Confession and scripture

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I ran across this searching for information for my parents (who are Presbyterian. The context the author uses seems that he’s using this verse against the Apostolic succession, but this is the one I always use when trying to explain about confession to a non-Catholic. I guess it could be used both ways.

Appeal may be made to Matthew 16:19 (and 18:18), which read this way: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (and vice versa). There! The church officers make a binding decision on earth, and heaven will ratify it. But the passage actually says exactly the opposite. The second verbs in each case (“shall be bound” / “loosed”), are future perfect tenses, properly translated: “shall have been bound / loosed”. So that the correct reading is: “Whatever you bind / loose on earth shall have been bound / loosed in heaven”. That is, officers of the church on earth must base their decisions on what heaven has already determined. And what would that be? That would be what “Heaven,” that is, God, has revealed by the Spirit in His Word, the Scriptures.

opc.org/qa.html?question_id=79 is this link. Translation from the original language is emphasised quite strongly. I looked the passage up a Greek interlinear Bible, and the tense is right.

I would really appreciate any help with this.

God Bless you!
Ericka
 
Try www.biblegateway.com and search “confess” and you will see that public confession was used in the OT. As to Apostolic succession, have them look into the early Church, and how it interpreted Jesus’ words. It looks just like the Catholic Church, because it was and is the Catholic Church.

In John 20:23, where Jesus gives the twelve power over sin, why would he allow them power to retain sin, after telling them to forgive seventy times seven times in Matthew 18:22? This makes absolutely no sense if the power was not theirs, but was “pre-supposed” in Heaven as Protestants sometimes claim.

Reading of the early Church fathers will open their eyes, if they do so with an open heart.
 
Since when does Heaven only reveal its will by the scriptures?

God certainly didn’t need any scriptures to speak to Moses from the burning bush, or on top of Mount Sinai. Or to speak to the prophets. And there WAS no New Testament when Jesus taught, and most of what He taught (which is surely ALL the will of Heaven) is not recorded in scripture.

The verse does indeed mean that the Apostles will not be permitted to bind anything that isn’t already bound in heaven, because the Holy Spirit will guide them into all truth (not just biblical or scriptural truth).

That’s not to say that what is bound must already have been so in scripture - for what point is there in the Pope pronouncing something bound when scripture already pronounces it so? The Pope doesn’t need to infallibly pronounce murder to be a sin - neither did the Apostles need to - since scripture already tells us that it is. To subject Apostolic power to your suggested limits would be to make it utterly unnecessary and redundant.
 
**John 20:21-23 **“21 He said therefore to them again: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. 23 Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”

The Lord had intended to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation a means of grace unto salvation. This is why He made this statement and gave this power to His apostles.

James 5: 14-16 Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved. For the continual prayer of a just man availeth much.

Both of these verses point to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, formerly known as Confession.

I hope this is helpful. 🙂
 
Hi everyone,

Just reviving an old post here as the title seemed most suitable.

The story goes I am engaging in some apologetics with a protestant assemblies of god friend and we were having a biblical discussion of confession. After showing Mathew 9:6-8 and saying God gave the power to men to forgive sins on earth ect. I then turned to:

Leviticus 5:5-6. if he is answerable in any of those cases, he will have to confess the sin committed. As a sacrifice of reparation for the sin committed, he will bring Yahweh a female from the flock (sheep or goat) as a sacrifice for sin; and the priest will perform the rite of expiation for him to free him from his sin.

This is wear I said that here we see a priest forgiving sins so it is not unbiblical, and i showed her:

2 Timothy 3:16. All scripture is inspired by God and useful for refuting error, for guiding people’s lives and teaching them to be upright

In order to show how the old testament still applies. However she then took me to:

Romans 3:21-24 But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.(New Living Translation).

She has stated that particulary Romans 3:21 shows that Jesus removed the old law of forgivness of sins which was through the animal sacrafice and a priest and now we can go straight to Jesus.

How can i reconcile this?

So far i have said that they are talking about the sacrifice of animals is no longer required. Is there anything else I can add?

Appreciate the help everyone 🙂
 
David89 said:
Hi everyone,

Just reviving an old post here as the title seemed most suitable.

The story goes I am engaging in some apologetics with a protestant assemblies of god friend and we were having a biblical discussion of confession. After showing Mathew 9:6-8 and saying God gave the power to men to forgive sins on earth ect. I then turned to:

Leviticus 5:5-6. if he is answerable in any of those cases, he will have to confess the sin committed. As a sacrifice of reparation for the sin committed, he will bring Yahweh a female from the flock (sheep or goat) as a sacrifice for sin; and the priest will perform the rite of expiation for him to free him from his sin.

This is wear I said that here we see a priest forgiving sins so it is not unbiblical, and i showed her:

2 Timothy 3:16. All scripture is inspired by God and useful for refuting error, for guiding people’s lives and teaching them to be upright

In order to show how the old testament still applies. However she then took me to:

Romans 3:21-24 But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law, as was promised in the writings of Moses and the prophets long ago. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.(New Living Translation).

