Catholics Don't Believe You Can Earn Your Way to Heaven

A man commits a serious crime, then he gets released. He has "paid his debt to society". But wait a minute, he's only ready for the half-way house. He's unlikely to get a prestigious job in his new prison suit coat, or any job at all; he has civil impediments, he can't vote or hold certain offices. His crime was serious enough that he won't be presumed to have been completely rehabilitated until he performs a notable service to society, or at least spends many years on the straight and narrow, so that his crime can be truly overlooked or forgotten.

In Catholic faith, your "debt to society" is paid by Jesus Christ on Calvary. It's called "eternal punishment", without Christ it keeps you from going to heaven. Supposing that you do take advantage of His sacrifice, you're truly sorry, have a firm purpose of amendment, if you relapse, you go again for forgiveness (to the Sacrament of Confession).

But your sin leaves a strong trace at another layer of impurity called "temporal punishment due to sin", like the civil impediments facing the half-way house prisoner. Because "nothing impure can enter heaven", there is a place or a state, a condition of purification to render you fit for heaven after Christ has finally saved you from hell. The Catholic Church calls it purgatory.

(Where is it in the bible? Where is the word Trinity in the bible? Where does it say that you only need a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Many valid principles aren't stated explicitly in the bible, but it does say to "hold fast to the traditions you have learned, whether by word or by letter", because much of the Gospel wasn't written down, as Jesus only wrote in the sand, the majority of the Gospel was taught from word to ear to people who couldn't afford expensive books, the exceptions were what tended to get written down. But the implication that there is a purgatory, is contained in the bible--see the comments.)

The ex-con can receive a pardon or commutation of his probation from a Governor, if he performs some heroic deed, saving numerous lives, or, like Chuck Colson, performs a long-lasting, valuable community service helping numerous people who can't help themselves.

In the Catholic Church there are 2 ways for the residual, temporal effects due to sin to be expiated: suffering in this life, or after life, undergoing purifying suffering along with other people who will finally be saved, but have to suffer for long without the vision of God--that is what causes them their pain.

Their suffering isn't meritorious enough to grant their release, the saints in heaven and those on earth suffering and practicing virtue can pray for the suffering souls in purgatory. In no way is their release by slow transfer of suffering or practice of virtue, "buying heaven". It's a long, excruciating process.

How the misunderstanding arose that Catholics think they can buy their way into heaven, is involved with history more than 500 years old. For a millennium of Christendom between roughly 410 and 1410, there was a Medieval civilization with harmony between faith and government.

Many small farmers would cluster around the manor house of a military lord who would protect them, in exchange for a certain fixed obligation of labor and agricultural produce. In most cases, those "serfs" had much more leisure than factory workers of the industrial revolution; there were a large number of holy days without work, and except for planting and harvesting, there were long stretches of idle time.

Another large sector of the economy surrounded monasteries, where the monks developed most of the farming practices that stabilized the serfs and their manorial lords. The monks who worked those monastic lands were sworn to poverty, so that monasteries built up large accumulations of economic value over decades and centuries of labor.

At the beginning, when lands were being cleared and put into production there weren't prominent town fairs ruled by merchants and bankers. Money wasn't used for sustenance, not even much barter occurred, life was mostly agrarian.

Charity was woven into the economy of monasteries. It was estimated that you only need travel 12 miles in medieval England between monasteries, where you could get a meal and minimal lodging for free, based on need. And the charity was also spiritual, including the ancient Catholic principle of prayer for the dead, which is biblical. (See "prayer for the dead" in the original King James Bible in the comment.)

There were foundations and benefices for praying for the dead, that allowed a person of means to support monasteries' charitable works, and in proportional response the monks would pray for the souls of the donors.

It happened at the close of the middle ages, that militarily strong nobles cast their eyes on the labor value accumulated by the poverty-sworn monks of the monasteries, which those nobles perceived as monetary wealth, especially where gold and jewels had been donated by the devout to adorn churches.

(Protestant writer William Cobbett wrote in his 1824 "A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland", an anecdote, that an incredibly valuable, hand illustrated bible was stripped of it's bejeweled, gold cover, the much more valuable hand-illumined manuscript, thrown in the mud and trampled by horses hooves by raiders suppressing the monasteries in Henry VIII's England.)

A new religion growing up around this seizure of monastic lands and valuables, that sought to discredit the Catholic Church, spread the black legend that the "sale of indulgences" was abusive. But this was very exceptional. Today the stipend of a Mass said for the dead is $10.

John 10: 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28 and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 29 My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and my Father are one.

Jesus puts His teaching in the present tense, thus when He says 'neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand" He has issued a guarantee that in this life a man who is in His hand cannot be removed from His hand, and that includes the man himself.

Obviously God would not be so omnipotent if there was a stronger power to take (pluck) something from or away from God's hands. Maybe that wasn't so apparent in those early days.

