Church forgives sins of those stricken by virus

I think herein lies the main difference between Catholics and Protestants. In its simplest form, Catholics believe the Church is an extension of the Incarnation. Hence the Church shares in the ministry of Jesus; she teaches and administers the Sacraments. It is why her priests have the authority to forgive sins.

By contrast, Protestant churches seemingly appear to be nothing more than religious Elks Clubs.

I actually think Protestants implicitly know the essence of the Catholic Church is holy.

 

I agree this issue of “church” separates the RCC from Protestants, perhaps until Jesus returns.

What do you mean the church “shares” in the incarnation of Jesus? Do you think the church is God?

When I say “church”, I think of the members therein, the brethren. The brethren are called the “Body of Christ”.

I suspect, you can correct me if necessary, when you say “church” you are thinking of the hierarchy of cardinals, bishops, priests: led by the bishop in Rome, who exercise authority over the members therein.

I don’t know much about the “Elks”, so I don’t know if your comparison is valid. But as long as we are sharing our opinions, let’s be candid.

The RCC put into place a system of religion that Jesus Himself did away with. Jesus gave us instructions to take our requests directly to God.
The RCC says you have to go through priests or saints in heaven.

Jesus says forgiveness of sins must come from God by grace. The RCC says forgiveness comes from men, through the church hierarchy, and must be accompanied by good works as defined by those men.

Jesus says He is the one and only High Priest and mediator between God and man. The RCC puts many priest and mediators between God and man and even proclaims their high priest, the Pontiff Maximus, is the ”vicar of Christ” which seems to mean something like the ”channeling” of Christ on earth.

In short, Jesus freed us from a hierarchy of religion, marked by dead works, and the RCC church reestablished a hierarchy, in doing so they rob Jesus of His glory by taking for themselves His Divine positions of authority and making a mockery of His grace.

The “church”, the brethren, are indeed Holy, set apart for God’s glory and work. Each believer has indwelling Holy Spirit, as well as those called by God to fill roles of leadership within the body so all things can be done orderly.

Everything we do should been done for the glory of our Lord Jesus.

peace to you

 

Sadly, I think you are right.

The premise I start from is that the Church is an extension of the Incarnation.

Extension: Something that can be extended or that extends to another object
Extended: Continued or prolonged
(Source)

"A man’s body is all one, though it has a number of different organs; and all this multitude of organs goes to make up one body; so it is with Christ. We too, all of us, have been baptized into a single body by the power of a single Spirit, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free men alike; we have all been given drink at a single source, the one Spirit. The body, after all, consists not of one organ but of many...And you are Christ’s body, organs of it depending upon each other..." (1 Cor 12:12-30)

So, while Christ had a body while on earth which He used to teach and sanctify. The Church - his body - is now an extension of His body which continues to teach and sanctify. (cf. Mt. 26:26, Mt. 28:20) This is why we can say things like...

Jesus is the Rock, but His Church has rocks. (1 Cor 10:4, Mt. 16:18)
Jesus is the foundation, but the Church has foundations. (1 Cor 3:11, Eph 2:20)
Jesus is the Shepherd, but His Church has shepherds. (John 10:11, John 21:16, Jeremiah 3:15)
Jesus is the Priest, but His Church has priests. (Heb 4:14, Heb 5:6, Rev. 20:6)
Jesus is the light of the world, but His Church is the light of the world. (John 8:12, Mt. 5:14)

The Church is not competing with Jesus. Rather, the Church is Jesus' instrument.

You are correct in that those baptized are members therein. (cf. 1Cor 12:13) This includes, however, those who receive a specific ordained ministry: bishops, deacons and priests.

By Elks Club I mean merely a social club. I will use your own words to demonstrate the analogy below.

Throughout salvation history, God has ALWAYS used man to convey His message, and since the Incarnation, now His grace. Never did Jesus "do away" with this, and nor does it take away from Him. Rather, it was ordained by Him. For example, we have been discussing Jesus sharing His ministry to forgive sins with the Apostles. He also commanded them to baptize, offer the Eucharist, etc. etc. All these things are done by and through the Church, which again is an extension of the Incarnation. None of these are logical or even possible with a "just me and Jesus" theology or if one has "a direct line to God." Perhaps that's why the Protestants keep telling me one doesn't have to do any of these things? After all, the very concept of the Church is meaningless if one truly has "a direct line with God."

If you believe otherwise, it would logically mean...

- One can formulate one's own credal statements about Who God Is
- One can pen one's own Scripture
- One can preach one's own sermons
- Conduct one's own service
- One can baptize himself
- One can marry himself
- One can ordain himself
- One can anoint himself
- One can forgive his own sins by confessing them to himself
- One can confect one's own Eucharistic sacrifice

If you truly believed Jesus did away with the necessity of having "intermediaries" as you call it, then you need to explain why you don't do the above things.

To close the loop, the Church is an extension of the incarnation. It is the body of Christ, Christ continuing in time and thus it is a divine institution. If the Church is not a divine institution, it will turn into an Elks Club.

 

The information regarding His first coming IS in the Psalms and other prophecies, and referenced by the Lord Himself in Luke 24:44...

They knew of their Messiah's having to be born at Jerusalem and many other things.
Just because they missed it, doesn't mean it wasn't there for them to see.
Their information concerning forgiveness of sins also came from the Law of Moses, Walpole.

