Jesus became human did he not?
Bret Responds,
That’s a nice sentiment David but let’s examine it a bit before we swallow it shall we. Now, remember, this is your response to my insistence that justification is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. You objected to that by mocking the Protestants who believe in faith alone. When I noted that Scripture clearly disallows our works as contributory to our justification you responded with the above.
So, I take this as an affirmation of yours that human works are necessary for salvation. Indeed, you say you are even “depending on them,” but that’s OK because “they are the works of Jesus Christ Himself.”
Now, while it is true that God’s people are, as Titus 2:14 teaches, always zealous for good works, and while we affirm Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
We also affirm that our right standing and acceptability with God is solely on the basis of the finished work of Jesus Christ reckoned to me and received by faith alone that is characterized as completely resting in Christ and His righteousness.
But, now you want to insert our works claiming that our works are the works of Jesus. This is large scale typical hubris on the part of Roman Catholics. David, do you really think any of your works (even if you think that they are the works of Jesus through you) can meet the standard for what God finds acceptable as a work? Are your good works absolutely Holy? Are your good works without any blemish or fault? This is what is required in order for your works righteousness to be accepted by God. We Protestants understand that by that standard all of our righteousness is like filthy rags. Yet, here we find a Roman Catholic, proudly declaring that to whatever extent he is depending on his works it is ok because his works are so exalted that his works are as acceptable as our saviors works.
Allow me to suggest David, that given this view of yours, you have not yet seen either God’s holiness or your sinfulness and as a result you do not understand your need for Christ’s death. I trust that in time the Holy Spirit will open your eyes to the foolishness of thinking that your works are acceptable before a thrice Holy God because, after all, your works have all the sanctity and acceptability of the works of the savior Jesus Christ.
Roman Catholic David writes,
To a Protestant Jesus is just an idea. Yes, you have faith. But even the demons believe God and tremble.
Bret responds,
Just an idea?
Nobody puts up with the persecution that the Roman Catholics visited upon the Protestants for “just an idea,” David. Nobody is martyred for an idea David. This statement is just Roman Catholic bloviating.
And while I don’t doubt that many Protestants have demon faith, I am more sure that even more Roman Catholics have demon faith. Indeed, there is not one Roman Catholic who is epistemologically self-conscious about what they believe who aren’t involved in demon faith. Your embrace of Trent, by itself, means that you are involved in demon faith.
You never actually unite with him. That’s the real reason you reject his body and blood, and have no life within you.
Bret responds,
And yet David, the Scripture testifies that the Holy Spirit unites believers to Christ. The Holy Spirit, by whom Christ offered Himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14), regenerates the elect when He unites them to Christ. By this vital spiritual union, God brings the elect from spiritual death to spiritual life (Romans 5:6).
Protestants don’t reject the body and blood of Christ. We merely reject the demonic Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. We are done with Priestcraft and the attempt of the Babylon Church to have complete sovereign control over who is and isn’t saved, which the evil doctrine of transubstantiation teaches.
Will you not repent David and cease with your reliance on the apostate magisterial Church for salvation and instead trust in Christ for your salvation with the Church as His faithful minister?
David the Roman Catholic writes,
David, the most sanctified Christian believes of himself that he is a “unprofitable servant who has only done what he ought.”
So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17:10)
The Protestant understands, David, that all our righteousness is in Christ alone and so we don’t spend much time thinking about ourselves. If we did spend much time thinking about ourselves we would understand that there is very little snow covering us as dung.
We do believe in sanctification David. We just understand that our only hope is not based on our own very real ongoing personal renewal but our only hope is found in Jesus Christ and His righteousness.
Won’t you join us and find your only hope in Jesus Christ and His righteousness?
David the Roman Catholic writes,
Bret responds,
Yes, I quite agree, that Jesus does save His people through and through. We are indeed saved to the uttermost and never fail of the salvation that is given in Christ. We know that because our Lord Christ said, “All that come to me I will in no wise cast out.”
