The Roman Catholic Church teaches that we need to be sinless to enter heaven, and need Purgatory to remove our sin. What is a biblical response?
Question:
The Catholic Church says that we must be perfectly sinless before we can enter heaven. So we can’t go directly to heaven after death if we have sin in us because God does not allow imperfection to enter heaven. Therefore the Catholic Church invented purgatory as a place to cleanse ourselves before we go to meet God. If Catholics say we will be sinless after leaving purgatory then for those who are Christians but not Roman Catholic, when will they become sinless? Will we meet Jesus in heaven with our sinfull nature? Will we pollute heaven? When will we become perfect, without sin?
Answer:
I am not a big fan of Catholic bashing, and I hesitate to point out one particular church, but in this case, the Roman Catholic Church is really far from correct if we allow for the reliability of the Bible, which is the only authoritative source of truth for Christians. According to 1 John 1:7, if we walk in the light as Christians, his blood cleanses us from every sin. That is all of them. The idea of only partial forgiveness in this life, as taught by the Roman Catholic Church is not stated in the New Testament, nor is it ever even remotely implied. This is a terrible doctrine, and it has been used by the Catholic Church to hold its members in a kind of bondage to removing sins through acts of pennance, indulgences, pilgrimages, the saying of multiple meaningless masses and much more.
Purgatory is an invention of the Catholic Church, approximately in the time of Pope Gregory I, in the sixth century. The word is not found in the Bible, and neither is the idea found in the Bible. By the way, I quoted 1 John 1:7, but there are dozens of passages that imply all of our sins are forgiven by the blood of Jesus. In Acts 2:38 we are told that when we repent and are baptized, we receive forgiveness of sins. We are not told that we receive forgiveness of past sins, but of sins. Period. Catholics and many Protestants believe in Original Sin–the idea that we inherit the sin of Adam. This is clearly false doctrine. Some teach that baptism of babies is for forgiveness of Original Sin, but this does not make sense because 1. Babies should not be baptized since they cannot have faith or repent and 2. Original Sin is false doctrine in any case.
When you meet Jesus after the final resurrection, if you are in Christ at the time of your death, you will be forgiven–white as the driven snow. During this life, you will continue to sin, I assume. but the blood of Christ purifies us and cleans our consciences as well (Hebrews 9:14). If you have been saved, you do not need to fear polluting heaven.
John Oakes