She has stated that particulary Romans 3:21 shows that Jesus removed the old law of forgivness of sins which was through the animal sacrafice and a priest and now we can go straight to Jesus.

How can i reconcile this?

So far i have said that they are talking about the sacrifice of animals is no longer required. Is there anything else I can add?

Appreciate the help everyone 🙂
Click to expand...
Just shooting from the hip here without thinking in depth on it too much, (don’t have the time at the moment but I’ll answer more in depth if you’d like later), first of all: Jesus did not remove or abolish any of the law but fulfilled it. Second, we do go straight to Jesus by virtue of the priest being “In persona Christi”, St. Francis de Sales goes on at length about the priesthood in his amazing work, “The Catholic Controversy” which I highly recommend. Third, its a faulty interpretation of 3:21 to apply it to what you and your friend are discussing. He has declared us righteous, how? Through Christ, what is confession? But reconciliation THROUGH Christ’s priesthood. Again, thats just off the top of my head, idk if any of it is helpful.
 
PJD1987 said:
Just shooting from the hip here without thinking in depth on it too much, (don’t have the time at the moment but I’ll answer more in depth if you’d like later), first of all: Jesus did not remove or abolish any of the law but fulfilled it. Second, we do go straight to Jesus by virtue of the priest being “In persona Christi”, St. Francis de Sales goes on at length about the priesthood in his amazing work, “The Catholic Controversy” which I highly recommend. Third, its a faulty interpretation of 3:21 to apply it to what you and your friend are discussing. He has declared us righteous, how? Through Christ, what is confession? But reconciliation THROUGH Christ’s priesthood. Again, thats just off the top of my head, idk if any of it is helpful.
Click to expand...
Thank you this has helped. So in reality Catholics do go straight to Christ, because it is Christ acting through the priest. i think I see what you mean about Romans 3:21 isn’t related too confession. I have explained this to her in which she has said it is her interpretation of the bible. So I simply asked how can both interpretations be right and went into the arguments against sola scriptura. Thanks for the help.
 
Playing “My out of context Bible verse is better than your out of context Bible verse” is pointless. Slinging Bible verses at each other rarely gets anyone anywhere. It is better to attack the problem of how our good sister is reading the Bible, rather than beating each other over the head with Bibles.

The Old Testament law says that we are to confess orally and make atonement. Jesus himself says that one iota of the law will not pass away and that he came to fulfill the law, not to abolish it; basically that we are still under the law. Paul however, says that we are no longer under the law but under grace. John says that if we but love one another, we will have fulfilled the entirety of the law and the prophets. Seems like a pretty big contradiction to me.

The onus us on our good sister from the Assemblies of God to reconcile this apparent contradiction. By understding the social, economic, religious and political context under which the various authors of sacred scripture and their intended audiance operated, the spiritual meaning of these passages and how they point us toward Christ, Catholicism has reconciled this particular contradiction long ago.

It’s raining cats and dogs.

A “Literal” (Catholic) intepretation of that phrase would look at similar texts, phraseology of the time, what else was written in the same book (was there a hurricane in the next chapter?) and perhapse even look at a weather report. Catholic intepretation would be that it was raiing pretty darn hard. A “Literalist” interpretation such as some of our Evangelical brothers and sisters would use, would interpret the phrase to mean that puppies and kittens were falling from the sky. Here is an example of how the Assemblies of God Church uses a literal interpretation of scripture, fails to look at the context of the passages and interprets Bible passages outside of the context of the entire Bible.

The Assemblies of God website has a PDF file entitled “How Can I Be Saved” at agchurches.org/Sitefiles/Default/RSS/IValue/Resources/Salvation/Articles/HowCanIBeSaved.pdf. In this publication, the Assemblies of God Church cites the following verses:

*For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13)

**…and it shall be that everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord.’ **(Acts 2:21)

And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Will be delivered (Joel 2:32 NASB) (3:5 NAB). *



Wonderful words indeed, as are Jesus’ words in the Gospel according to Matthew.

"Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)

Hmmm… :hmmm: So, is anyone saved or **not everyone **saved if they call upon the Lord? Which is it?

The Assmeblies of God church teaches that all you have to do is call upon the name of the Lord in order to be saved. But Jesus himself says that not everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will enter heaven! The onus is on our good Assemblies of God sister to reconcile this apparant contradiction. Catholics are secure in the knowledge that their Church has done so many centuries ago.

My point is not to refute this particular doctrine, but to illustrate faulty interpretive techniques; how verses are taken out of the historic, social, economic, religious and political context and interpreted in a vacuum apart from the rest of scripture.

And this is the problem the good woman has - her Church has simply taught her to read scripture incorrectly. That is the argument to make.

-Tim-
 
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