A very passionate Evangelical Protestant writes to me, saying…
<<
Wrong again. God forgives me DIRECTLY when I repent. I
don't need to go to any church to get forgivness.
>>
Fine. Then you apparently
don't believe that the Church is truly the Body of
Christ. Nor do you do what Scripture commands you to do.
For example, in James 5:16, we are commanded to confess
our sins to one another. And this is said in the context
of the healing and forgiving ministry of the presbyters
(priests) of the Church: James 5:14-15, a ministry rooted
in Jesus' commission to the Apostles in John 20:21-23
("…As the Father has sent me, even so I send
you…If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven;
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained").
Yet, do you Fundamentalist
Protestants ever do this? Do you listen to the command of
James 5:16? Not at all. Thus, you deny the Scriptures and
pick-and-choose what to believe and follow and what to
reject. You are, therefore, not truly a "Bible
Christian."
As for you not having to
go to the Church for forgiveness, tell me: Can one
Baptize oneself? Or, rather, do you need someone else,
someone who is already a believer, to Baptize you?
Indeed, according to the
Bible, it is THE CHURCH that received the Holy
Spirit (John 14-16; 20:22; 1 Corinthians 12), and it is THE
CHURCH that is commissioned to Baptize all nations
for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38; Matthew 28:19; Mark
16:16). So, if you cannot be Baptized without the Church,
how can you return to God in repentance without the
Church?
Once again, you apparently
do not believe that the Church is the Body of Christ. In
this, you assume that your sins only affect you and God.
Yet, that's not the case at all. When I sin, I not only
sin against God and myself, but against the entire Body
of Christ – the Church. And this is clear in Scripture:
1 Corinthians 12:26. Thus, if I sin against God, I also sin
against His Church. And, since the Church is holy,
spotless, and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27), when I
sin (mortally) I cut myself off from the Church. I,
therefore, need to be reconciled to God WITHIN HIS
CHURCH, or I am not reconciled to God at all. The Catechism
of the Catholic Church explains:
1440. Sin is before
all else an offense against God, a rupture of
communion with him. At the same time it damages
communion with the Church. For this reason conversion
entails both God's forgiveness and reconciliation
with the Church, which are expressed and accomplished
liturgically by the sacrament of Penance and
Reconciliation (cf. Vatican II LG 11).
But, my Evangelical friend
goes on to say…
<<
But of course, this is again opposite of what the head of
the Roman church says. Remember "…no forgivness
directly from God." >>
We never said that there
is no forgiveness directly from God. Yet, one can never
be sure that God forgives you unless that forgiveness is
given to you INCARNATIONALLY by the Church. If you
sin against the Body, you must be reconciled to the Body.
Yet, since you fail to appreciate the significance of
Christ's Incarnation (and how the Church is an extension
of that Incarnation), you do not recognize the truth of
this; and you reduce your relationship with God to a
strictly spiritual level – that is, to the level of a
relationship which any Jew could have had with God before
Christ's Incarnation. Thus, you do not appreciate the
gift of Emmanuel (God with us who became flesh, Matthew
1:23; John 1:14).
So again, is the Church
the Body of Christ or isn't it?
As for forgiveness coming
directly from God, let me give you yet another example:
In Luke 7:36-50, we are
told of the sinful woman who came into the house of Simon
the Pharisee and wept at Jesus' feet. In v. 48, Jesus
tells her: "Your sins are forgiven," and
thereafter dismisses her in peace.
Now, this woman had
obviously heard about Jesus and listened to Him speak to
the crowds. She knew that He was the Messiah, and she
knew that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and that she
was called to repentance. Now, given all this, she could
have gone to the Temple or to some lonely mountain side
and prayed to God the Father, and He would have forgiven
her because of the sincerity in her heart. Yet, instead,
she bursts into the Pharisee's house and repents at the
feet of Jesus. Why? What is this meant to show us? It
shows us that Jesus came in the flesh – that He intended
this woman FEEL His hands and to HEAR the
words: "Your sins are forgiven." That He
intended this woman to experience inter-personal contact;
and to KNOW that her sins were forgiven. For, He
Who was manifested in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 2:9)
told her this directly.
Now, would Jesus offer
this gift to the woman and not to the rest of us today?
