Transcription
I'd like to share a verse that broke my Protestant understanding of salvation in scripture. It really goes back to a conversation I had many years ago when I first began attending Baptist church before I was a Baptist minister.
If you're a Catholic, how many times has a Protestant approached you and asked you if you've sa if you're saved? Have you been saved? And how should you reply to that? Well, I don't want to be too combative and I want to say that I think Protestants get a lot right even on this point. But for me, it was things in scripture that gnawed at me that later I began to put together a fuller picture of what the Bible's doing.
Now, without going too in depth, we're going to cover this more on my Patreon. We're going to do a study of the book of Romans from a Catholic point of view. I want to read to you a snippet from Legionnaire Ministries. This is a reformed organization and this is their article on justification.
Justification is a theological term that is debated among scholars. It's in the book of Romans in the Greek. And it's been debated about what that word means. We're going to cover that more on Patreon. But essentially for the Protestant it means a legal aquitt a forensic declaration of righteousness. So when you become saved or justified and usually those two things are rather tied together um then you have been legally acquitted of your sins and Christ's righteousness has legally been applied to your account. This is what I would not all Protestants I don't want to lump them all together but I would say the majority of Protestants believe.
In fact in the book of Concord which is a Lutheran book in the subject index it says that justification is like I think the most important of Christian doctrines. Upon this doctrine, all the doctrines of the evangelicals rise or fall because if they get this wrong, you might as well pack it up and go to mass. And I want to say first of all that Protestants and Catholics have a lot in common here. I'm going to say particularly speaking as a former Baptist, I think Baptists who read the Bible thoroughly really do have a sense of this already. And I mean that genuinely. But I just want to share what they say and then a Bible verse for you.
Legionary ministry says justification is a once-forall nonre repeatable act of God. And it is by this act of God that God forgives the sins of his people and imputes Christ's righteousness. Puts it on their accounts before him. This is what uh this reformed ministry says. A once one-time non-re repeatable act of God.
Now, I don't think that's actually what the Bible says. And I had a conversation with friends many years ago before I was a minister and we were wrestling with stories about Abraham and I just I I think we accidentally kind of stumbled upon the historic view, the Catholic view. I want to share this one verse with you and then a few more verses and just kind of uh [clears throat and snorts] tease us out a bit.
In Romans chapter 4, Paul's already begun his great epistle um about the righteousness of God and the wrath of God and the gospel of Christ. And in chapter 4, he comes to Abraham and he says in chapter 4 and verse three, "For what does the scripture say?" So he's quoting the Old Testament. "Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness or accounted to him as righteousness." He's quoting Genesis chapter 15.
Now back in Genesis, um if you recall, we see the story of Abraham's life, the great father of Israel. But in chapter 15, Abraham hasn't even been called Abraham yet. He's still Abram. Anytime in scripture God changes someone's name, it's a big deal. Mark it down. He changed Abram's name to Abraham. He changed Jacob's name to Israel. Obviously a big deal. He changes Peter's name. He changes Simon's name to Rock. Now, as a Baptist, I would say, "Well, that one's not a big deal." Of course, it's a big deal. But before he changes Abraham's name, he's making a covenant. And he says, "After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Fear not, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "Oh Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless." So he's an old man at this time. And the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abraham or Abram said, "Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a slave born in my house will be my heir." And behold, the word of the Lord came to him. "This man shall not be your heir. Your own son shall be your heir." Abram hadn't had a son yet. And he brought him outside and said, "Look towards heaven and number the stars, if you were able to number them." Then he said, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the Lord, and he reckoned it to him [clears throat] as righteousness.
This is what Paul's quoting in Romans 4 in his great letter about the gospel righteousness, the righteousness of God. He talks about Abraham's faith being reckoned to him as righteousness. But remember, in the Calvinist view, this is a one-time in most Protestant views, a onetime non-re repeatable act. Here's the problem. That's not what the Bible does.
In the book of James, in James epistle, he says in chapter 2:21, and I don't think this is in competition with what St. Paul says, but he tells us something else. "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?" And so the word there is still justified. But when he offered Isaac upon the altar, that's referring to a later event after Genesis 15. That's Genesis chapter 22 when Abraham offers Isaac upon the altar. But he's justified there as well. And there are nuances Protestants would use to try to say, "Well, this is different."