We likewise believe that the triune God has made a provision for a whole lifetime of grace. Indeed, we even believe that Word and Sacrament are the means of grace — the way in which God conveys His grace to His “at the same time sinner, the same time saint” people.
We historic Protestants are not apologetic about our belief that the prayer of repentance is normatively consistent with the context of salvation, and that regardless the age of the one praying. However, we don’t believe that the prayer is magic or that the prayer makes the reality. We understand that a seven year old praying that prayer is the result of that seven year old being regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Word preached.
And we will teach that protestant child who prayed that prayer that throughout their life they have need to attend Word and Sacrament in order to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. We will also teach them that the sacraments of the Roman Catholic church are blasphemies that empty the Cross of its power since it denies the “once forever” work of Jesus Christ on the cross and replaces that finished work with a insistence that Jesus has to be continually and perpetually sacrificed in the Mass so that salvation can be obtained.
David the Roman Catholic writes,
I am not lying to myself David. Like all Protestants I believe that Word and Sacrament are means of Grace. I simply don’t believe, because of the teaching of Scripture, that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross was insufficient for all time. As we read in Hebrews 10;
11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. 14 For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.
And then there’s the whole obnoxious institution of the papacy, which was gradually built up during the Middle Ages. I justly say “gradually,” because a great part of the Catholic world itself refused to follow pure papal autocracy even in the midst of the medieval times, as shown by the great amount of support the Holy Roman emperors were able to gather in their great, long struggle with the papacy – the party of the “Ghibellines” is standing evidence that papal supremacy aroused lots of resistance even in pre-Reformation centuries.
And here we have a conservative Eastern Orthodox source drawing a direct link between radical pontifical theories and modern egalitarianism – for you see, in their enthusiasm to uplift the papal power, the popes and pro-papacy writers decided to denigrate the dignity of secular rulers in such a manner that Leftist revolutionaries could later easily take up, in “Liberation Theology” spirit:
http://www.romanitas.ru/eng/THE%20FALL%20OF%20ORTHODOX%20ENGLAND%205X8.htm#_ftnref193
Indeed, “who would not know that kings and dukes took their origin from those who, ignorant of God, through pride, rapine, perfidy, murders and, finally, almost any kind of crime, at the instigation of the devil, the prince of this world, sought with blind desire and unbearable presumption to dominate their equals, namely other men?”[194]
…
Indeed, as de Rosa writes of a later Pope who faithfully followed Hildebrand’s teaching, “this was Manicheeism applied to relations between church and state. The church, spiritual, was good; the state, material, was essentially the work of the devil. This naked political absolutism undermined the authority of kings. Taken seriously, his theories would lead to anarchy”.[195]
…
What was new, shocking and completely unpatristic in Gregory’s words was his disrespect for the kingship, his refusal to allow it any dignity or holiness – still more, his proto-communist implication that rulers had no right to rule. The corollary of this, of course, was that the only rightful ruler was the Pope.”
And so all Israel will be saved — Romans 11:26
“Many understand this of the Jewish people, as though Paul had said, that religion would again be restored among them as before: but I extend the word Israel to all the people of God, according to this meaning – “When the Gentiles shall come in, the Jews also shall return from their defection to the obedience of faith; and thus shall be completed the salvation of the whole Israel of God, which must be gathered from both ….” The same manner of speaking we find in Gal. vi.16. The Israel of God is what he calls the Church, gathered alike from Jews and Gentiles.
John Calvin
Romans 11:26
Here we find Calvin insisting that “All Israel shall be saved,” refers not uniquely to Bagels but rather refers to the whole Church. As for the view that “all Israel” refers to ethnic Jews in our future, we can immediately know that this view is incorrect. With the passing of the old covenant in AD 70, there is no covenantal Israel other than the united Jew-Gentile church. The things of the old order passed away. So the covenant promises in Romans 11 cannot refer to the modern nation of Israel or to the modern Jewish race or community. The only “Israel” in the New Testament that was to be cleansed from sin is the Jew-Gentile church, the body of Israel’s Messiah.