Posted on 08/08/2025 3:48:54 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
Five hundred years have passed since the Reformation began, and yet the influence of the Roman Catholic Church remains strong. I’m not referring to the mammoth oligarchy that seeks to dictate the lives of an estimated one billion people, but rather its continuing influence upon churches outside its realm, including many that adhere to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture.
While attending Talbot Seminary, I wrote my master’s thesis on Roman Catholic Justification in the Light of Scripture. In my study, I discovered that Catholicism’s key departure from Scripture was its firm insistence that God’s justification of sinners happens at the end of their life. This teaching contradicts what Paul wrote in Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
In other words, God justifies us at the moment of our regeneration (see also Titus 3:4-7). Why is it so important to affirm this clear biblical truth?
It’s because the error of placing our justification at the end of one’s life has crept into evangelical churches in various forms that continue to grow in popularity, as well as negate the glorious hope embedded in the Gospel. It does so by. . .
Undoing the Finality of Our Salvation
I’m not aware of when Catholic theologians first decided that God’s justification of the sinner happens at the end of one’s life, but by the time of Reformation, it had become deeply entrenched in the church’s dogma. This teaching provided the church with the means to control the lives of its members from birth to the grave.
As a result, Catholics can never be sure of their salvation since their final destination depends upon their obedience as well as adherence to the church’s sacraments up to the time of last rites. Under such a scenario, how could anyone be certain of the final outcome of their faith?
Scripture tells us a much different story. Not only does it reveal that God justifies us at the moment of our regeneration, but it also provides us with the security of our hope that Catholicism kills. When God justifies the sinner, He declares that person not guilty of all his or her sins, past present, and future.
The word for “justify” in the Greek comes from the law courts of Paul’s day; it depicted a judge declaring the accused “not guilty” of their crimes. For us, it’s the legal declaration of our righteousness that comes solely through faith by grace. God declares us innocent solely because Jesus bore the punishment for our sins on the cross; His blood covers all of our iniquity. Romans 8:1 states the finality of God’s proclamation of our righteousness, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Later in Romans 8, the apostle elaborates on the permanence of God’s verdict: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.” (Romans 8:32-34).
For all of us in Christ Jesus, our justification is a done deal. God, who is not bound by time, looked at our entire life and declared us not guilty of all our sins. Who can possibly overturn His verdict? No one can provide Him with evidence that He didn’t already know about.
The belief that one can lose their salvation, or walk away from their faith, reflects the Roman Catholic understanding of justification, which regards it as a process that’s not fully settled until death. The only way to deny the finality of our salvation is to either say that someone can reverse God’s verdict, which is impossible, or somehow repackage the Catholic teaching of when God credits our account with His righteousness. If it happens at the time of our rebirth, it’s an absolute done deal.
Subjecting the Believer to a Works Mentality
The Roman Catholic error regarding justification empowers the church to enforce obedience whether it be to its traditions, its sacraments, or Scripture. Do we see this same works mentality today outside of the Catholic faith? We do.
I have experienced various forms of legalism in my life. Such teachings deceive believers into thinking they must earn favor with God, which is something they already fully possess via their secure righteous standing before Him, i.e., their justification.
Legalism reverses the order of chapters in the book of Ephesians. Instead of encouraging adherence to Paul’s instructions based upon one’s secure righteous standing before God, the works mentality begins with the commands as the way to assure the believer of his or her favor in the Lord’s sight. Paul never intended for chapters 4-6 of Ephesians to be the means of obtaining God’s approval, but rather the result of our permanent “holy and blameless” standing before God (Ephesians 1:3-14).
Once our focus shifts away from Christ and what He has done for us to how we should live, we lose the joy that comes from our security and the peace from knowing we will surely meet Jesus in the air in the future. The works mentality, popular in many Evangelical churches, is a remnant of Catholicism that spotlights our behavior rather than our glorious hope in Jesus’ appearing.
Adhering to the False Teaching of Replacement Theology
The refusal of a great many churches today to recognize the prophetic significance of Israel also mirrors Catholicism’s teaching on Bible prophecy.
Replacement Theology, or amillennialism, is the longstanding belief of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine, a fifth century theologian, popularized the teaching that the church is the new Israel, which replaced the church in God’s prophetic program. He denied the future restoration of Israel and applied the Lord’s many promises to do so to the church, albeit spiritually.
Because Israel’s miraculous reappearance as a nation on May 14, 1948, contradicted its long held beliefs, the Vatican refused to recognize Israel as a nation until the end of 1993, a full forty-five years later. Why the delay apart from their realization that Israel’s astounding rebirth refuted their longstanding amillennial beliefs?
