Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:05 So Pastor Michael, we have been going through some questions on Roman Catholicism, and we get a lot of these from our congregation. They get submitted online, and this one's a really good one. I'm excited to hear your thoughts on this. Do Roman Catholics preach a false gospel?
Speaker 2 00:00:22 That's a trick question. Uh, sorry. That's all right. It, it really depends on who you're talking to. So, uh, for example, are we talking about, does Rome itself, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church mm-hmm. <affirmative> the Pope and the official doctrine and teaching of the church, do they preach a false gospel versus does a certain priest preach a false gospel versus an individual Catholic? Mm-hmm. What most people don't know about the Roman Catholic Church is that, um, geographically, even by continent, uh, different continents have different emphasis. Mm-hmm. So, for example, Europe and Latin America have a really strong emphasis on maryology, adoration and mar et cetera. And so what we find is that when I talk to, like my friends who are priests who are Roman Catholics, um, I find that there are some people, some priests who actually don't align with the official Roman Catholic Gospel, and they believe in a more historic pure gospel. And, and what they do is they're actually teaching their parish, um, not a Roman Catholic gospel, but maybe a more pure gospel. And then I'll, I'll meet some Catholics who they actually don't believe in the Roman Catholic gospel, but they, um, they wanna be a part of the historic church, if you will. Sure. And so they're, they're still there. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but they don't believe what Rome actually teaches. Interesting. So, so
Speaker 1 00:01:43 Can we, so can we lay the groundwork here a little bit? Yeah. So first let's clarify what is the gospel? Pure gospel.
Speaker 2 00:01:48 Yeah. Um, the gospel, the word gospel means good news. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and the gospel is the good news of how somebody can be reconciled to God. We use different words like forgiven, saved. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, justified, reconciled, et cetera. Um, and here's the good news of the gospel. Uh, anybody who believes can be saved. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what do they have to believe? Do you believe that Jesus is God, that he died for your sins? Do you believe that he was raised from the dead? Uh, do you believe that he's coming back to judge the living and the dead? Do you believe he made you and loves you? Right. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, these are like, kind of these essentials and, um, the gospels are very clear. Paul is very clear. Jesus is very clear. Anybody who believes in Jesus Christ, they will be forgiven and saved. And it's not an intellectual ascent to the truth because even the demons believe Sure.
Speaker 2 00:02:36 And shutter, as James says, but this is really about a belief, a trust from the heart. Anybody who casts himself on Christ and believes in him asks him for forgiveness, they shall be saved. Mm-hmm. So at the, at its purest, um, Ephesians chapter two, verse eight through 10 is, is kind of the verse that for most Roman Catholics begins to, to undo them. And it's the most simple, pure statement on the gospel. Uh, Paul says this in Ephesians two, eight. He says, for by grace, you have been saved. And grace is simply a free gift by grace, you've been saved. And he says, it's through faith. So how do I get this gift? I get it through faith. He goes on. He says, this is not your own doing. It's the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast.
Speaker 2 00:03:29 And so at its core, Paul is saying, salvation, forgiveness, justification, all these words, all of them happen in one way. It's free and it happens when you believe or trust or have faith in God. Hmm. And then he goes out of his way because he knows the human propensity to try to earn our salvation. And he says it's not by work so that no human being can boast. No human beings can say, well, I did this and that you did this part, and I did my part. No. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, it is all of grace, only by faith in Jesus Christ. And then he anticipates the most obvious question that everyone's gonna ask. Well, then what's the whole point of good works? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And he says in verse 10, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. In other words, the good works don't save you to the things you do after you're saved. Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so, like, I don't do good things for my wife to earn her love. I do good things for her because I love her. Mm-hmm. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's, we, it's the difference between cause and effect. Sure. Good works are the effect of salvation. They're not the cause of salvation. And, um, at, at its core, the pure gospel belief not by works mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 00:04:44 <affirmative>. So then the Roman Catholic gospel takes that and does something to it.
