A lot of preachers and laity are going around today claiming that Jesus said, or didn’t say certain things. For instance, I have heard atheists claim that Jesus NEVER claimed to be God. Somehow, this misstated fact makes it okay in their minds to not believe in the entire New Testament but Jesus did claim to be God. For instance, in Mark 14:61-62, the following exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees occurs:
again the high priest asked him, ‘“Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I AM; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’
Jesus answered in the affirmative with the very name of God from the Old Testament, “I AM.” The bottom line is NEVER let a biblical illiterate interpret the Bible for you since they have no clue what they are talking about. Jesus was crucified because the Pharisees accused him of “claiming” to be the Son of God, so atheists’ ignorant assertion that Jesus never claimed to be God carries no weight whatsoever.
Homosexuality
Another ludicrous gem from non-believers is that Jesus never condemned homosexuality, which somehow, in their minds, means that sodomy is acceptable. To them, the “real” sin of Sodom was inhospitality. The entire Bible, not just the words of Jesus, is God-breathed. In Romans 1: 24-32, St. Paul, speaking infallibly for God (as Romans is the Word of God, not just Paul’s), says:
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them but approve those who practice them.
St. Paul, speaking for God, also condemns homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. The book of Jude also condemns sodomy in verses 1-7. Again, do not let people with a hidden agenda ever interpret the Bible for you, as they will self-interpret it to their own destruction, as the Bible itself warns in 2 Peter 1:20.
So what about some of the things that people allege that Jesus said?
Earthly Rewards
Jesus never said that huge rewards await you in this life for being one of His followers.
Just turn on some of the Protestant cable channels, and you will hear the “health and wealth” gospel. That is, “Send me (the TV preacher) a faith seed (your money), and God will reward you IN THIS LIFE with even more money!” That is a huge lie. Jesus told the rich young man to sell all that he had, give it to the poor (not to Him!), and then come and follow Him. The rich young man would then have treasure in heaven, not here on earth. Many very wealthy preachers scam the widows and ignorant among us with this ploy. Jesus Himself predicted this in Luke 20:47:
They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation.
A corollary of this is “God wants YOU to be rich and prosperous in this life”. Well, Mother Teresa certainly wasn’t rich and prosperous in this life. St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Saint of Auschwitz certainly wasn’t rich in this life. The apostles weren’t rich and prosperous in this life. On the contrary, the Bible warns us over and over and over again about the lure of riches and how it can lead a person straight to hell:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Amen, I say to you, it will be hard for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 23:19-24)
The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty. (Luke 1:53)
For the love of money is the root of all evils, and some people in their desire for it have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains. (1 Timothy 6:10)
I’m more than sure that there are some rich people in heaven, but they are there because they renounced their love of money for their love of Christ. Sirach 3:30 says that almsgiving atones for sins, so if you want to atone for your sins, then start giving money, sacrificially, like the widow did with her two copper coins right in front of Jesus.
The Bible Alone
Jesus never said that the Bible by itself was all that was needed to get to heaven.
As a matter of fact, the Jews at the time of Jesus had no set canon, which is why the Essenes, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees all believed different things about God and salvation. The current canon of the Bible with all 73 books in it was established by Pope Damasus I in 382 AD at the Council of Rome. From that point forward, the scriptures were all written down and everyone knew what they were. Up until that time, almost four centuries after Jesus, oral teaching of the faith had taken place. This, of course, was commanded by Jesus right before the Ascension (Matthew 28:20). Since there was no set Bible up until that time, there could have been no “Bible alone” theory either.
The current fad among so many Protestants seems to be “me and my Bible alone,” and that’s all I need but that can’t be true since so many Protestant Bibles have footnotes in them. Including footnotes and other references defeats the idea that the Bible is easy enough to understand on our own, without someone else to interpret it for us. If this were true, then those explanatory footnotes in Protestant Bibles shouldn’t be there.
Jesus did not say, “Write everything down in a book, make sure everyone gets a copy, and whatever they come up with is okay, even if it’s totally wrong.”
The Bible does say that the church is the pillar and bulwark of truth, so only that church (the Catholic Church) has the primacy of what the Bible actually means. After all, the Church was there at the time of Peter and the apostles, as it was founded on giving Peter the keys to the Kingdom (Matthew 16:19).(These keys had been taken away from the Jews as shown in Matthew 21:43.)
Evolving Theology
Jesus never said to let His teachings evolve with modern times so as to make them acceptable to sinners.
A lot of ministers and priests conform their views of scripture based on the current zeitgeist of the culture. They have done this with artificial birth control, abortion, divorce and remarriage, and sodomy. Some have even come out and said that their views are “evolving” on issues. The thought process seems to be that since I know good people who are contraceptors, homosexuals, or remarried divorcees, then that makes it okay. Well, either they are right, or the Bible is right. Sinners who demand acceptance of their personal sin, and pastors who acquiesce to them, will all have to answer to Jesus, not to each other, their congregation, or you and me.
