The fallacy in YOPIOS, is that those who "believe in Christ" are henceforth cleared of any sins they commit, assuming they recognize some action as a sin (definition?). They are free to sin on a daily basis for there are no repercussions from those sins because they are "saved".
All pardon for sins ultimately comes from Christ's finished work on Calvary, but how is this pardon received by individuals? Did Christ leave us any means within the Church to take away sin? The Bible says he gave us two means.
Baptism was given to take away the sin inherited from Adam (original sin) and any sins we personally committed before baptism - sins we personally commit are called actual sins, because they come from our own acts. Thus on the day of Pentecost, Peter told the crowds, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38), and when Paul was baptized he was told, "And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16). And so Peter later wrote, "Baptism . . . now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 3:21).
For sins committed after baptism, a different sacrament is needed. It has been called penance, confession, and reconciliation, each word emphasizing one of its.aspects. During his life, Christ forgave sins, as in the case of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11) and the woman who anointed his feet (Luke 7:48). He exercised this power in his human capacity as the Messiah or Son of man, telling us, "the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Matt. 9:6), which is why the Gospel writer himself explains that God "had given such authority to men" (Matt. 9:8).
Since he would not always be with the Church visibly, Christ gave this power to other men so the Church, which is the continuation of his presence throughout time (Matt. 28:20), would be able to offer forgiveness to future generations. He gave his power to the apostles, and it was a power that could be passed on to their successors and agents, since the apostles wouldn’t always be on earth either, but people would still be sinning.
God had sent Jesus to forgive sins, but after his resurrection Jesus told the apostles, "As the Father has sent me, even so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:21-23). (This is one of only two times we are told that God breathed on man, the other being in Genesis 2:7, when he made man a living soul. It emphasizes how important the establishment of the sacrament of penance was.)
What John is suggesting when he uses this description of Jesus imparting the Holy Spirit by breathing on them, that Jesus is bringing about, in all of them, a new creation. We will be different now from the human beings we were before because we're filled with God's spirit in a way we never were before.
My take on this is that as a Protestant, my confession is directly to Jesus; however I think that making such a confession of sins to my pastor, an elder, or deacon in the congregation is also useful as that forces me to acknowledge publicly, if in confidence of what I have done wrong/sinned.
I see the Roman Catholic of confessing to a priest as being in the tradition of telling others one’s sins. The priest cannot absolve the sins, but provides one to whom you know that knows your sins in addition to Jesus. The priest giving a penance is to help one reflect on the sin and hopefully learn NOT to sin any more.
my bottomline is that “confession is good for the soul and bad for one’s reputation” and that is a good thing, for one is thus truthful in public.
Is there any record of a priest not forgiving anyone sins?
The only fallacy is the repeated misrepresentation of the Evangelical position.
True, we are cleared of any and all sins, those we have committed and those yet to be committed. We have been FORGIVEN, once for all and TRANSFERRED into the kingdom of the Son God loves.
We are saved. Finished. Done deal.
Our sin cannot separate us from God because IN CHRIST, that relationship has been restored and God sees us as and with the righteousness of Christ.
The notion that we think we can then sin with impunity and do live that way if we know we are secure in our salvation is a fallacy from the pit and has been corrected many times on this forum and yet it STILL gets repeated on a regular basis, as if nobody has ever addressed it before.
When we sin, there are consequences. God doe snot let His children continue in sin. However, instead of it casting us our salvation, He disciplines us, for our good, with the natural consequences of our actions.
Our sin usually leaves a mess for us to work through and clean up here on earth, even though we are already and still saved.
Baptism is NOT how sins are forgiven. Confession is.
If baptism saves, then why aren't Catholics sure they are going to heaven? If baptism saves, then it must work and it must work all the time, so that even gross sinners like Stalin and Hitler are saved.
To say that salvation is dependent on keeping current with sacraments puts salvation on a works level, something that one merits if one is good enough, which nullifies the grace of God.
Then you are back to Judaism, where they thought that salvation was by keeping the Law.
It's NOT.