What does today’s popularity of Replacement Theology in Bible-believing churches have to do with a biblical understanding of justification? I provide a full answer to this question in my previous article: Can God Change His Mind about Israel? Or About Us?
Based upon Romans 11:28-32, I explain how God’s unfailing mercy lies at the heart of His continuing faithfulness to us as well as to Jacob’s descendants. He will not renege on any of His promises to His people, whether it be to the nation of Israel or to us as New Testament saints. Chapters 9-11 in the book of Romans were not a rabbit trail in Paul’s line of thought, but rather a critical part of it as he showed how the promised future restoration of Israel demonstrates the Lord’s unfailing mercy not only to the Jewish nation, but also to all justified saints, which He proclaimed in Romans 8:31-38.
Identifying the Church as God’s Kingdom
From its inception, the Roman Catholic Church believed it was God’s physical kingdom on earth and hence a political entity, which directly results from its adherence to Replacement Theology, which teaches that the church is just such a realm. Its role as a governing power during the Dark Ages has long since faded, but not this exalted view of itself.
The Vatican is officially the “Vatican City State.” This came about via the 1929 Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy through which it became an officially recognized independent governing state. The US sends an ambassador to the Vatican, just like it does for other governing entities.
Unfortunately, the Reformation didn’t change the perception of the church as God’s corporal kingdom on earth. Many churches, deeply steeped in amillennialism or its offshoots, continue to teach that Jesus is now reigning over the nations in fulfillment of such passages such as Psalms 2 and 46 as well as Revelation 20:1-10.
During the past few decades, Dominion Theology has grown exponentially in popularity. It asserts that the church will bring about millennial conditions on the earth and rule over it before Jesus’ returns. Is this not a variation the long ago kingdom aspirations of the Vatican?
The Bible teaches that as New Testament saints; we are heirs to a kingdom rather than current possessors of it (Ephesians 1:12-14; James 2:5). Paul couldn’t have been more clear when he said: “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (1 Corinthians 15:50). When Jesus appears, He will transform our lowly bodies into ones like His, immortal and incorruptible (Philippians 3:20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:51-55). He will make us fit to inherit His kingdom that’s coming to the earth.
The Bible never identifies the church as a kingdom, but rather describes it as the “body of Christ” with Jesus as its Head. The picture of body life in Romans 12:3-8 is most certainly not that of a kingdom, but rather of functioning entity were all its members enjoy an equal standing. Furthermore, the role of the leaders of a kingdom differs radically from the humble servant leadership Jesus prescribed for His Church (Mark 10:42-45; see also 1 Peter 5:1-5).
Why does this matter? It signifies that we are not now enjoying the glories of God’s promised kingdom on the earth as those who adhere to Replacement Theology claim. The good news is that in the future, we will participate in God’s spectacular kingdom on earth with immortal bodies in a realm devoid of wars, government corruption, overt wickedness, and injustice.
Making One’s Obedience and Feelings the Validation of Salvation
I heard a pastor say this in his Sunday sermon, “You are okay if you love the Lord.” No, no, no, no!! The Bible says that all those in Christ are “okay” because the Lord loves us!
Looking to one’s feelings, or even obedience, as the validation of one’s salvation yields the same fruit as the rigors of Catholicism: it traps believers in the same web of insecurity that obstructs their walk with the Lord and turns their focus away from their joyous blessed hope in Jesus’ appearing.
If it’s true that God’s justification of the sinner happens at the moment of our redemption (Titus 3:4-7) and is by its nature wholly irreversible (Romans 8:1 and 26-39), and Scripture teaches that both are true, the Bible must be the sole rock upon which we must base our assurance of eternal life, not our feelings, our love for the Lord, nor our obedience to some standard.
Our assurance of eternal life comes from what Scripture says about us as New Testament saints, i.e., our justification though faith alone by grace.
A biblical understanding of what happens when God justifies us counters the hope-killing remains of Roman Catholicism in today’s churches that rob believers of the joy that comes from knowing the certainty of their salvation. Scripture frees us from the works mentality that results from thinking we can lose our salvation, walk away from our faith, or must work to keep ourselves within God’s favor and love for us.
Sadly, these vestiges of Roman Catholicism persist in many churches outside its realm. Not only do they breed insecurity and a works-based validation of our hope of eternal life, but in many cases these places of worship also dismiss the biblical hope that we will reign with Jesus in His glorious kingdom, one that will include a restored Israel. Our hope in Jesus’ appearing and what happens afterward is not just dry theology, but something that breathes life into our souls each and every day.
