Purgatory and
Sin
1 Corinthians
3:10-15: “According to the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise
master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he builds on
it. For no man can lay a foundation
other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man builds on the foundation with
gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become
evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and
the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it
remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself
will be saved, yet so as through fire.”
<-Scriptural evidence for purgatory.
Purgatory
literally means cleansing – to be made pure.
We must still deal with the guilt of our sins, even after we have been
forgiven. The Church doesn’t define a
length for purgatory.
Salvation is
union with Christ. If salvation were only
about going to heaven, purgatory wouldn’t make any sense. It’d be like working just so that you could
retire.
The Christian
life is all about conforming to Christ.
Hebrews 12:14: “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification
without which no one will see the Lord.”
Without holiness, no one will see God.
God is the standard to conform to, not man. If you die before you’re a perfect image of
God, then you need purgatory. Purgatory
can be thought of as more of a process (cleansing) than a place – and it
carries with it the promise of salvation.
If you need to think about it as a place, consider this analogy. If you have a garden and you take care of it,
then you probably have a “mud room” you go in so that you can clean yourself
off before you enter the rest of your house.
Purgatory is the “mud room” of heaven.
There are
three categories of sin:
1.
Original sin
is the absence of God’s grace within us.
2.
Actual sin is
what we ourselves do to offend God
3.
Concupiscence is
our tendency to make the wrong choices.
Purgatory rids
us of our concupiscence. Think about it:
do you really want to spend eternity the way that you are now? Hebrews 12 calls God a consuming fire: He
purifies everything that He touches.
If there is no
purgatory, then why pray for the dead?
Yet praying for the dead is an ancient custom. It is mentioned in the book of Maccabees.
Our unity
through the Communion of Saints does not end when we die. The dead are more alive than we are, for they
have been reborn in Christ, and purified.
The
Papacy – Why do we need the papacy?
Matthew
16:17-19: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Blessed are you,
Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal
this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower
it. I will give you the keys of the
kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in
heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.”
Jesus gave
Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven, the keys to the Church.
One question
Protestants have about the papacy is the words used in Greek for Peter and
rock: Petros
is used for Peter, but the Greek word for rock is
In Isaiah 22,
Hezekiah appoints a prime minister, and gives him the keys of the kingdom. The same concept is being used here in Mt.
Did Peter
really have this authority? Yes.
Acts 1: Peter took the initiative and decided that Judas
needed to be replaced by another apostle.
Acts 2: three thousand people were baptized after Peter
told the crowds at Pentecost to repent.
Acts 4: he puts the Jews on trial for the murder of Jesus while
the Jews were trying to put him on trial for healing a sick man.
Acts 5: Peter sensed that Ananias
lied about money related to a piece of property, and when Peter asked Ananias why he lied, he was struck dead.
Acts 10: Peter decides that Gentiles should be admitted
into the Church.
Acts 15: Peter issues a binding proclamation concerning
old Jewish customs that were no longer necessary for the Church.
Also, Peter’s
shadow had the power to heal people.
You get the
idea.
Papal
Infallibility
The Pope is
only infallible when he speaks from the chair of Peter, as a shepherd of the
Church, on matters of faith and morals.
He has spoken in this manner only twice in the past 200 years, on the
issues of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary. Both of these statements were made to
reinforce beliefs of the Church, not to invent new doctrines. Being infallible doesn’t mean that he can
predict the score of next weekend’s game: he is not impeccable. Peter, the first Pope, was not impeccable.
In Acts 10,
Peter has a dream where God tells him that non-kosher food is no longer
unclean. When he eats with Gentiles, he
accepts that and eats non-kosher food, but then when Paul comes up Peter starts
talking about how the food is unclean.
For this, Paul rebukes Peter.
The integrity
and validity of the priesthood has been called into question today due to
several scandals in the past few years; but the proportion of homosexuals in
the priesthood is comparable to the general population. We should not hold up an errant priest as the
example of a faithful Catholic any more than we should hold up Bill Clinton as
the paragon of a faithful Baptist.
Apostolic
succession: Acts 1: Peter says that the
seat of Judas needs to be filled. “Let another take his office.” The Greek is Episcopa,
which is very close to Episcopas, the Greek word for
bishop. The bishops are the successors
of the apostles. If
Judas’ seat was so important that it needed to be filled, then why not Peter’s
seat?