Speaker 2 00:04:50 It does. So let's, let's break it down. Three different kinds of gospels that most Americans are familiar with. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the first gospel is what most people know. We call this the Good Works gospel. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And it's essentially this good people go to heaven. Mm-hmm. This is the default view of the vast majority of Americans. And in fact people around the world right now, uh, is that if you're good enough or you're good works outweigh you're bad works, you're gonna be fine. When you get to heaven, godes some like scales and you didn't do the really bad stuff, and you're better than most of the people in your life anyways, so
Speaker 1 00:05:22 You're fine. One of Satan's most impactful
Speaker 2 00:05:24 Lies, oh, it's, it's so insidious. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then the, the next kind of gospel is what we call the Roman Catholic gospel. It's a sacramental gospel. So it starts with good works, but then you add to it the second ingredient, which is sacraments. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you add a third ingredient, which is faith, and if you get all three ingredients, then you have forgiveness or salvation or whatever else. And so I'll, I'll show you how the sacramental gospel works if you're a Roman Catholic. Um, it's really important that your babies are baptized because baptism, what it does is according to Rome, Catholicism, is that it removes or washes away original sin. Hmm. Original sin is the sin that we're born with that separates us from God. This is why it's a super important thing when one of their children are being
Speaker 1 00:06:12 Oh yeah. Baptized. It's a huge party. It's a big deal. Everybody comes massive celebration.
Speaker 2 00:06:17 Yes. And there is great sadness if a child dies before they have the opportunity to be baptized, because its destiny is uncertain at that point. Yeah. And so, uh, for Roman Catholic, you, when you're baptized, you and God are actually now in relationship. Your original sin that's separated you is now, it's not been taken away mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And now you need to participate in other sacraments. The second most important one is gonna be the Eucharist where you, um, partake in the eating of the physical body and blood of Christ and are therefore nourished spiritually. It's very important in terms of, um, we'll say getting salvation, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And what you find here is the sacramental gospel, good works plus sacraments, plus faith equals saved. Um, is also a perversion of the biblical true gospel. And again, remember we said what is the gospel? It is by grace through faith, not by works.
Speaker 2 00:07:12 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but when you add works and sacraments right. To faith, it's, it's getting even more complicated. And so, um, what you do is when you keep adding ingredients, you actually have to create other doctrines that come up. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So for example, well, what happens if I don't have enough good works, or I haven't done enough sacraments in order to be saved, will they create a whole new doctrine called purgatory, where you now have to work off, um, your sins or accrue more merit? Uh, we'll deal with that in a future Yep. Episode mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, in order that you can get into heaven mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so you start creating more and more doctrines that aren't in the Bible, but you have to come up with solutions to these answers. It's like a bad de division equation. Right. That gets really kind of
Speaker 1 00:08:01 Counter wise. You need to keep going over everything else Yeah. To make sure it all adds up. Hundred percent. And if you don't add up to a hundred, you don't get into heaven, apparently.
Speaker 2 00:08:09 Yep. Well, if I, if the math's short, well, I gotta come up with an equation to get me more math preparatory.
Speaker 1 00:08:13 Is that Exactly. Or somebody else does. So even people who are here on earth can pray for you while you are in purgatory. Yep. And again, we'll get more into that later. Um, but the Council of Trent met in the 15 hundreds and came up with a bunch of different canons that then explained some of these additional doctrines and even went so far as to cast curses on people who believed otherwise. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2 00:08:36 Yeah. So a council is a gathering of bishops from around the world. The Council of Trent was the 19th Council councils are really good. They're called typically to clarify doctrine or to address a, a significant problem, um, in the church globally. And so they, these bishops, these, um, priests would come together, they would make some decisions, they'd go back home, they would take the decisions of the Roman Catholic Church, and then they would teach them globally and create consistency, um, around the world in Catholic doctrine. Really smart, really effective, um, councils are generally a good thing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So what happened is, is in the 16th century you had this rascal named Martin Luther. Yeah. Who Rascal started I know. Who started the Protestant Reformation. Well, his goal wasn't to start, uh, the Protestant church. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, his goal was to reform the Catholic church from the inside out. So he started to publicly call out, um, aspects of their false gospel, where the added sacraments and work and purgatory in order to be saved. And the manipulation that was happening to Roman Catholics around the globe. Yeah. Uh, because of this false gospel. Well, Trent was called as a reaction. And one of the main teachings of Martin Luther is, uh, he happened to agree with Jesus and Paul, um,
Speaker 1 00:09:53 Probably a good
Speaker 2 00:09:53 Choice. Probably a good choice. Yeah. That justification, which is, um, a good theological word and biblical word for you are legally made right with God. You are reconciled justification. What Paul said is that it, it happens by, not by works, not by works of the law, but through faith in Christ and faith alone. Hmm. It was a big, huge statement because that landed like a bomb in the 16th century when they were saying, oh, no, no, no, no. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> justification is by good works. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> plus sacraments mm-hmm. <affirmative> plus faith, um, that's how you get justified. So they called Trent to respond, and the canons are their official and fallible, canonical, if you will, statements of conclusion after they had gathered the bishops. And, uh, it's really actually hard to read the, the Trent Cannons on justification. Mm. So I'll read you a couple.