But what about Hebrews 11? Hebrews 11:8. "By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out in a place which he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was to go. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise, etc." Now, the Bible doesn't use the word justified there, but in both Catholic and Protestant theology, he would not have been able to have faith because faith itself is a gift of God as you know from Ephesians. And Abraham obeyed God by faith, which means he had to have been justified in both Protestant and Catholic theology. So that's at least three times we know of in which Abraham must have been justified. Three points in his life, but probably more.
When a Protestant asks, "Have you been saved?" They're thinking past tense, referring to a one-time moment in the past. And they associate this with that non-re repeatable act of God. Here's the thing. That is not what the Bible does either with justification or even the word salvation. Salvation in the Bible is past, present, and future. I had a Baptist pastor, several of them, and they said this. "I was saved in the past. I am being saved and I shall be saved." And that is the Catholic view. Not only was I saved in the past when I repented, believed the gospel, and was baptized for the remission of sins according to Peter, I am being saved. I'm going to show you that in scripture, and I shall be saved.
And Protestants have begun to notice this. This is E.P. Sanders. I'm not saying he's right about everything, but this was a landmark text sort of offering push back against the uh traditional reformed view of justification in St. Paul. He points out that it is to be observed that the verb save in Paul is generally future or present. It's presented as future or present in the Bible more often than it is past tense. Titus 3:5, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us." And he says, um, Sanders notes that Paul writes in Romans 8:24, "We were saved," past tense, "that we were saved in hope," and that hope is of the final salvation in Christ. More characteristics are such passages as "We shall be saved through him from the wrath to come." Romans 5:9. "If you confess and believe in your heart that God hath raised him from the dead, you shall be saved." Romans 10:9, which I used to quote at Protestants. I used to spam that verse of Protestants, checkmate pro-Catholics, I mean, "in order that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord." That's 1 Corinthians 5:5. "In order that by all means I may save some." 1 Corinthians.
So I want to show you some examples of present tense salvation. Just a couple. 1 Corinthians 1:18 St. Paul writes. "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. And they're perishing now. They're not just perishing in the future. But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." The cross is salvation. It's the power of God to those of us who are being saved. Present tense.
Now, just in case you happen to be a King James only guy, I saw a guy I'm I'm going to play the clip. He threw his Bible across the room. All right, so let's also uh see what the New International Version has to say about these texts. Ironically, Matthew 7:14, the New International Version gets that right. But let's go ahead and see what it said. The New International Version says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those which are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." Those of us who are being saved, are you saved or you not? Was this thing written by a person in the middle of a sinner's prayer who was in the process of accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Being saved straight out of hell.
To be fair to Protestants, most Protestants would not accept what this guy's doing. But what they would say is um what a what a King James only guy might say is in the King James, you you miss that present tense because there's only three tenses in the English essentially. In the Greek, there's more nuance. So if you are a King James guy, this Baptist had noticed that this doesn't fit with his theology of salvation justification as I did. So he decided this translation must be false. But I want to show you in the Greek [clears throat] and this is behind modern translations and the King James. The word for being saved in Greek or in the King James saved in this passage is the Greek sojoo. This is of the word sojo or save or I save but this is a verb present passive participle plural. So this is the Nestle-Aland. This is the one that you know modern scholars accept the Greek text uh from which they will work with their translations in Bible study. But King James guys here's the TR. This is the Textus Receptus. This is the TR. It's the same.
"So we are being saved and we shall be saved in Christ from the wrath to come." Romans 5:9. "Since therefore we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." And this is linked in the rest of that chapter by the way, this justification, this salvation is linked to not just a legal declaration but as Adam by many were made sinners by the disobedience of Adam. So by one man's obedience, Christ, many will be made righteous, not just declared righteous.
This view that justification is a one-time act isn't biblical because salvation isn't a one-time thing. It's past, present, and future. This is thoroughly biblical. And this is what it turns out, much to my dismay at first, what the Catholic Church has always known and always taught.
If you want to go deeper, we'll be covering that on Patreon where we'll be studying the book of Romans. But for now, I hope you know that you matter. Your life matters. God loves you. People love you. So live your life to its fullest. Take hope. There's hope in Christ. Don't check out early. As always, thanks for watching.