Is our relationship with Jesus somehow less than this
woman's? The woman experienced forgiveness IN THE
FLESH. She HEARD someone tell her "Your
sins are forgiven," and FELT someone offer
that mercy to her. And Jesus wills us to have the same.
This is why He gave His Church the authority to forgive
sins – so that we may HEAR the words, FEEL
the touch of human compassion (as an extension of the
Lord's own humanity); and KNOW for certain that we
are forgiven. Further,
"This sacrament
is rooted in the mission God gave to Christ in his
capacity as the Son of man on earth to go and forgive
sins (cf. Matthew 9:6). Thus, the crowds who witnessed
this new power 'glorified God, who had given such
authority to men' (Matthew 9:8; note the plural
"men"). After his resurrection, Jesus
passed on his mission to forgive sins to his
ministers…" (from the Catholic Answers tract
on Confession)
These ministers, who have
been given the "ministry of reconciliation"
(cf. 2 Corinthians 5:18f) have always been the Bishops and
Priests of the Catholic Church, as seen in the writings
of the early Christian Fathers and ecclesiastical
writers:
ORIGEN (c. 244 AD)
In addition to these [kinds of
forgiveness of sins], albeit hard and laborious: the
remission of sins THROUGH PENANCE…when he [the
sinner] does not shrink from DECLARING HIS SIN TO
A PRIEST OF THE LORD AND FROM SEEKING MEDICINE…In
this way there is fulfilled that too, which the
Apostle James says: "If, then, there is anyone
sick, let him call the PRESBYTERS [where we
get PRIESTS] of the Church, and let them
impose hands upon him, anointing him with oil in the
name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save
the sick man, and if he be in SINS, THEY SHALL BE
FORGIVEN HIM [James 5:14-15; cf. John
20:21-23]." (Homily on Leviticus 2:4)
CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (c. 250 AD)
Of how much greater faith and salutary
fear are they who…CONFESS THEIR SINS TO THE
PRIESTS OF GOD in a straightforward manner and in
sorrow, making an open declaration of
conscience…Indeed, he but sins the more if,
thinking that God is like man, he believes that he
can escape the punishment of his crime by not openly
admitting his crime…I beseech you, brethren, LET
EVERYONE WHO HAS SINNED CONFESS HIS SIN while he
is still in this world, while his confession is still
admissible, WHILE THE SATISFACTION AND REMISSION
MADE THROUGH THE PRIEST ARE STILL PLEASING BEFORE THE
LORD. (The Lapsed 28)
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (c. 387 AD)
Priests have
received a power which God has given neither to
angels nor to archangels. It was said to them:
"Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven; and whatsoever you shall loose,
shall be loosed" [Matthew 18:18]. Temporal rulers
have indeed the power of binding; but they can only
bind the body. Priests, in contrast, can bind with
a bond which pertains to the soul itself and
transcends the very heavens. Did [God] not
give them all the powers of heaven? "Whose
sins you shall forgive," he says, "they are
forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain, they are
retained" [John 20:23]. What greater power is
there than this? The Father has given all judgment to
the Son. And now I see the Son placing all this
power in the hands of men [cf. Matthew 9:8; 10:40;
John 20:21]. (The Priesthood 3:5)
AUGUSTINE (c. 395 AD)
When you shall have
been baptized, keep to a good life in the
commandments of God so that you may preserve your
baptism to the very end. I do not tell you that you
will live here without sin, but they are venial sins
which this life is never without. Baptism was
instituted for all sins. For light sins, without
which we cannot live, prayer was instituted…But
do not commit those sins on account of which you
would have to be separated from the body of Christ.
Perish the thought! For those whom you see doing
penance have committed crimes, either adultery or
some other enormities. That is why they are doing
penance. If their sins were light, daily prayer would
suffice to blot them out…In the Church, therefore,
there are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in
baptisms, in prayer, and in the greater humility of
penance. (Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed 7:15;
8:16).
Yet, contrary to our
Lord's desire (John 20:21-23; cf. James 5:14-16; 1 John
1:9) and the unanimous teaching and practice of the early
Church, Fundamentalist or Evangelical Protestants have
reduced Christianity to a purely "spiritual"
religion. In this, they deny the significance of the
Incarnation. They unwittingly deny that the Church is the
Body of Christ, an extension of His very Incarnation
based on the "one flesh" relationship between
Christ and His Bride (Ephesians 5:25-32).
