“Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” … it sounds like you are trying to work for your forgiveness by doing all those works to keep out of Purgatory. Which is easier, for Jesus to say your forgiven when you repent, or work for your forgiveness…Why is there a threat of Purgatory…I don’t understand going to a man to confess
The teachers of the Law were irritated when Christ said He could forgive sin. “Only God forgives sin, not men!”, they replied. Christ, knowing their thoughts, did not say that He was God or that the Messiah could do so. No, He said:
know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins
The power was given by God to the Son of man. Indeed the reply of those who believed was captured by the evangelist as follows:
when the crowds saw this, they were awestruck, and glorified God, who had given such authority to men.
God had given to men the authority to forgive sin! This was unprecedented. But if some may question this, there can be no doubt when it comes to the very first words spoken by the Risen Christ to the apostles:
As the Father has sent me, so I send you…whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven; whosoever sins you retain, they are retained.
“Who can forgive sins but God alone?” God
chose and willed to give men the power to forgive sins. He chose to forgive sins through men.
Why is there a fear of Purgatory? Because the Lord and the Apostles proclaimed its existence (see “
Purgatory in Scripture”). Working for our forgiveness to go straight into heaven: is that not what the Gospels say?
And someone said to Him, “Lord, are there just a few who are being saved?” And He said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door…”
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father”
“For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.”
“Their work will be shown for what it is…It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If someone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
“Run in such a way that you may win. …] work out your own salvation with fear and trembling”
The understanding of God’s forgiveness you present is not based on what the Church Fathers practiced, but on the XVI-century
fiduciary faith theorized by Luther, Calvin, and others, whereby man bases his hope on an infallible conviction that God for the sake of Christ will no longer impute to us our sins, but will consider and treat us, as if we were really just and holy (“imputed righteousness”), although in our inner selves we remain the same sinners as before. Or, in Luther’s own words: “Through the obedience of Christ by faith the just are so declared and reputed, although by reason of their corrupt nature they still are and remain, sinners as long as they bear this mortal body.”
This has never made sense to me, for instead the apostolic faith teaches that sin is not hidden under the mantel of Christ’s righteousness, but is in fact
truly forgiven so that the soul itself is sanctified.
The Catholic belief is that we cannot presume forgiveness, not even by asking directly the Lord, but that we must follow what He Himself established, namely the confession of our sins and forgiveness by the hands of the successors of the apostles. Otherwise, it would have made no sense at all to teach us to pray: “Our Father who art in Heaven…forgive us our sins…” and then appear to the apostles and tell them as the very first sentence: “those whose sins you forgive are forgiven, etc.”
Clearly, just like He had sent them to proclaim the Gospel and expel demons, He was now commanding them to go and either forgive or retain people’s sins. How to do that, unless the people would first go to them and confess them their sin and manifested contrition and repentance?
Fiduciary faith is beautiful, cotton-candy forgiveness, but it does not work that way. God is a just judge, and we, members of the mystical body of Christ, will keep “fulfilling in our flesh what is lacking in the tribulations of Christ for the sake of the Church” (Colossians 1:24) until the end of time, knowing that “we do not even judge ourselves, for even if we are not conscious of anything, we are not thereby acquitted, since He who judges us is the Lord” (1 Cor 4:3-4).
As Church Father Cyprian of Carthage wrote in AD 250:
confess their sins to the priests of God in a straightforward manner and in sorrow, making an open declaration of conscience. . . . I beseech you, brethren, let everyone who has sinned confess his sin while he is still in this world, while his confession is still admissible, while the satisfaction and remission made through the priests are still pleasing before the Lord…inners may do penance for a set time, and according to the rules of discipline come to public confession, and by imposition of the hand of the bishop and clergy receive the right of Communion.
and concerning those who refused to confess to priests:
[But now some] with their time [of penance] still unfulfilled . . . they are admitted to Communion… and while the penitence is not yet performed, confession is not yet made, the hands of the bishop and clergy are not yet laid upon them, the Eucharist is given to them; although it is written, ‘Whosoever shall eat the bread and drink the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord’ [1 Cor. 11:27]"