In addition, Christ Himself told them why they did not believe on Him in John 6...
Because it must be given to someone by the Father to come to Him ( John 6:65 ).

They didn't like that.

He said that they did, so that is a "yes".

" Then said Jesus to them again, Peace [be] unto you: as [my] Father hath sent me, even so send I you.
22 And when he had said this, he breathed on [them], and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
23 whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; [and] whose soever [sins] ye retain, they are retained." ( John 20:21-23 ).

However, there are no apostles left, having died many centuries ago.
Where the Roman Catholic Church gets the teaching of "apostolic succession", I do not know.
To me, it is assumed and has always been assumed.

Jesus was speaking to the apostles and no one else.

But the process of forgiving sins is still only something that God can do.
If you wish to believe in "delegated authority" to forgive sins outside of the office of apostle, then we will have to disagree.

The apostles were entrusted with the serious work of spreading the Gospel...
In addition to this, they were empowered by the Lord via the Holy Spirit to legitimatize that message by performing miracles.
That all ended in Paul's time.
There are no more apostles, and there is no such thing as "apostolic succession".

My Head is Jesus Christ, not an organization built by men, sir.

I do not recognize many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church as being Scriptural ( especially their understanding of how and why someone is saved from God's wrath ), and I do not recognize any sort of authority that they may attempt to put me under, in their belief that they are the one true church.

I've lost count of the number of organizations that teach that.
Unfortunately, I've also lost count of the people who I see in history that have been killed for believing as I do.

Respectfully, I disagree.
To me, it's fully sequitur.

Everything I stated in my post was what the Bible teaches with respect to salvation...only it was condemned and pronounced as anathema at the Council of Trent, sir.
I truly hope someday that you see what I see...
That salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ's finished work on the cross alone...and for His people alone.

In addition, God alone forgives sins.

There are no more apostles, and the forgiveness of sins being referenced in John was given only to the apostles, and for a specific purpose...
As representatives of Christ's Gospel and the office of apostle.
In other words, it was delegated to them by God.

The bodily witnesses of Christ's death, burial and resurrection are no longer with us.
The office of apostle is no longer in effect.

Therefore, forgiveness of sins by an apostle ( demonstrated by Simon's request for Peter to pray to God for his forgiveness in Acts of the Apostles 8:24 ), given on the behalf of God, is no longer in effect.
That "delegation" died with them.


This will be my final reply in this thread.



May God bless you all in the knowledge of Him and His precious Son.

 

Right, and they rejected Jesus because He claimed to be the Son of God...

John 5:18 ---> "This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God."

John 19:7 ---> "The Jews answered him, 'We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.'”


By quoting the scribes and Pharisees, you placed yourself in the Jewish camp, who rejected Jesus and hence the concept that God would share in our humanity by becoming man and hence sharing too his authority to forgive sins.

Thanks for the concession. So the charge that no man can forgive sins is demonstrably fallacious.

It gets the teaching from the beginning of the Church. The first thing the Apostles (led by Peter) do after returning to Jerusalem after our Lord's glorious ascension was to appoint a successor to Judas...

St. Peter ---> “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it’; and 'Let another take his office.’" (Acts 1:20)

Right, but he mission of the Apostles was to continue. Ergo the necessity of them to have successors, which Scripture records them establishing.

You just agreed the Apostles had the authority to forgive sins. Now you are saying no one but God can do this. Please make up your mind.

Apostolic succession is of the upmost importance because without it, the Christian faith falls. Without it, one is not able to know what is or is not the faith of the Church, nor is one able to have valid Sacraments.

It is important to note that neither the Gospels, Pauline epistles, nor the catholic epistles address the issue of a post-Apostolic Church. (One would need to look to history for this.) Thus any appeal strictly to the Scriptures to see how the post-Apostolic Church functioned is simply not possible. However, what the Scriptures do show us is the how the structure of the Apostolic Church functioned, as well as how the Apostles planned for its eventual continuation apart from them.

The Gospels, epistles and personal correspondences which would later be compiled into what we call the New Testament carried weight amongst the early Church because they were tied to the person of an Apostle, which in turn led back to Christ Himself. We see the importance of the personage of the Apostles and a physical pedigree descending from them by the fact that they physically ordained men, “laying on hands,” in order to seal their word and mission to successors as authoritatively connected to them, and through them, back to Christ Himself. The faith does not and never has existed in a vacuum, isolated and cut off from its roots. The very fact that the Scriptures record the ordaining of men to continue their work is indicative of a hierarchical and institutional model; less any man would be free to independently do the mission entrusted to the Apostles by Christ. For example...

Acts 6:6 --> "Whom they set before the apostles: and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them."

Acts 13:3 --> "And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away."

Acts 14:23 --> "And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed."

1 Tim 4:14 --> "Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery."

1 Tim 5:22 --> "Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure."

2 Tim 1:6 --> "Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands."

The reason the Apostles did this was because Apostolic succession ensures right doctrine and valid Sacraments. Without it, you have nothing but a man-made sect. So important is Apostolic succession that the Church's first ecumenical Council, that of Nicea, prescribed strict consecration procedures to ensure valid succession, which is still practiced today..

It's a non-sequitur because it's a red herring.

Take care and God bless.

Oremus pro invicem.

 

Yes of course, that is why we believe the Pope is the Antichrist.