Audio Transcript
Right now we speak about a few of the deadliest errors of present-day Roman Catholicism. And over the subsequent month, we have a look at Rome traditionally. This October, we’re celebrating the Reformation — Martin Luther’s nice stand towards the pope and towards Rome’s religious abuses and theological errors. However Luther didn’t stand alone. Different males stood for this identical trigger, earlier than and after him — folks like John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, and John Calvin. And lots of different lesser-known names paid the final word worth within the Reformation — women and men, even youngsters, who stood towards Rome, and who bled and have been burned and drowned for it.
These tales of sacrifice are our focus within the month forward, in a 31-day tour you may full in simply 5–7 minutes every day. It’s known as Right here We Stand. You possibly can subscribe to the e-mail journey as we speak by going to desiringGod.org/stand. Or simply go to desiringGod.org and click on on the hyperlink on the high of the web site. I hope you’ll be part of us in remembering the value paid for the religious blessings and spiritual liberties we take pleasure in as we speak.
The core beliefs enshrined by the pope and within the practices of Rome that deeply involved the Reformers 5 hundred years in the past are a few of the exact same issues for us Protestants as we speak — resulting in this query about whether or not somebody in a Roman Catholic church may very well be genuinely saved. The query comes from a listener named Jimmy who writes, “Good day, Pastor John. A detailed buddy of mine handed away not too long ago. He was an amazing man, a superb buddy, a mentor to many younger males like myself. And he was a religious Roman Catholic. My questions for you might be these: Will I see my buddy in heaven? Or do his theological views make this unimaginable? Can I rightfully expertise Paul’s ‘sorrowful, but all the time rejoicing’ mantra, or was my buddy merely a loyal husband, an exquisite buddy, and a superb man? In different phrases, do you imagine religious Roman Catholics could be real Christians?”
Earlier than I reply that particular query, let me lay out once more the explanations we ought to be significantly involved with Roman Catholic educating — and that, at quite a few ranges, its contradictory stance towards Scripture produces, I feel, a type of faith that I concern has led many individuals astray, even into destruction. And I don’t imply that Roman Catholicism has a nook on that type of deceptive educating. There are many manufacturers of so-called “Christian” custom which have broken folks by the errors that they characterize.
Seven Lethal Errors
So, let me offer you seven examples of what issues me about Roman Catholic educating and that I feel we ought to be very involved about and avoid.
1. We ought to be involved that the Roman Catholic Church elevates the authority of the pope and the church councils — when talking of their official capability as academics of the church — to the identical stage as Holy Scripture. This has led many Roman Catholics away from a private engagement with the Scriptures right into a reliance on the church — despite the fact that the church is fallible — after they must be counting on the Scriptures, the very phrase of God, impressed and written.
“I feel there are real Christians who’re religious and inconsistent Roman Catholics.”
2. We ought to be involved that the blessed Virgin Mary — and I’ve no downside calling her that — is elevated to a place, in observe, the place she mediates between the folks of God and the Son of God in a approach that undermines the direct priestly ministry of Christ between his folks and God. This elevation of Mary — past something within the Scriptures, based mostly solely on church custom — distances the folks of God from the enjoyment of private fellowship with Jesus and the type of relationship and assurance they may in any other case take pleasure in with him.
3. We ought to be involved in regards to the educating of baptismal regeneration — the concept that an applicable placing of water on the infant’s head, by the very work of the water (ex opere operato, by the very working of the factor itself, by the very work of the water within the priestly act), causes a change within the nature of the infant from misplaced in authentic sin to saved via regeneration. This notion has produced, I might say, untold ill-founded confidence within the folks of God who’ve little or no private religion or relationship with Christ or like to Jesus, and but, due to their baptism, imagine they’re heaven sure.
4. We ought to be involved in regards to the providing of so-called indulgences, which the very Pope Francis himself supplied — not in some distant sixteenth-century previous. It entails sure sorts of pilgrimages or particular buildings or particular funds that one can carry out or attend in order that an indulgence is granted by the pope that gives forgiveness of sins. That is an appalling detraction from absolutely the uniqueness of the dying of Christ as the availability for sins, and private religion because the means by which that provision turns into ours.
5. We ought to be involved in regards to the confusion over the doctrine of justification by grace alone on the premise of Christ alone via religion alone to the glory of God alone. The Roman Catholic insistence that justification consists within the infusion of righteousness, which (as our personal advantage) qualifies us to be accepted by God, shouldn’t be the identical because the biblical doctrine of God turning into 100% for us within the second when by religion we’re united with Christ in order that his blood and righteousness alone turn out to be the bottom of that acceptance.
6. We ought to be involved in regards to the centrality of the Mass within the Roman Catholic observe, wherein the bread and wine are literally transubstantiated. They turn out to be the bodily physique and bodily blood of Jesus in order that the Lord’s Supper takes on an influence of salvation by the getting into of the blood and the physique of Jesus into us, which it by no means was meant to have within the Bible. It misleads tens of millions of what’s taking place there.
7. Lastly, we ought to be involved in regards to the doctrine of purgatory, wherein an individual after dying could also be given one other probability of bearing some punishment in order that lastly he could make his strategy to heaven after doing applicable penance there. The Bible holds out no such hope for many who die in unbelief. It’s not discovered within the Scriptures.
Can Catholics Be Saved?
Now, having waved a flag of concern for these seven issues of Catholic perception, my reply to the query nonetheless is sure. I feel there are real Christians who’re religious and inconsistent Roman Catholics — “religious” within the sense that they’re earnest and critical, honest, and “inconsistent” within the sense that their true coronary heart embrace of Jesus is best than their psychological concepts or doctrines.
If an individual has a real encounter with the dwelling Christ and acknowledges the depth of human sinfulness and the hopelessness that we’re in with out grace and with out Christ, and sees in Jesus the substitute that God supplied to bear our punishment and supply all we’d like for acceptance with God, and that individual throws himself on the mercy of Christ, despairing of all self-reliance, and cherishes Christ as his supreme treasure and hope for everlasting life, that individual can be saved — even when many doctrinal concepts are confused or inaccurate. In different phrases, it’s doable for an individual’s coronary heart and his important grasp of Christ to be much better than the constructions of his doctrinal framework, and we might all be very, very grateful for this.