A central
point of authority is necessary for unity, and unity is essential to the
proclamation of the Gospel.
Mary and the Saints
Healthy
devotion to saints is a good thing, however we must
phrase it very carefully. From a
Protestant point of view, there is a wide gulf between earth and Heaven. For Catholics, the separation is more akin to
a thin veil, which is moved aside at times.
The Revelation
of John is a Mass that takes place in Heaven: whenever we celebrate Mass on
earth, we’re sharing in eternity.
Hebrews 12:1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and
persevere in running the race that lies before us.” The Christians in Heaven
are watching those on earth. We’re in a
race – the saints are watching from the grandstand.
Revelation 8:3
tells us that the saints pray. They
aren’t praying for themselves though, because they’re already in Heaven, so
they have no need to prayer for themselves.
They aren’t praying for the souls in Hell, because they are beyond
help. They must, then, be praying for
us. Keeping that in mind, we ask the
saints to pray for us.
The role of
saints in our lives can be summed up with two expressions. They are role models
and prayer partners. We look up to the
saints like Protestants look up to Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Calvin, and
Billy Graham.
The members of
the Body support each other, and we and the saints are members of the One Body
of Christ. James 5:16: “The effective
prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”
How much more effective must a perfect person’s prayer be than our own?
What about
Mary?
It’s easy for
Catholics to give the wrong impressions about Mary.
What do we
believe about Mary?
We believe
that Mary is the Mother of Jesus – all of our beliefs about Mary are derived
from this fact. Mary is the model
Christian – she is completely human as human was meant to be.
1.
We call Mary
the Queen of Heaven. Satan never comes up with anything original:
1 Kings 2 tells us that when Bathsheba (Solomon’s mother) entered Solomon’s
throne room, Solomon stood up. At
Solomon’s right hand, there was a throne for his mother. This began the tradition of the queen mother,
which was never condemned by the prophets.
We honor Mary because we worship Jesus.
2.
Mother of God – this title has more to do with Jesus than with
Mary. It was defined at
3.
The Immaculate
Conception – Jesus was
perfectly divine and perfectly human – He got His perfect humanity from Mary,
who was perfectly human. Mary’s
perfection does not entail that she had no need for a Savior. She was saved to a greater degree than anyone
else in history – she was preserved from sin from the moment of her conception
by the grace of God. Whenever Mary is
mentioned in the Bible, the Holy Spirit is mentioned as well. In Genesis 3:15, God says to the serpent, “I
will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and
hers.” This is not so unusual: Everyone living today was saved 2000 years ago,
by Jesus. In Luke 1, Gabriel calls her “full of grace” - Mary has always been
full of grace. In the whole Bible, only
the Ark of the Covenant shares this title with Mary. The Ark of the Covenant carried three things:
the Torah (The Word of God), Aaron’s staff (The Power of God), and Manna from
the desert (the Bread of God). In
Revelation 11 and 12, John describes the Ark of the Covenant appearing in the
form of a woman: Mary is the
4.
Perpetual
Virginity. Matthew
5.
Assumption – Revelation 12 mentions a woman being called
into heaven. Elijah and other Old
Testament figures were also taken from the earth in unusual ways. There are lots of shrines to many saints that
claim relics of saints. No shrine has
ever claimed the bones of Mary. Mary has merely already experienced the
Resurrection, due to her special role in the life of our Savior. Catholics do not worship Mary, because
worship requires sacrifice; and we never sacrifice to Mary. Masses are never
offered to Mary.
Holy means
“other”, or “not of this world.” To be a
saint is to be set apart, to not be concerned with this world.
Phillipians 1:7: “For it is only right for me to feel this
way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my
imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are
partakers of grace with me.” We are
co-redeemers with Christ.
Why do we have
statues?
The first
commandment forbids the worshipping of graven images. However, we are not
forbidden from using statues for devotion.
If you take the First Commandment out of context, you end up with the
Muslim perspective on statues (they condemn all art). Statues are like ancient photographs. You might carry around a picture of your
family in your wallet, but that doesn’t mean that you worship them.
“But the
Israelites didn’t have statues.” Moses
brought down with the 10 Commandments the plans for the