And How and Why We Separated.
Part I discussed the misconception that Christians are saved by faith alone. Part II further explained the differences between the Protestant and Catholic faith, all backed by scripture.
4) All Christians believe that:
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
And also that:
Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father (Philip. 2: 9-11).
But here again, the Protestant tradition adds the word “alone”, so that many Protestants profess the misleading theme of “Christ alone”.
Yet, throughout all of Salvation history as recorded in the Bible, Jesus rarely if ever acts alone. He repeatedly acts through chosen creatures and people, from angels to Moses, to the Apostles, to their successors.
Even while Jesus walked the earth, Scripture informs us:
Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself was not baptizing, just his disciples), he left Judea and returned to Galilee (John 4: 1-3).
Another serious problem with the Protestant tradition of “Jesus alone” is that it ignores the wisdom gently affirmed in the lesson of the incident between the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip.
Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him (Acts 8: 29-31).
This very material that I have written illustrates why it is unwise for a person to believe that it is possible to learn God’s revelation with the help of “Jesus alone” in the conviction that he or she is accepting only what Scripture alone teaches. The truth is that whatever you believe, you believe that in part because of what other fallible people made available to you and taught you. Under a consistent Christian theory of God’s revelation, there is no God-given authority to even identify what constitutes the complete Bible other than the Catholic Church as commissioned by Jesus Christ.
The Catholic Church again rejects the excess and misdirection of adding the word “alone” to our affirmation of the role of Jesus because of His explicit teaching:
Very truly, I tell you, whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives him who sent me (John 13: 20).
(Jesus) said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.'(John 20: 21-23).
Then Jesus approached and said to them, ‘All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age'(Matthew 28: 18-20).
He said to them, ‘Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned (Mark 16: 15-16).
Paul affirms, in a simple summary, the obvious meaning of the commission that Jesus gave in the words quoted above:
But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach? And how can people preach unless they are sent? … Thus faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ (Romans 10:13-17).
The Fifth Truth: All Christians believe that:
when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, ‘he sat down at the right hand of God,’ and since then has been waiting ‘until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.’ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified (Hebrews 10:12-14)
He has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered himself (Hebrews 7: 27).
I say again, in so far as one can speak of “A Protestant faith”, Protestantism focuses exclusively on the underlined words that do explicitly assert that Jesus made only one offering of His passion and death on the cross. From that limited understanding, Protestantism rejects and condemns the heart of Catholic worship: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. And Protestantism then accuses Catholicism of diminishing and detracting from Christ’s one sacrifice and one offering of that sacrifice by its Faith in the Sacrifice of the Mass.
The defect in the Protestant thinking is the supposition that one sacrifice offered only once can only mean that offering and sacrifice must be limited to a Judean hillside for one brief moment of time some odd 2000 years ago. Protestants have simply not understood the lessons found in the Old and the New Testament.
The Protestant’s belief would be true for all merely human high priests. But that limitation does not apply to Jesus, the high priest of Christianity.
Severely limited within the constraints of their purely human context, a context that fails to take into account the superiority of Jesus our High Priest, Protestants misunderstand the statement that:
Unlike the other high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people; this he did once for all when he offered himself (Hebrews 7:27).
By His Divine power, that single offering of Christ’s obedience and sacrificial death was extended from that cross to every time and every place that a priest commissioned by Christ says, in obedience to Christ’s command, the words identifying that the bread is changed by Christ into His body and the wine is changed by Christ into His blood. I am not describing many offerings by Christ; but rather, each distinct part of a single extended offering by Christ that He makes present in many times and places by His divine power.
It is the bondage of ignorance and an incomplete faith that blinds many to this ‘more excellent ministry’ that is derived from the superiority of Christ our high priest (See Hebrews 8, 6).
The words of Jesus at the Last Supper, as recorded in the original Greek Scriptures, clearly suggest this is true:
And Having Taken bread(and) having given thanks He broke (it) and gave (it) to them saying, This is the Body of me- for you being given; this do in my memory of me. And the cup similarily after (they) ate, saying this cup (is) the new covenant in the blood of me- for being shed (Luke 22: 19-22, TNGEINT Version).
Matthew 26: 28 and Mark 14: 24 also affirm that the blood of Christ “IS BEING SHED” and “IS BEING POURED OUT”.
There is more Scriptural evidence for those who will accept it.
Hebrews 8: 3 affirms,
the necessity for this [high priest] to have something to offer” as minister of the sanctuary and that true tabernacle set up by the Lord.
Hebrews 10: 19-25 states that:
since through the blood of Jesus we have confidence of entrance into the sanctuary by the new and living way he opened for us through the veil, that is, his flesh,…” The allusion to Christ’s Last Supper testament is evident.
Christ’s body, which has replaced the bread that was offered to God, opens the path. Christ’s blood, which has replaced the wine that was offered to God, assures our entrance into the sanctuary.
This passage is not speaking of our salvation; rather it is speaking of our presence in the sanctuary ministered by Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 13: 10 explicitly affirms:
We [Christians] have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.
The argument that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 10: 14-22 provides additional incidental confirmation of the Christian altar:
Therefore, my beloved, avoid idolatry. … The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
Look at Israel according to the flesh; are not those who eat the sacrifices participants on the altar? … You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.”
This provides us a clue, that almost begs to be followed up.
When Jesus multiplies his body and blood to feed us in communion, from what moment in time does He take It?
The answer to that question, which seems obvious once it is asked, sheds intense light on both the whole Jewish Passover experience and the whole Catholic experience of faith.
All glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
And finally:
For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes (1 Cor. 11: 23-26).
Any guidance of the material in this presentation depends entirely on its own identifiable merits.
The guidance of the Catholic Church depends entirely on the promises of Jesus, which are recorded in both Scripture and Divine Tradition.
Those not of the Catholic Faith might consider two obvious and related truths before continuing the human tradition of rejecting the fact of a Divine Oral Tradition. Generations of Christians had lived the Faith for years before the New Testament Scriptures were written or gathered together! More Christians were living the Faith for centuries before moveable type printing made Bibles readily affordable and widespread literacy developed to the point that everyone could read their own Bible. The Catholic Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type. When the Gutenberg Bible was printed, Latin was the most widely read language.
Never forget or underestimate the fact that: “‘He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.’” John 8: 44
In conclusion, I urge every professed Christian to read and prayerfully consider the following words of our Lord in relation to the historic and existing divisions and in light of the fact that the Church is the body of Christ:
But he knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and no town or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself; how, then, will his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his property, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come (Matt 12: 25-32. See also Luke 11: 18-23 and Acts 9: 1-6).
Some final food for thought: What detail, essential to our salvation, is missing from these five truths? It is a detail that is subtly excluded by the Protestant addition of the word “alone” to each of these truths. See Luke 10: 25-28 and Matt 22: 36- 40 for what Jesus had to say.