If you have not yet placed your faith in Jesus or are unsure of your salvation, please see my article, Jesus is the Only Path to Eternal Life. In it, I explain the saving message of the cross and how you can know that you belong to the Savior.
The Bereans sure as hell could!!
(And were COMMENENDED for it!)
Heck, we even use Rome’s book they compiled!!
(The GOOD stuff anyway!)
It’s hilarious to see a Romanist whine about someone else serve him with his own debate-quenching tactics . . .
So you think that the Bereans being able to read negates the whole sola scriptura argument?! Sorry, dang near the whole world was unable to read until recently. Your argument holds no water.
Protestants don’t even know that the Catholic Church compiled the canon of the cut down Bible you try to use against us.
And your point is?
Which it is, unmistakably, at its very foundations upon the tool it uses for church formation, organization, and discipline.
The power of death of body, soul, and spirit is that tool accorded to the principal Adversary, the god of this world, Satan, the Devil, the Serpent, to which deceptive offer our federal ancestors willingly, sovereignly submitted though forewarned. Through it iniquity, sin, amd guile entered the temporal world; and with it the corresponding entropic destructive condemnation of death. Going forward to the era succeeding the formation of a true church on the day of Pentecost, those who were about to use this tool appointed it as the method to stop the growth and replication of the Jerusalem church, the prototype of those to be formed elsewhere.
From this example, once the unscriptural suprachurch episcopacy inveigled its path to become--with and after Constantine--the Roman Empire's exclusive state organ of religion, usimg the expansion of membership, clergy, teachings, heresy, and excommuication that includes the perceived power to give or deny physical, spiritual, and eternal life, depending whether or not one obeys its doctrine and dictates of its episcopacy.
Together, it revokes the God-given right of the liberty of an individual soul to have a personal relationship with Him and His Son outside of the religious clergy as a source of intercessors and distribution of God's graces and punishments.
This implementation of power was therfore also behind the same intent to eliminate any competitor for unquestioned power over the bodies and minds of the laity.
And do not confuse yourself by referring the Romanists as "Catholics," which they are NOT.
"Catholic" means that in the professing of the Apostolic Creed ALL the Reformers say they, as Christ-professors, subscribe to belief in the catholicuty (univeralism) of His One Church (which it is, existing in Heaven only since since His ascension; Heb. 12:23a).
But the Romanists exclude the Reformer Protestants from their definition of catholicism (to the point of capializing it as a proper noun applying only to them, clearly showing that the AREN'T doctrinally catholic at all); while ALL the Protestants, catholicity prevailing amongst themselves despite their doctrinal differences, ALSO includes the ROMANISTS as if they were catholic in principle (which they AREN'T). What a dilemma!
Actually and Biblically, there cannot be any regularly meeting local assembly with boundaries defining which attenders are constitutional members of that local polity, and which are not; none of which assemblies are "pure" such that they include only regenerated spirit-baptized constituents. All local visible assemblies consist of fallible, errant individuals, be they subdivisions of a parachurch denomination to which they commit their organization's allegiance; or an independant autonomous local association of congregants whose supra-church allegiance is to their Head, the Lord Jesus Himself only, an entity overseen by agreement under appointed local elders; NONE of these VISIBLE congregations can claim to be pure in doctrine or behavior.
The true Church of the First-Born exists in the spiritual realm, is invisible to the temporal relam, is pure in that it inludes ONLY those who have their sins irretrievably pardoned forever, are begotten in the Spiritual realm by the Heavenly Father, are His children and thus citizens of the Kingdom of God, so the spiritual side of the regenrated human does not know the crevass boundary separating the temporal physical natural side of his/her existence, being already there in joy and worship.
Upon physical death of your body (it is already spiritually dead, see Rom. 6:6-7), ones spirit is already there, a part of the denominationless catholicity of that heavenly ekklesia, at one with the Lord Jesus Messiah as the Eternal High Priest over a kingdom of regenerated priests as yet without bodies, "asleep" to those who are also regenerated but still physically alive in the temporal realm.
At physical death, absent from the (dissociated into dust particles physically) body, present (spiritually) with the LORD, already there, actually (Col. 3:1-3).
To us who are already risen with Him, the Roman concept of catholicity means less than nothing; it is nonsense, so don't refer to those subscribing the the long-lasting state religion devised for the long-dead Roman Empire intimidate you.
Like a TV image, it has form and a voice, but no substance. Your chore as an ambassador of the true Gospel (Jesus Saves!) to offer a visa towrd instruction in His Reality and Citizenship in the Kingdom of Peace amd Righteousness, soon to be instituted on Earth, with the Impostor chined in the abyss and out of the way of the reigning Viceroy David at the head of the Jews surviving the Great Tribulation and globally governing the doings of mankind in it.