But when you say..." that included man himself."...you're offering your opinion, in thinking that man has no capability of walking away from God.
It actually happens very often, usually a result of a tragedy. I have experienced this first hand in my family.
But nowhere in those verses do you read anything about not being able in removing themselves from God, insofar as you can make that claim.
It would be a stupid thing to do, walk away from God, but it is possible. Your just reading back into scripture your present day faith ideals to make that claim sem possible to you.

And if you read any of Sunday's Prodigal Son parable, you would see it as a cautionary tale against exactly that which you suggest is not possible.

Do you not think the Prodigal walked away from the Father then?

Let us now look at one of the letters Paul wrote, the one to The Hebrews. In this letter Paul sought to contrast the old covenant with the new covenant. He was writing primarily to born again Hebrews who had chosen to be under the new covenant, though they had not made the connections which contrast the old covenant from the new covenant.

By the sixth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews the Apostle emphasizes the nature of the old coovenant, wherein every year, once per year, there was a High Priest function to remember the sins of himself and the people and use the blood of innocent animals to make an atonement. This was done once per year, every year, as remembrance of their sins dealt with by the shedding of blood, innocent blood.

Jesus quoted from the prophets when He stated that the blood of bulls and lambs did not please God and that God the Father had provided a body for Him, God the Son, so He could make the perfected sacrifice for the sins of the many. Paul clears it up that this sacrifice was done once, for everyone, forever, then The Lamb Sacrificed sat down at the Right Hand of The Father and is our High Priest forever before The Father.

By the writing of chapter ten (really there were no chapter divisions, the writing was a flowing stream of thought, stream of Spirit urging) Paul focuses in more closely to the reality of the new covenant functioning, contrasting that with the weakness of the old covenant functioning and how God enacts His new covenant. In the New Covebnant there is no remembrance each year for the Blood of Jesus is sufficient forever, and the New Covenant does not require that Jesus be sacrificed over and over like in the old covenant because this would mean the first and ONLY time He shred His blood for us was not enough. God forbid!

The Spirit culminates this focus with the statement that God will remember their sins no more! That is stated to those in whom God has put His ordinances and character. How did God / how does God do that, put His character and ordinances within a man or woman? Well, by coming in to abide in that born again spirit which the Blood of Christ has cleansed from ALL unrighteousness.

In the old covenant the sins of the many were remembered each year and addressed once each year with the High Priest entry into the Holy of Holy. In the New Covenant which cancelled the old covenant (according to what Paul wrote) the remembrance of the sins of the many is now dealt with by the blood of Our High Priest such that God remembers their sins no more! What? Yes, there is no next years ritual and the next years ritual to deal with the sins, Christ dealt with them ALL, past, present and even next years sins with His Once for All sacrifice/ This is where God expects something from us ...

The work of God, the thing God requires from us is to believe He has dealt with our sins, once and for all by the blood of Whom GOD sent for our redemption. Behold a believer is a new creation ... in spirit. Not in flesh, in spirit. While we are alive our flesh is alive in this body we will sin. BUT GOD ... God has dealt with that sin and remembers it no more following our being born again. THAT is the astonishing preciousness of the Gospel of God's Grace in Christ: we who believe God, though we are yet sinners in this flesh, are made to be the righteousness of Christ by God's Presence in our born again spirit, thus not requiring every year once per year to remember sin and have it dealt with temporarily.

The key is right there in the letter to the Hebrews, that the Word of God separates the soul and spirit so that God, by His Holy Spirit, abides in our human born again spirit.

Jesus explained this to Nic, as written in John 3. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit. We are not yet equipped to 'see' into the spirit, so Jesus added for Nic that the Spirit is likened unto wind which blows and only the effect of that wind is seen, not the wind itself.

What Paul wrote to the Hebrews is actually quite the defense of once born again thereafter forever a born again, because Jesus through His blood shed for us dealt with sin once and forever so that it is not remembered every year to be dealt with once peer year. We have a High Priest in Heaven who has dealt the penalty for sin and cleared the ledger forever.

Those who would argue against this teaching by Paul in the Letter to the Hebrews will try to focus attention on 'unrepentant sin' or the withholding of eternal life until AFTER the flesh is dead. Some will even commit a heresy of insisting the person must pay a penalty for which Jesus has already met the price.

Once a man or woman is born again, they are in the Hands of God, not in their own hands. They didn't get into the hands of God by their flesh and cannot get away from the hands of God by their flesh. It is satan who wants you to believe otherwise. Their spirit has been birth by God, into the family of God,with the imputed righteousness of Christ as their new life identity, in the spirit, regardless of what sin the flesh which is dying may commit. And satan is so subtle and powerful in this world that he can produce sin in the flesh of the born again that makes the hair stand on end! But that sin has already been dealt with Once and forever by the shedding of Christ's blood, the power of which is connected to the Believer by faith, by believing, thus by the Power of God's Grace not the efforts of the sin-laden flesh.

God is going to grace us even further at some point in the future (perhaps this week?), when He comes to transform us in the twinkling of an eye and call us up into the clouds to meet the Lord Christ in the air and return with Him to the Father's House.

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