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.

This is why I keep saying that we could settle this disagreement simply with an understanding of perspective.

From God’s perspective, those who have salvation cannot possibly lose it, because God’s written the story, and HE is the author, not us.

But from a human perspective, it’s possible to think that you genuinely believe, and yet your belief is a false one, or to think you have faith, but to fall away because of either persecution or the allures of the world.

It’d easily resolve all those passages that we keep throwing back and forth at each other.

Thank you so much, MHG.

I love your entire post, but would like to especially pay attention to this great part:

“Is it hard to believe that before the Universe was even created, God as The Word, had a knowledge/listing of/for the humans descended from Adam who would believe in Whom God sends for their redemption? God knows the end from the beginning.”

When a person believes they can lose their salvation that God gave them, they’re making God into someone who would give you something and then say, “HEY! Didn’t know that about you when I gave it you. Give it back!”

Cheap date, if you’re asking me.

(Maybe He overlooked something in my past since He doesn’t seem to get the future correct?)

Walter Martin said, “It’s a good thing He saved me then because He might change His mind if He saw me now.”

I’m glad He sees all of time at once and that He gives us His Holy Spirit as an earnest payment.

Well, we all know one thing we can all agree on: God can’t learn anything. That’s not possible. God also can’t lie, of course. Losing salvation puts Him in the position of doing one or the other.

Taking a perspective of space-time from on high, OSAS can’t be refuted ... unless we say God learns something when we sin that He didn’t know when He saved us or that He saves in vain or that He lied when He said it. I’m not willing to believe that God is NOT all-knowing, which is really a very stupid idea. And He sure isn’t a liar. His word states that He does nothing in vain. Looks like we’ve about run out of options here, yeah?

Salvation made easy: Jesus + nothing = Salvation.

Thank you. This is what I’m trying to tell people, and I admit my frustration when they don’t seem to want to see. Maybe it’s because I’m usually in a position of teaching authority.

Anyways, God’s perspective is not our perspective, but Scripture is written to speak according to both.

So what from our perspective looks like losing faith or falling away does not mean that God’s election to grant us salvation is invalidated. It simply means that we don’t know the whole story and we are in a situation where we must live with that limited knowledge.

And according to that limited knowledge, people will fall away, but from the eternal perspective OSAS. But since we live in OUR limited perspective, we should still live as if it were possible to lose salvation because we can experience falling away in our limited perspective even if it’s impossible according to the eternal perspective. And we should also live THAT way.

God has a way of using paradox to reveal eternal truth.

I deeply appreciate your views and how you present them, Luicirn.

“... we should still live as if it were possible to lose salvation because we can experience falling away in our limited perspective even if it’s impossible according to the eternal perspective. And we should also live THAT way.”

I can’t see how a person could live a life of being bold for Christ Jesus if they’re constantly doubting and asking, “Have I done enough right that I’m still saved?” (Alternatively, “Have I not done enough bad that I’m still saved?”) How does God want us to believe? We can both agree, I think, on that viewpoint. Do the scriptures teach that He wants us to feel that we have to run the hamster wheel until we die or to be secure in His word that He saves us now and forever?

I believe that the Holy Spirit in a person has them constantly trying to aim for the best in living their life because God gave us His Best.

When God promises, it will come to pass. when God says nothing/noone can take us from His hand,we ought to take that to the bank, so to speak, because noone is powerful enought to contradict His Promise. A Christian should live on the Promise of God, not on the doubt satan is constantly trying to impart. There is coming a moment in space and time when satan’s ability to sow doubt will end for those in the Body of Christ. The Rapture transformation will impart a new glorified body and perfected behavior mechanism, to go along with the born again spirit in the which God is abiding

Tis amazing how many folks miss this verse.

One explanation for the one who does what you point out is that is he effectively believes he is saved by believing he is saved, ignoring or denying his own behavior. On the opposite side, we have our witness Job, one of the three men (although there is a fourth in my reading) called tam/perfect in the scriptures.

Job 13:15-16
King James Version

15 Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
16 He also shall be my salvation: for an hypocrite shall not come before him.

The maintenance of a godly way is necessary and can be summed up in the two greatest commandments.

