Posted on 02/20/2015 2:37:38 AM PST by Repent and Believe
From the Martyrology today we have: "At Damascus, [in the year 743,] holy Peter Mavimeno. Some Arabs came to see him while he was ill, and to them he said, " Whoever does not embrace the Catholic Christian religion will be damned, as your false prophet Mohammed is," whereupon they killed him."
“So my question to you is have you cut your eye out or cut off a hand? “
No; God knows I’ve repented of what wickedness that eye and hand have committed and how I shall (by God’s grace avoid it in future.
As in my heart I now despise those members (fallen eye, hand) and have torn them from the service of the devil, so also in my Heart I know that the consecrated Host is Christ even though it also does not appear to the eye to be Him.
In fact, by spiritually removing my sinful eye, I have recieved in turn a spiritual eye that can recognize Christ in the consecrated bread!
Blessed be God.
Hmmm. How can the apostles DECIDE which sins to forgive and which sins to retain?
Why—it is self-evident that people need to TELL them what their sins are, and whether they repent.
Funny. Jesus gave the apostles the power to forgive sins. It’s right there in St. John’s gospel. Yet some people DENY that Jesus handed over the power to forgive sins to any human. They say that “it is not necessary to tell our sins to a man.” I guess some people JUST DON’T BELIEVE WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS.
Of course, anyone could just go with what Scripture says and confess to God and be SURE of getting their sins forgiven.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
No need to worry about a priest deciding that he knows better than God and retaining someone's sins.
God because .....
Hebrews 9:22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Water is the wrong medium for cleansing sin.
Did anyone force you to read them? If you are not interested, ignore them.
Minutes later, you sneeringly mock the sacrament of baptism—instituted by CHRIST—as “getting wet.”
Get back to me when you decide which one of your personalities is posting today.
Dude, do you really read the postings? Or do you just look for a chance to come up with crazy stuff....as I've seen you do in the past.
Your idea of cutting and pasting was exhibited in post #39 from wikipedia for a question regarding are we all bound to belong to the Church...which in your worldview is the roman catholic church. It's about believing in Jesus as the Word notes.
I posted several verses from Acts, mostly from Peter, to illustrate how reading the Word, verses some long winded stuff from one of your popes, would get the message across on how to be saved. And it's not being a member of the roman catholic church.
To your comment on baptism....one post mentioned baptism out of the five I posted. I mock nothing. But I see what your intention is....to draw attention away from the facts.
Acts 2:38
Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Then you replied back with
Who said that Baptism does not forgive sins?
My reply was, "just getting wet doesn't forgive anything."
I would hope that you, being a priest, would understand what it really means to be saved and forgiven.
But I'll be glad to clarify....if you haven't repented of your sins, and placed your faith/belief in Christ as the five verses I posted indicate, then all you're doing when you're baptized is getting wet. You go down a wet sinner and come up a wet sinner.
The verses are in post #123 on how one can be saved. There's lots more we could post, but those were good enough for Peter and Paul, so I think they'll be good enough for this conversation.
No; God knows I’ve repented of what wickedness that eye and hand have committed and how I shall (by God’s grace avoid it in future.
As in my heart I now despise those members (fallen eye, hand) and have torn them from the service of the devil, so also in my Heart I know that the consecrated Host is Christ even though it also does not appear to the eye to be Him.
In fact, by spiritually removing my sinful eye, I have recieved in turn a spiritual eye that can recognize Christ in the consecrated bread!
You're half right....as you've not physically removed your sinful eye, but "spiritually" have removed your sinful eye, then you've spiritually received Christ when you eat the bread and drink the blood, not physically eaten Him.
Leni
Two things fiercely independent free people love and will never stop doing: Arguing about politics and religion, especially if coerced to do so. Thanks.
So you don’t actually believe in free speech? How liberal of you!
Gotta love your attitude!!! Thanks for all you do!
You interpret John 1:9 to mean that we should confess our sins directly to God and not to each other to have them forgiven (and that has to be an interpretation because there is no direction in the actual words to tell us who to confess to).
I do not dispute that that interpretation may be valid.
John 20:23, however, is clear in that it gives the apostles the power to forgive or retain sins, which of course would mean that they would have to hear those sins to know which to retain or forgive, which is the clear biblical basis of Catholic confession.
So from the scripture,if we accept your interpretation, there are at least two ways to have your sins forgiven, either by confessing them to another person, or by confessing them directly to God. The first being the most clear.
You are making the assumption that the ability to directly confess to God eliminates the possibility of doing it any other way, when in fact the other way is more directly explained.
Catholics embrace the clear method of confessing to another, but they do not eliminate confessing directly to God. Catholics do believe in confessing directly to God, you know that don’t you? Confession as a sacrament is an outward sign of the grace of God, in that we know that our confession is immediately accepted by God through our confessor and we are given the words of absolution which our human ears can hear. We also know that our sins if perfectly confessed directly to God are also immediately forgiven, but the human interface in the sacrament clearly commanded in John 20:23 gives us physical feedback that is priceless. For that reason the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation is required of Catholics.
Love,
O2
P.S.
If our sins are already forgiven because we are saved by faith in Jesus, why would we need to ever confess anything after being saved? Why would John say we need to be “cleansed from all unrighteousness” if that was already done when we were saved?
T A G L I N E
Many people have said that conservative talk radio divides the political spectrum and does not advance the conservative cause. Some have even said that about FR! Will you stop supporting other conservative mediums because of this?
If you don't like these threads, don't read them. I don't read a lot of threads as they don't interest me.
I for one though enjoy these threads. You never really know how well you know something until you have to defend it.
If a child disobeys his father, what does he do? Tell a friend to tell his father that he disobeyed and is sorry? That's ludicrous. What father wouldn't want the child coming to him himself and telling his own daddy that he's sorry?
What father would give a child's friend the right to forgive in his stead?
If the child sins, does he cease being his child for the disobedience? Is he written out of the will in an on again off again relationship with his father?
Is he not part of the family any more?
Does the disobedience severe the family relationship or just disrupt it?
So what's the point in parents having their child confess their disobedience to them? Is it to get him back into the family, or to restore the lines of communication between the parent and child and bring peace back into it?
So why do Catholics need so many outward signs?
Can't they take God as His word?
God said it. That's enough for me. I rest in His promise that if I confess, HE is FAITHFUL and JUST to forgive me of my sins and cleanse me from ALL unrighteousness.
It's not presumption as I've been accused of having. It's trusting and believing the God who I know cannot lie.
God's word, His promise, is all I need to hear to know that it's done.
And I learn a lot about God from these threads on a daily basis.
And sometimes even end up preaching to myself.
I don’t understand all of the questions, but if you are asking why we should confess to someone other than God, the answer is in the scripture.
Jesus Himself told the apostles that they should forgive or retain sins. I don’t know why He said that, I just know that He did.
The Catholic Church follows scripture exactly in this case, and you still dispute it, which leads me to believe that your tendency is to disagree with everything the Catholic Church does, even when it is clearly scriptural.
You also didn’t address the question that you opened your reply with.
Love, O2
ttttaaaagggglllliiiinnnneeee
Especially if God tells you to.
Love, O2
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