I’m reminded of the scene in the 1950 Martin Luther movie where Luther is talking to the head of his Romanish monk order and the guy says after Luther points to Romans about how the just shall live by faith - and the guy goes off on “Dr. Luther, what if we take away the indulgences, the relics, the pilgrimages, what will we replace these with?”
Luther responds, “Christ. Man only needs Jesus Christ.”
And the Romanish monk shakes his head and walks away.
It is the same debate that is going on in this thread today.
Man refuses to accept the gift because he thinks “All I have to do is believe?” He does not realize how hard it is to live a good Christian life even knowing it’s free. A person like Paul, who understood salvation to be a gift of God, freely given, who wanted to live more Christlike, was terribly bothered by his own sins (failings, shortcomings, character flaws, etc) because he was trying to live a better Christian life and still could not do it perfectly. He begged God to take these away from him and God would not do so. His sins bothered him greatly, but he did not fear that his sins cost him his salvation.
This is the picture of the maturing Christian, engaged in the process of sanctification while alive on the earth, no matter what denomination they are in. They are not the antinomianism “I am saved so I’ll keep sinning” person.
Thanks. Good post.
I want to expand on this. The problem that some of the RCC posters have here about this is ‘what if a person’s conscience does not make him feel repentant ENOUGH?’ He may ‘slack off’ and not ‘do enough’ to be forgiven by God.
Given the fact there is nothing we can do to repay one sin completely (you break the law in one place, you break it everywhere - it’s as bad as breaking the entire law because the punishment is the same whether it’s small or not) tell me what is enough? Living the rest of your life perfectly is not enough, because it still doesn’t pay for you breaking the law beforehand - living perfectly is only doing what God EXPECTS of you. Doing only what’s expected of you from now until you die does not pay for your past crimes.
The whole RCC problem is that they want to be your conscience and tell you when you’ve done enough to be forgiven. They want to displace your own God-given conscience, and there are many, many people who willingly want to turn their own conscience off and simply listen to what others say they need to do (legalism) in order to stay in God’s good graces. They say if we leave it up to the lay people then most will not ‘behave right’ - not go to church, not support the church, not ‘do what they should do.’
I ask, who are any of them, priests or lay people, to play the part of someone else’s conscience and tell them they don’t have salvation unless you do x, y, and z and tell Father everything and say 25 Our Fathers and 100 Hail Marys and then you’ll be forgiven. You don’t even give them a chance to figure out the seriousness of what they may have done on their own, you want to play the part of their own conscience - for their own good you say.
It is not your job to force people to be ‘repentant’ enough in your opinion. You are not their conscience. God has given them one. Do you know how you feel when your conscience is bugging you? You feel really bad. You want to feel better. The RCC, though, at this point holds this person hostage by saying their salvation may be in jeopardy (or is lost) until you do a bunch of things and another person tells you you are officially forgiven. This is not biblical. A truly repentant person wants forgiveness and understands why they need it (and if it is in question if they do or not, it is easily and quickly explained to them). A repentant person, who is told they are forgiven, once the fear of eternal consequences is gone, can move forward with confidence with his pastor or other Christians and say, what can I do to make up for what I’ve done? And start moving forward from that point, knowing he has been forgiven, not having to do a number of tasks before someone will tell him he is forgiven.
By letting others be your conscience and set up a legalistic system of confession/penance/absolution controlled by others, the way the RCC has done it, I believe that a lot of lay Christians in that church do not have the opportunity to grow into more mature Christians because their own consciences are not maturing and ‘the mind of Christ’ we are supposed to have is not being molded and growing like it should. They are not able to discern things for themselves as they should, and be repentant as they should, as forgiveness becomes a ritualistic, legalistic-formula exercise.