Accepting Jesus as Personal Lord and Savior

[mercygate]

But you know, the more I think about this…we are all sinners. God knows we are sinners, and are weak. Of course we need to strive to be holy and follow Him, but we will never be perfect and without sin. Only Christ was without sin. We are not on par with Him. So, if this is the case, and we happen to die before getting to the confessional, we’re doomed. I can’t believe God would set us up for failure like that.

No. If you die UNREPENTANT, you place yourself in mortal jeopardy. If you die repentant, having made a good act of contrition, and fully intending to come to Confession, you would not be cast into the pit of hell because of an accident.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Catechism of the Catholic Church. It’s chock-full of all kinds of great information.

Here is what it says about sin putting us in Hell:

#1037: God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

 

[ron77nyc]

Only God knows. All I can note is that you post many anti-Catholic statements.

I apologize for doing that. I respect you and what you have to say.

 

[sharmin]

No. If you die UNREPENTANT, you place yourself in mortal jeopardy. If you die repentant, having made a good act of contrition, and fully intending to come to Confession, you would not be cast into the pit of hell because of an accident.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Catechism of the Catholic Church. It’s chock-full of all kinds of great information.

Here is what it says about sin putting us in Hell:

#1037: God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.

Thanks for the tip but I have a copy of the catechism, which I have read cover to cover more than once. See, that’s the thing I’m starting to question, though. If all you need is to feel repentence to save yourself from condemnation, what’s with the requirement of confession? All the legalism doesn’t make sense when you consider everything. (At least in my opinion.) Just something for me to ponder, I suppose…

 

[mercygate]

Thanks for the tip but I have a copy of the catechism, which I have read cover to cover more than once. See, that’s the thing I’m starting to question, though. If all you need is to feel repentence to save yourself from condemnation, what’s with the requirement of confession? All the legalism doesn’t make sense when you consider everything. (At least in my opinion.) Just something for me to ponder, I suppose…

As a convert, I find Confession to be one of the very best things about being Catholic.

The nuance in the Catechism is the difference between normative and not-normative. Since Jesus specifically conveys to the Apostles the faculty of forgiving and retaining sins, confession is the way He determined to convey His mercy in most circumstances.

If you are Rose and Jack, and the Titanic is going down, the “legalism” is off. If it were a “legalistic” system, there would be no exception, and every Catholic who failed to make it to confession, even if repentant, would fry.

Detail: repentance without confession requires “perfect” contrition. I.e., perfect love of God and complete freedom from any attachment to sin. A tall order. When you come to Confession, only “imperfect” contrition is required: that is, the firm desire to amend one’s life, perhaps only through fear of hell. Perhaps on the Titanic one’s motivation would be more inspired than in the ordinary course of events.

Speakling of the Titanic, here’s a touching story about a priest who went down with her – after hearing many last confessions.

 

[jmcrae]

Thanks for the tip but I have a copy of the catechism, which I have read cover to cover more than once. See, that’s the thing I’m starting to question, though. If all you need is to feel repentence to save yourself from condemnation, what’s with the requirement of confession?

First, feelings have nothing to do with it. You can be repentant without feeling sad or frightened - you can also be sad and frightened without really being repentant; maybe you just fear the annihilation of death. To be repentant is to be resolved to be obedient to God from here on in out of true love for God (not out of fear or sadness), including going to Confession to confess all of your sins up to this point.

 

[sharmin]

Detail: repentance without confession requires “perfect” contrition. I.e., perfect love of God and complete freedom from any attachment to sin. A tall order.

Not only tall, but impossible to fill. Think about it…we are sinners BY NATURE. How can we ever have a complete freedom from any attachment to sin? Again, if this were all true, it’d be like God was setting us up to fail.

 

[RobGentner]

I apologize for doing that. I respect you and what you have to say.

From that, I have raised my opinion of you. You are a better person than I personally thought from your other posts. Maybe you are just having problems articulating what you desire to convey. Keep trying. It may be worth while to hear what you want to tell us.

God Bless

 

[RobGentner]

Not only tall, but impossible to fill. Think about it…we are sinners BY NATURE. How can we ever have a complete freedom from any attachment to sin? Again, if this were all true, it’d be like God was setting us up to fail.

