going on, desperate hearts in the midst of a very difficult world situation, a lot of death in preceding decades, no wonder desperate hearts leaped at the thought that there might be another way of salvation than the slavery and bondage that had been given to them through the Roman church.

Beloved, here's the bottom line. A man, a woman, a child could ignore God's word and follow Catholicism if they wanted, I suppose, or you could hear God's word, ignore Catholicism and listen to the sweetness and the simplicity of what scripture says. Scripture promises full salvation as a gracious gift through simple faith in Jesus Christ. Listen to these scriptures as we close. Romans 5-1, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 8-1, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8-30, these whom he predestined, he also called, and these whom he called, he also justified, and these whom he justified, he also glorified. Everyone justified is glorified. No one drops out. You don't lose justification.

Why? Because it's premised on a perfect savior who's paid it all. So the ones who are truly justified could never be lost because it is based on Christ. Galatians 2-21, I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly. Ephesians 2-8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not as a result of work so that no one may boast. Testimony of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3-8 and 9, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law but that which is through faith in Christ. One more, Titus 3-5, he saved us, not on the basis of deeds we have done in righteousness but according to his mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.

Everyone who is truly justified by faith will go to heaven. A Catholic would never tell you that. Their whole doctrine denies that.

They set up penance so that you could restore that which had been lost. I hate it. I hate it with all my heart. It's been a privilege to teach against it, especially on this day, the exact 500th anniversary. You realize if we had a Wednesday night service we wouldn't be able to do that? Tuesdays, man.

Tuesdays when you should have your midweek service. You liked that, didn't you, Janet? One last thing. The whole idea of sacraments, doing things so that you can get God's grace into your life as a Christian, so-called. How is it that you and I, as believers in Christ, find God's grace in our times of weakness, times of temptation, times of confession, times of trial, times of sorrow? How do we find God's grace, beloved? Do we have to go through a lot of rituals? How do you find God's grace in the Christian life?

Simply ask. You just ask directly to God, have you sinned? Matthew 6, 12 to 13. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. God's eager to answer that prayer from his children. Facing a hard time ahead, you feeling the weight of temptation? God, do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Matthew 6, 12 and 13. Later on in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, ask, it'll be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and he who seeks, finds, and to him who knocks, it will be open. Is there anything more precious to you as a Christian than the fact that you don't have to go through a lot of rituals, that you don't have to go out and do works of penance in order to somehow earn God's grace and maybe be satisfied with what you did, maybe you don't?

Forget all of that. The blessed position that we enjoy as Christians is God says, just come to me and ask, I'll give it to you. You need grace, I've got all the grace you need.

It's sufficient for you. That's our Father. The one who loves us. The one who sent Christ to save us. The one who planned salvation from the start. The one who knows your needs before you asked. The one who is pleased with his Son and because you're in his Son, you share the same status before God as Jesus Christ himself did.

You say, well, you know, it's been a dry time for me. Could it be, James 4-2, you don't have simply because you haven't asked? God hears.

God doesn't set any conditions on it. He says, ask me for the grace you need. It's his delight to provide it. And so in true Christianity, beloved, God doesn't convey grace to his children through threats, through priests, through works, or through self-inflicted punishments. Beloved, if you take nothing else away from this tonight than this, God is a good God who delights to give good gifts to his children.

There's probably a little bit of Catholicism in all of us thinking we got to work, we got to earn this. Well, the more you go into Scripture, the more that you understand true salvation, true biblical theology, the more you realize that it's not rooted in you. God doesn't respond to you based on your merit. That's wonderful because it means he responds to you according to his love and his grace. And you go and you ask him in faith, you ask him in trust, and he's delighted to pour the blessing upon you. You don't need to prove anything to him because Jesus already paid it all.

Thank you for your patience. We'll try to bring all this to a conclusion next week. For now, let's bow together in prayer and thank our God for who he is. Father, we've spoken strongly, strongly to say that we would hate you if the true God were the God of Roman Catholicism. We can speak that way because the God of Roman Catholicism is not you. It's not the true God.

It's some false substitute. It's an idol in the minds of men, but it's not the true God. So we can hate that false God, Lord, and come to you and simply thank you for who you are. We thank you, Father, for the love which designed the eternal plan of salvation, that designed our good before we were even born. We thank you for the wonder of a Savior who made the complete atonement for sin 2,000 years before our mothers held us in her human arms. Father, we thank you for the indwelling Holy Spirit who keeps us, who is the seal, the promise that there is even more to our salvation yet to come. Having put the Spirit within us, O God, you won't take him away. The Spirit will be with us and deliver us safely into your heavenly kingdom. And there, Father, we will know inexpressible joy full of glory that will just abound in ways that go far beyond I could see or tongue could describe in this life.

That's what you've done for us. That's what salvation is. And God, that is not anything that we could ever work for.

There's no way that climbing up stairs on our knees someplace in Europe could ever earn any kind of gift like that. O God, please have mercy on those that we love, that we know that are in the bonds of Catholicism. Be pleased to use us as instruments of the gospel.

Open their hearts to the same gospel that you opened our hearts to, that they might also believe in Christ and be saved. But as we close, Father, we just thank you for the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's why we're eager to preach it to Jew and Gentile alike, for in the gospel alone, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. In the gospel alone is your glory and your righteousness truly seen. It's a glory and a righteousness that belongs to you alone that you give to us as a gift received by faith Father, we are on the receiving end of amazing, astonishing, abounding grace that is far more precious than any false system of religion could offer an alternative to. And so with that, Father, we close with grateful, thankful, abounding hearts. Not that we're better than anyone else, not that we're better than any Catholic, but you have shown us grace, Father, that we would desire them to know as well.

Protect us as we go. In Jesus' name, amen. That's Don Green here on The Truth Pulpit. And here's Don again with some closing thoughts. Well, my friend, thank you for joining us here on today's broadcast of The Truth Pulpit, where we love to be teaching God's people God's word.

And I just want to send a special invitation to you. If you're ever in the Midwest area, come to see us at Truth Community Church. We're on the east side of Cincinnati, Ohio. We're easy to find, easy to get to. We have services at 9 a.m. on Sunday and 7 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday evening for our midweek study. You can also find us on our live stream at thetruthpulpit.com.

That's thetruthpulpit.com. But we would love to see you. And if you do happen to be able to visit us in person, do this if you would. Come and introduce yourself to me personally. Fight your way through the people and tell me that you listen on The Truth Pulpit and that you're here visiting. I would love to give you a word of personal greeting. So hopefully we'll see you one day in person at Truth Community Church.

You can find our location and service times at thetruthpulpit.com. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's Word.