God is the author of salvation. IF one BELIEVES HIM and does as Herequires ^{believes Whom He sent for their redemption} then it is God Who wants that one to bel;ieve he is saved. IF you were more a student of the scriptures you would have found that instruction rather than trying to support doubting. If you do not presume He keeps His word then you will flounder around, striving to obtain that which ONLY God can Give by His Grace honoring His Deliverer not your strivings.

Take the 'you' and 'your' as generic, so you don't presume I am attacking you. I am however assaulting your belief system which opens doors to doubt the Promises of God. No org can guarantee His Promises, nor can it nullify His intent.

The encouragement you are giving is very much appreciated and helpful.

In this case, what I’m attempting to say is less a warning against not doing enough to earn salvation, but I more mean “living that way” in the sense that people will fall away—at least from our perspective. We know that this will happen because God himself has said so.

We shouldn’t let it damage our faith when it happens.

On top of that, we can simply allow it to be a distinction between saving faith and intellectual assent. A firm warning about how the wages of sin is death should terrify someone into seeking the true Gospel, especially if they thought that a mealy-mouthed “belief” that shows no fruits of faith is enough.

The reason our so called “future sins” are covered is because when God saved us, He took the whole record of our sin debt and did away with it.

It wasn’t the sin just up until the point where we got saved and then we have to manage the rest.

Colossians 2:13-14 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Then He transferred us into the kingdom of Jesus.

Colossians 1:13-14 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

And we are now seated in heaven with Christ. We, being in Christ, are positionally, in the spiritual realm, already there.

Ephesians 2:4-10 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

“In this case, what I’m attempting to say is less a warning against not doing enough to earn salvation, but I more mean “living that way” in the sense that people will fall away—at least from our perspective. We know that this will happen because God himself has said so.”

I understand, Luircin. I will openly admit that the more sin I get rid of, the more I seem to find in myself.

But that is exactly what it should be, isn’t it? To grow ever sensitive to the sin in our lives as led by His Holy Spirit?

As for me and fellow members of The Body of Christ, we have already been judged IN the cross and will not be required to stabnd at The Great White Throne for judgment

I am certainly not dogmatic, but I always thought the great white throne, was not to determine whether these people were saved or lost. That had already been determined. It is to determine the amount of punishment they will get. What a terrifying moment for billions.
I believe we will be present, as witnesses for the prosecution. I think this is where the men of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba will rise in judgment. I believe we will too. I want to sit next to the Queen of Sheba. 😀🤗🙃👍

Of course we want to see Murph in the clouds someday soon. That's how much we care about people. We do, however, have to tell the truth about false religions. So Murph, this is to you. I don't know what your status with the Lord is. All we can do, is make a value judgment, based on your posts, and it doesn't look good.

Well you'll have to make that value judgement- I will take St. Paul's advice:

Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

Again I can have some assurance, in that IF I have done what Christ has asked me to do- I have a chance at the clouds – and what God has promised. but we always fall short… how short of the goal can we fall? I dunno – So I cannot have certainty of being in the Clouds – or proclaiming that for myself.

I was a Catholic, like you. I know what it's like, to have no assurance of salvation, or anything. I know it's a terrible feeling inside, knowing I wasn't saved. I hated it, so I know where you are coming from.

I left the Catholic Church when I was younger, and finally free - and it had nothing to do with “being saved” or not - that movement hadn't even mainstreamed yet or made popular.
It wasn't even about doctrine back then, as I wasn't educated well enough to even know my own Faith, let alone defend it.
No, it was more like who needs Mass every week? And “I'm not telling my sins to a priest, none of his business” –and I'm a good person just the same… most of the time…. "Fasting? No thanks"

Heck, I walked away from the Church before being able to use the priest-sex-scandal as an excuse became trendy. It was, who needs that “mystery of Faith”, mythical religion- what's the relevance to me?

Then I moved to the “Bible” Belt, and American Christianity… and Lord have mercy. Sparing details and stories – all I can say is that there was nothing of any non-Catholic faith I encountered for years that seemed legitimate to what I knew to be Christ. Something was missing.

It wasn't until family came along that I realized I was deceiving myself about having Faith. So we were both changed in different ways- on different paths. And we seem to better than we were before, so there's that.

“Yep! The more sensitive you get to sin in your life, the more you know that the Holy Spirit is working within you.”

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

― John Newton

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