Man-Made Churches
Jesus never said, “Upon this rock, I will build my churches.”
There are over 30,000 Protestant churches, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Mormonism, etc., in the world today. None of these meets the biblical criteria that Jesus founded one, and only one church. John Smythe (founder of the Baptist Church), John Wesley (founder of the Methodist Church), Martin Luther (founder of the Lutheran Church, Henry VIII (founder of the Anglican Church), and Joseph Smith (founder of the Mormon Church) all disagreed with Jesus and his founding of one and only one church. Their followers also disagree with Jesus on this. They can all be saved, of course, if they are invincibly ignorant of the Truth that the Catholic Church teaches. However, without the grace from the sacraments of the Catholic Church, it will be tough. Many of them believe that the Catholic Church became corrupted in the early going, and therefore, men had to create their own churches in its place. That kind of thinking makes a liar out of Jesus, who did say that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. He also said that the tares and the wheat would grow together in His church, side by side, and that is so evident today, with sexual predators seemingly everywhere in His church, and in man-made churches as well (Jim Jones, David Koresh, etc.).
Holy Communion
Jesus never said that the Eucharist was only a symbol of His body and blood.
In John chapter 6, Jesus says over and over again that we must consume His flesh and drink His blood to have eternal life. He even compares it to the supernatural manna from Heaven and says that it is the food that leads to eternal life. That is why in the Lord’s prayer He says to give us this day “our daily bread”. (Manna was also daily bread from heaven). Look as you may, you will never see the word “symbol” anywhere when referring to the Eucharist. Just like Jesus was disguised as an ordinary man, just so, the Eucharist is disguised as ordinary bread. Just as the forbidden fruit led to damnation, the Eucharist leads to salvation.
A plastic banana is a symbol of a real banana, and provides no nourishment whatsoever. If the Eucharist were only a symbol instead of the risen Christ, then it would have no salvific power, either.
Being Saved
Jesus never said that we must accept Him as our personal Lord and savior in order to be saved.
No, those words are not in the Bible and are part of the Protestant “tradition” that someone made up. Peter says when asked what must we do to be saved: “You must repent and be baptized (Acts 2:38).” Baptism saves us, says Peter in 1 Peter 3:21.
Of course, there is more to being saved than being baptized, which is our initial justification. Jesus commands us to do all of the necessary good works in Matthew 25:31-46. Jesus is VERY clear during this sermon that if you don’t do these things, then you will be a goat and cast into hell.
There is nothing wrong, of course with having Jesus as your personal Lord and savior, but Catholics are much closer to Jesus than that, because He is part of us after Holy Communion, and 1 Corinthians 6:17 says that we become one spirit with Him then.
A Final Caution
So be very wary of people who say things about Jesus and the Bible, because a lot of them are making it up as they go along to either get your money or to get you to accept their sin as being okay.
14 thoughts on “Things Jesus Never Said”
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The problem is that there is a group of putatively conservative Catholics who have decided that adultery and fornication are perfectly acceptable behavior; in fact lauded by the Church.
As soon as you point out that Trump is an unrepentant adulterer, fornicator (and likely abortionist and sodomizer), they say, “Well, how can that be wrong, David did it?”
(I would point out that under Church law, any sexual behavior outside that ordered toward reproduction is “sodomy.” Therefore, this includes “oral sex.)
Yes we all know that scandalously there are many such “Catholics”. Though I must admit I’ve never heard someone so brazen as to argue that adultery is ok because King David did it (omitting to mention that he then bitterly repented, and still had to face the terrible punishment for his sin, even in this life.)
I can’t work out why you think it is only a problem if they are political conservatives though. Or is that by “putatively conservative” you mean “claiming to be orthodox Catholics”?
Once again, censorship at Catholic Stand.
What do you mean?
To Cato:
Some of my comments have been barred by the editorial staff at Catholic Stand.
When Christ’s Spirit is within us, we are at one with Him. This is required before we participate in the Eucharist; otherwise, we are not in the state of grace. The state of grace is required for salvation; and, the Spirit is the evidence of our salvation.
When the people asked Christ: “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” (John 6:28-29).
Jesus also said in John 7:38-39: “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)”
Our initial justification includes all of this: as well as Baptism.
Whether Jesus said he was God, or even the Son of God, is debatable. He (or the New Testament writers recording his words) was all over the map on this issue.
In Mark, when the high priest asks if he is the Son of God, Jesus says yes. But in Matthew Jesus says only that others have *said* he was the son of God. Cf. Matt 26:64 with Mark 14:62. Matthew got most of his Gospel from Mark. Why would Matthew water down Jesus’s claim? This is a contradiction, of course. A common theory is that Mark was later changed in light of the “higher” Christology that evolved toward the end of the first century (which we see reflected in John). The earliest manuscripts we have of this part of Mark are from the fourth century, so a lot could have happened to the text during the previous 250 years. Not only did scribes make mistakes, they were aware that previous scribes made mistakes, and must have tried to “correct” them. A scribe copying Mark in the year 150, seeing Jesus’s equivocal answer to Pilate, might have said, “That can’t be right!” and changed it to what we have now.