Hi Sharmin and Mercy,

**Reference, confession. I would like to share a tale from catholic tradition. **

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A young boy was sleeping, God awoke him and told him to give the king a message. The boy ran to the king and said “God told me to tell you something.” The king stopped him, saying "How will I know the message is really from God? Go back to sleep, if God comes again tell him "The king want to know his last sin so he can know it is actually you talking"
**The boy complied, later God awakened Him and gave the boy an answer. The boy ran back to the King. Lord, he said “God told me to give you the message now.” The King said “What did God say my last sin was?” The boy said “God said to tell you He had forgiven you and actually couldn’t remember”. The King joyfully received the message from the boy! **

Isn’t that cute? The lesson from that tale is that confession is to “remove” the personal shame we have from sinning. To “hear” your sins are forgiven and knowing that God himself had given the authority for that to happen releases you from the bondage of self doubt and allows grace to flow into the places that doubt might have existed. Or that is how I personally like to think of it~

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We really do have our sins forgiven, but there is still a fee to be paid that is why there is purgatory, where the just, who die in venial sin or who still owe a debt of temporal punishment for sin, are cleansed by suffering before their admission to heaven. But that would be another thread.

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**Mercy, you swam very well. Your information is accurate! **

God Bless both of you.

 

[RobGentner]

But you know, the more I think about this…we are all sinners. God knows we are sinners, and are weak. Of course we need to strive to be holy and follow Him, but we will never be perfect and without sin. Only Christ was without sin. We are not on par with Him. So, if this is the case, and we happen to die before getting to the confessional, we’re doomed. I can’t believe God would set us up for failure like that.

**God wants all of us to be saved. Jesus came and paid with his life so we ‘could’ be saved. If we didn’t have free will, God wouldn’t have had to suffer a human death for our salvation. “God so loved the world…” The Mercy of God is beyond our understanding. What we can’t do is “depend” on that mercy! Does that make sense? **

 

[MelanieAnne]

I sing in the parish choir. For me, singing is a form of prayer. I cannot imagine life without it. We sing this ~

“God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whoso believeth(sp?) in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

We don’t just sing that or pray that for no reason, we sing it and pray that because we believe it. That’s a fact.

We commune with Jesus every time we take the sacrament. No amount of talking about Jesus, as many are fond of doing, sometimes ENDLESSLY, can compare to actually communing with Him. We do not take Him into ourselves, He takes us into Him and we are enriched in the process. We do as He asked us to do. He specified the form and we follow it.

It is a mystery to me why anyone would find this hard to figure out. It’s very simple and plain.

 

[Realcatholicgk]

I sing in the parish choir. For me, singing is a form of prayer. I cannot imagine life without it. We sing this ~

“God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whoso believeth(sp?) in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

We don’t just sing that or pray that for no reason, we sing it and pray that because we believe it. That’s a fact.

We commune with Jesus every time we take the sacrament. No amount of talking about Jesus, as many are fond of doing, sometimes ENDLESSLY, can compare to actually communing with Him. We do not take Him into ourselves, He takes us into Him and we are enriched in the process. We do as He asked us to do. He specified the form and we follow it.

It is a mystery to me why anyone would find this hard to figure out. It’s very simple and plain.

** hi Melanie, :tiphat:
Singing is a beautiful form of prayer, there are so many great and powerful songs. But as you said, the greatest and most powerful thing is Our lord and savior Jesus Christ. Without Him we would be Protestants. They sing at fellowship services also! Funny thing about Protestants They accept Him and reject Him They know of Him, but sadly they don’t know Him!

I pray to the Blessed Mother daily for her intercession on their behalf! **

 

[mercygate]

Not only tall, but impossible to fill. Think about it…we are sinners BY NATURE. How can we ever have a complete freedom from any attachment to sin? Again, if this were all true, it’d be like God was setting us up to fail.

Thus, we have Confession. Thank GOD! Once you “get it” about this, it becomes one of the best features of your whole Christian experience.

 

[mercygate]

To the topic of this thread:

I think that the idea that Jesus is “my personal Lord and Savior” has led to a lot of mushiness in spirituality among those who would LIMIT Jesus to the personal.

Although we DO come to Him in a deeply personal way through our prayer, in reading Scripture, and in receiving the Sacraments, there is nothing PRIVATE about it. We live our faith among the body of believers and consistently with the teachings of the Church.

“Faith” thus risks becoming entirely about the subjective “relationship.” The fallacy that some people fall into when pushing the “personal Lord and Savior” button is that “my” faith (rather that “the” faith is the key to salvation. “My” feelings, “my” undertanding, “my” spirituality begin to supplant the faith of the ages and can lead to all manner of nonsense.

Evangelicals of a sound intellectual disposition frequently lament this as much as we Catholics and strive to teach people that “Precious Moments” spirituality does NOT meet the standard of a mature Christian life.