Speaker 2 00:10:45 This is Canon 12. If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else, then confidence in the divine mercy, pardoning sins for Christ's sake, or that, or that it is that confidence alone by which we are justified, let him be a curse. Hmm. Let me, let me like translate. Uh, if anybody teaches or says that salvation, forgiveness, justification, or simply by belief or confidence, and Christ's work on the cross for you and your behalf, you are to be damned to hell. Mm-hmm. That's what anathema or a cursed means. Yeah. And so Romans 3 28, on the other hand, doesn't agree with Trent. Hmm. Romans 3 28 says, yes, this is Paul for we hold. That one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Here's another canon.
Speaker 1 00:11:43 You can also probably rattle off about five or six other Bible verses that Yes. Confirm the simple gospel.
Speaker 2 00:11:50 The teaching of scripture is consistent justification is by grace through faith. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> not by works. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and that's a hard one, um, for Roman Catholics to swallow. But whenever the word justification is used with regard to our salvation, it always communicates the same thing. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Canon 30, if anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received to every penitent or sorry sinner, the guilt is remitted or taken away. And the debt of eternal punishment is blotted out in such wise that there remains not any debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world or the next in purgatory, before the entrance to the kingdom of heaven can be opened to him. Let him be anathema or a cursed. Hmm. Let me translate. If anybody says that the moment you trust in Christ for salvation, that all the punishment of your sins has been removed because it was put on Christ, and you are no longer legally guilty before God, but forgiven, and that you don't have to be punished for the sins that Christ didn't cover, and you, you teach this and believe this, you're a curse to hell.
Speaker 2 00:13:02 You, you can understand by the way, why, um, Martin Luther was trying to reform the church from the inside out and to bring back the pure gospel from Jesus and the apostles. You can also understand why the Protestant reformation happened in the wake of Trent. Sure. Because now they came back and said, anybody who believes in Jesus, anybody who preaches the gospel, anybody who believes that justification is by grace through faith, you're all going to hell. They said, they're doubling down. They're doubling down. Yeah. And so now here's, here's their response. The response is, we have nowhere else to go. And so the reformation started and it spread like wildfire. It was, uh, it was revolutionary because the pure gospel was being received. And these people who had been told their whole life, you have to be good enough. Well, how good, how long am I gonna be in purgatory? They were released from all of that. Yeah. They heard the gospel, they believed, and it spread all over the world.
Speaker 1 00:13:54 And one of my favorite village church isms is that good people don't go to heaven, saved people go to heaven. And that's something that I think a lot of our Roman Catholic friends just struggle with because their whole lives, they've been told, you have to earn it. You have to earn it. You have to earn it. Am I going to be good enough? What peace Yeah. You can arrive at knowing that it's not of yourself. Yeah. Is the gift of God, not by works. Yeah. Bless any man to boast. And bringing that back to Ephesians two, eight through 10, um, knowing that the good works come as a result of that faith. Amen. Um, so I'm gonna close it with one last question. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, which is, can a Roman Catholic truly be saved then?
Speaker 2 00:14:33 Yep. Absolutely. Anybody who believes in Jesus Christ can be saved. Abandon your req. You're trying to earn yourself or earn your way to heaven, abandon it. It will not help you. And, um, abandon that, uh, sacraments are going to reconcile you to God. There is no work you can do to reconcile you, you to God, except to believe. Um, Protestants, we still get baptized, we still partake of communion. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, but we do it as a response to salvation and not as a cause. And so I would look at anybody, I would look at a satanist and say, you can be saved. A Roman Catholic, Jehovah's Witness, a Mormon, anybody who perverts the gospel, subtly or majorly anybody can be saved, abandon anything except for a pure gospel, you can be saved. Thanks so much for going into that joy.