As for Jesus being God, he never said he was God, just like that. In fact by clear implication he denied being God. Mark 10:18, Luke 18:19 (“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”)
As for homosexuality, this writer seems to admit that Jesus said nothing about it. All he does is quote Paul, who cannot be considered Jesus. (Paul also said things that no Catholic agrees with today, particularly as to the role of women.) As for anything Jesus said, his passing mention of “male and female”, in a conversation not about sexual orientation but about divorce, is a slender hook upon which to hang what today’s conservatives consider a bedrock principle of the faith. There is a lot more Gospel support for abandoning your family (Luke 14:26), or for anti-Semitism (Matt 27:25).
Finally the word “church” as used by Paul meant the entire body of believers. It did not refer to a top-down hierarchy such as exists today. Even so, once again this is Paul, not Jesus.
These are commonly made points, made mostly not by atheists but by other Christians, and this would be a more effective post if they had been dealt with.
A veritable farrago of unsupported assertions there. If a pope himself spoke like that people would call him rigid and dogmatic.
To take only the most important of your ludicrous errors of fact (not belief or opinion), there is no suggestion anywhere in either the New Testament or any other ancient source, that any follower of Jesus Christ disputed the universal belief in His Divinity. It wasn’t until 300 years later that Arius first proposed the theory that He was something a little less than God the Father, a kind of demi-God or second class God. The other major heresy of the time was Docetism, that Jesus only seemed to take on a human nature but remained simply God, not man. Absolutely NO ancient Christian, either orthodox or heretical, ever said that Christ was merely a man and not God. Now from a distance of two millennia and an utterly different culture, you claim you know better than them who and what Christ is, based on your highly imaginative subjective interpretation of the books which they wrote and later approved for use in the liturgy (after checking rigorously that everything in them is entirely consistent and concordant with the fullness of the Catholic faith received from Christ through the Apostles).
Secondly the ludicrous claim that scribes “corrected” biblical manuscripts to conform to their own beliefs (a claim primarily made by atheists, seldom by Christians) is refuted by the 2000 year old Dead Sea Scrolls which are stunningly almost verbatim with the “received versions” of the scriptural books we have today. The early Christians were absolutely fanatical about preserving the faith exactly as it had been received from the mouth of Christ, and were up in arms (sometimes quite literally) at any perceived attempt to change it or water it down.
Thirdly if any “Catholic” disagrees with the inerrant words of the NT letters of St Paul, it’s that “Catholic” who has a problem, not St Paul.
Fourthly even a cursory perusal of the Acts of the Apostles, will illustrate that the infant Church was if anything MORE of a top-down hierarchy than it is today.
Fourthly your attempt to argue that although divorce and “remarriage” is a sin, sodomy is not, well all I can say is if you can somehow hold that contradiction in your mind, it must be about to explode. Christ’s audience were orthodox Jews, nobody needed to tell them “by the way sodomy is still not ok” LoL. Do you also think Christ taught that slavery, wife-bashing, rape, pedophilia, bestiality, sadism, masochism, infanticide, wars of aggression, etc etc are ok too, because we don’t have an extant record of Him explicitly mentioning them?
Ray,
You contradict yourself. Your title is “Things Jesus Never Said” and in your paragraph on homosexuality you don’t quote Jesus at all just St. Paul. Did Jesus himself say anything on the matter?
Check out Matthew 19:4-12 and Mark 10:6-12.
Robert,
Thanks for the references,
Tried to post this.
In keeping with the gist of your title,
Some of the Things Jesus Never Said:
1. People go to heaven or hell when they die.
2. There is a purgatory.
3. The Church could declare sainthood for anyone and encourage believers to pray to them for intercession with God.
4. Mary would be Queen of Heaven, Co-Redemptrix, Gate of Heaven, and various other titles. True believers should pray to her, serve her, etc.
5. Peter was the first pope and Vicar of Christ, and was “infallible” in his dogmas.
6. Confess your sins to a Catholic priest and receive absolution.
7. Ignore the Feasts of God, declared in the Old Testament.
8. Change the day of sabbath.
9. Celebrate/observe Christmas.
10. The RCC is the one true church.
The Church, established by Christ through the Holy Spirit, was made up of Jews who recognized Him as the Messiah that had been foretold in the Old Testament. It was initially known as the Jerusalem Church.
You never mentioned statements by the current pope, which clearly go against your arguments under Homosexuality and Man-Made Churches.
Suggest that you review Revelation 17 and 18, which seems to warn us to leave the RCC. The current pope has been advocating the unity of all “faiths” under the banner of a climate crisis.