 

[MySavior]

MarcoPolo;4357738:

Catholics agree with this completely, but believe it entails a faith working through love and obedience, which some denominations limit to an intellectual assent of faith only./

QUOTE]

That is not true at all. As a Protestant I have never met any non-catholic Christian who believes what you just wrote. Your statement implies that we don’t care about works at all. You make it sound like it’s no big deal for us just as long as we say the words. That’s a horrible misconception. Faith for us is not a punch-line. It happens to be real to us, and works play a major role in our faith. We don’t sweep them under the rug and justify things with a mental assent.

I agree!

 

[Henning]

John 14:23 “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

Jesus personally makes his abode with someone. This verse is how I understand ‘Jesus as personal Lord and Savior’.

 

[mercygate]

MySavior:

That is not true at all. As a Protestant I have never met any non-catholic Christian who believes what you just wrote. Your statement implies that we don’t care about works at all. You make it sound like it’s no big deal for us just as long as we say the words. That’s a horrible misconception. Faith for us is not a punch-line. It happens to be real to us, and works play a major role in our faith. We don’t sweep them under the rug and justify things with a mental assent.

Certainly most Christians do not believe that mere intellectual assent is the whole package of saving faith and are certaiinly not antinomians.

We do encounter them on these forums rather often though. Thes people seem to have the notion that Catholic theology teaches “works righteousness.”

 

[Realcatholicgk]

Certainly most Christians do not believe that mere intellectual assent is the whole package of saving faith and are certaiinly not antinomians.

We do encounter them on these forums rather often though. Thes people seem to have the notion that Catholic theology teaches “works righteousness.”

**
HI mercy,

I think the majority of Christians, even non-Catholics, follow our belief that If you love Jesus you will do good works. Jesus will tell us about our good works. “When were you hungry and …” What we do for the least of Hios children we do for Him. How could we not do works and say we are christians? Do we gain anything for doing them? Maybe, maybe not. I do know that Jesus death paid for our sins so we don’t have to do anything to earn Heaven. But we do owe Jesus for His sacrafice.

Sometimes misunderstand comes from words used to express beliefs.

God Bless**

 

[guanophore]

They worship God and have the same Spirit that is present in the consecration of the Eucharist. It is present in the worship.

Yes. God is enthroned on the praises of His people. Although the HS uses such ecclesiastical communties to bring people to Himself, He is manifested most perfectly in the Eucharist.

Catholics have all strange beliefs: new age, reincarnation, fornication, séances and no belief in Jesus at all. Those are the Catholics I have met in my local parish, workplace and friends. This is not meant to be anti-Catholic or disrespectful. It is just what I see. So why would I want to worship with those people?

I am glad that you do not , and it is sad that you are surrounded by so many apostates. However, these people are not Catholic. They are apostates, or Protestants. They may not know it, but they have left the faith if they do anything such as you describe here.

The only salient point is that we do not attend Mass only for fellowship, but primarily for the True Body and the True Blood. One should not let oneself be separated because of the apostate.

If you’re saying only Catholics go to heaven then I have to disagree and the Church also disagrees with that.

No, the Church teaches this. There is only One Church, One faith, One Baptism. The Catholic Church is that which Jesus founded. Therefore, all who are members of Him are members of His One Body, the Church. Whether other Christians realize it or not, to a greater or lesser extent, they are Catholic. There is no other name under heaven by which we may be saved.

 

[guanophore]

But you know, the more I think about this…we are all sinners. God knows we are sinners, and are weak. Of course we need to strive to be holy and follow Him, but we will never be perfect and without sin. Only Christ was without sin. We are not on par with Him. So, if this is the case, and we happen to die before getting to the confessional, we’re doomed. I can’t believe God would set us up for failure like that.

No, sharmin, Jesus came to free us from the bondage of sin, and He has. We now have a choice about whether or not we sin. Of course we need to strive to be holy and to follow Him. He does not ask us to do what we cannot. He has made us partakers of His grace, and caused His mind to live within us. I this manner, by grace, through faith, we can live perfect. When He says “be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect”, He is not asking us to do that which He did not provide us the ability to do. God does not set us up for failure. Mortal sin is deliberate, and willful. It does not just “happen”. We choose to turn our hearts against Him.

 

[guanophore]

I apologize for doing that. I respect you and what you have to say.

And I thou. You put me in mind of myself, and I think that you boldly state those experiences of many Catholics that have been influenced by the modern Pagan culture which has ravaged the Church.