There will no longer be any Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Orthodoxenof any kind, Romanists, Waldensians, etc.; so don't worry to much about them at this point. Just go out and recruit some more discviples and get them inducted into a local independent autonomous Christ-dedicated, Bible-preaching elder-led assembly to be born-again into a life of progressive growth in holiness that ovecomes the efforts of wicked one to distract or disable them.
The deception runs deep in Catholicism to come to conclusions like that.
Contrary to your claim, it actually SUPPORTS the supremacy of Scripture above all
Sorry, dang near the whole world was unable to read until recently.
I asked you to prove it earlier and you have not yet.
Repeating a statement is not proof and doesn't make it true.
SO many errors......
Everyone knows that Catholics COMPILED Scripture into one handy compendium. That's no great feat or work or genius.
But they are not responsible for the Scripture's existence. Catholicism did not give us Scripture.
He does not. But ypu do.
It is beyond question in his discussion that the judicial pardoning of sins and simultaneous imputation of His Son's Righteousness, as well as birth as a new spiritual; entity happens once, for all time and eternity, and is thus irrevocable. The gift of Absolute Eternal Living Existence (salvation from sin and sinfulness) never needs recall. The eternal preservation of existence, meaning, communication with The Omniscient, eradication of plain-literal and figurative-literal darkness and tears is a fixed inescapable Promise that never will be rescinded.
On the other hand, the theme of progressive JUSTIFICATION says that the subject never escaped God's condemnation that constantly requires confession of sinfulness and continual judicial pardoning, to the inescapable end that the sinner can and WILL LOSE HIS/HER SALVATION, which is NOT the transaction that the High Court has offered graciously (unmerited and undeserved) of which terms when ratified by the Eternal Judge, is FINISHED, ONCE AND FOR ALL TIME!
When by instant, permanently effective justification engendered by the judicial pardon pronounced by the Celestial Judge, immediately His imputation to the pleader of the Righteousness of His Son, the pleader will in His Eyes NEVER be perceived to have sinned anymore. So how and why could the pleader ever "lose his salvation"?
You are the one ducking the straightforward translation and interpretation of the whole body of heavenly policy. You show no spiritual discernment at all. Clearly, you do not know the mind of Christ on this core issue, IMHO.
evidently invisible.
T_G has no conclusions-only talking points.
I've yet to see a theme carried from one reply to the next.
I really can't believe you're appealing to staples....catholic answers are some of the weakest apologists for Rome.
He's wrong about the verb in Romans 5:1.
It's an aorist, participle, passive.
He left out a key descriptor of the verb.
The Berean's prove the reason for sola scriptura. They checked what Paul was saying against Scripture. Just as everyone should be doing.
It is interesting the Reformation happened in party because of the access to the Bible.
IF Rome had really been serious about educating their people you think they'd been highly in favor of folks having their own Bible.
I think we know why they didn't.
And now, in the Information Age, it's even easier to research the flaws of Roman Catholicism....many as there are.
That’s ridiculous. A select group could read but over 80-90% of humanity couldn’t until about 100 years ago, and you think that proves sola scriptura?
The Reformation was just another heresy that spread, instead of being localized, due to the printing press. The rebellion spread because of the arrogance of its founder and the greed of his supporters who thought it was a great way to steal church land.
People are swarming to the Catholic Church because of the Internet and the availability of information.
You’re foolish. I cited sources. You refused to even read. It’s a historical fact. Heck, I even googled it for you:
https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
To know history is to cease to be Protestant.
I keep reading people are leaving Rome in numbers.
As far as the internet goes....I'm sure rome isn't too happy with it. It lets people research just how off base its theology is.
Sola Scriptura remains the hinge on what is truth or what is false. It is THE standard.
Roman Catholicism hates that because its dogmas fail the standard when compared to Scripture.
*****
To know Scripture is to cease to be Roman Catholic.
You’re gonna go down swinging on literacy rates to prove your point?? LOL
Literacy increased more than 100 years ago.
And again, nobody knows or can prove what literacy was in the times Scripture was written.
Besides, once the Bible was in print, the demand for literacy went up. People saw the value in being able to read Scripture themselves and were motivated to learn.
Interesting that Catholicism didn’t do anything about literacy rates. They were perfectly fine with people being ignorant of Scripture, as evidenced by their treatment of those who dared to provide Scripture in their own languages.
That is a ridiculous answer. Nobody can know literacy rates? Really? That’s just absurd.
Our calling was to preach the gospel, not teach people to read. Everything else comes second.
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