Can We Work Our Way to Heaven?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. If you’ve been following our program, we are going through Dave’s brand new book called Seeking and Finding God: In Search of the True Faith. And, Dave, we’re moving through it. Last week we finished up chapter 7 which, as I mentioned, [is] a very important chapter, because the title of it is, “What Is the Gospel?” And, Dave, we’ve mentioned this on the program before, and [with] both your experiences, your travels, [and] my own travels, I’m concerned that many Christians, professing Christians, do not understand the Bible—do not understand the gospel. If you’d ask them to give you a simple explanation of the gospel, I fear few would be able to do that.

Dave: Well, Tom, aren’t you getting a little technical? I mean, so they couldn’t give you a biblical definition, but does that really matter? [chuckles]

Tom: Uhh, I think it might. [chuckles]

Dave: Of course it does…

Tom: Eternal life in the balance there.

Dave: …because Paul clearly says in Romans:1:16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
See All... that “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.” So, to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 15, he says, “This is the gospel that I preached that you received wherein you stand by which you are saved.” So, we’re born again, Peter says, by the Word of God, “and this is the Word by which the gospel is preached unto you.” And Jesus said, “Except you’re born again, you won’t even see, much less enter into the kingdom of God,” John 3. So, the gospel is absolutely essential. Otherwise we are separated from God forever.

Tom: And it’s not that complex. A child can believe the gospel, but basically it has to be explained to the child. Oftentimes we see in church services where there’s an altar call and so on, sometimes I don’t know why people go on forward, because nothing’s been explained that I can fathom.

Dave: Well, it’s an emotional experience for many people. You said we have to understand the gospel. Certainly up to a point you can’t believe what you don’t understand. That’s the problem. “By grace are you saved through faith.” Faith must have an object; [there] must be some content to what you believe in a person—in whom you believe—and if you don’t understand the gospel; you don’t know you’re a sinner; you don’t know that Christ is God who came to this earth through a virgin birth, [and] became man to die for our sins; you don’t understand that He paid the full penalty for our sins, rose again, is alive, and so forth—you have no basis for your faith, nothing to really believe. Maybe [you have] some emotional idea about someone named Jesus who left a good example, or you want to get involved—well, it’s a good thing to be part of a church; good for business, if you’re a businessman. Maybe you’ll get some customers or clients. But that is all beside the point to what we must believe to be saved.

Tom: Often, Dave, as we mentioned last week, there’s a carrot that’s held out, whether it be avoiding hell, or reaching our potential, or there’s “pie in the sky” for us, things along that line—can somebody get to heaven just based on that wishful, hopeful thinking?

Dave: Not according to the Bible, and we have to go by the Bible. We have to go by what Christ said.

Tom: Who Christ is, who we are, and what Christ’s death accomplished—it’s not very complex, but has to be understood.

Dave: Exactly.

Tom: We covered that last week, but chapter 8 deals with, I think, a lot of confusion out there—not just in a lack of understanding, but replacing what the Bible says we must do to be saved with works, with performance, with all these other kinds of things that, really, the Bible condemns as a rejection of receiving the gift only God could give us.

Dave: It’s by grace, by God’s mercy. We do not deserve it. There is no way that we could merit salvation. There is no way that we could say, “God, You are obligated. You created us. Now You are obligated to see that we don’t go to hell.” No, we have rebelled against Him. The consequences are serious. He has a way that we can be forgiven, but it must be on the basis of the penalty having been paid, the penalty we could not pay, the penalty which Christ paid for us. If we are willing to acknowledge our sin, our guilt, that we deserve to be separated from Him forever, and we believe that Christ paid the full penalty, and that He rose from the dead, and we receive Him as the One who paid the penalty for our sins, we’re saved. Otherwise, there’s nothing that God can do for us. It’s a matter of justice.

Tom: At the beginning of chapter 8, you compare two verses. They’re really amazing. Let me read from Exodus:20:24-26 [24] An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. [25] And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. [26] Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.
See All...: “An altar of earth thou shall make unto me,” of course, this is God speaking, “and if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.” Now, you follow that with another Scripture, Genesis:11:4And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
See All...: “Let us build us a city and a tower,” referring to Babel, “whose top may reach unto heaven.” There’s a contrast, Dave.

Dave: It’s quite clear there’s nothing man can do to merit his salvation, and you can’t help Christ. If there’s something that I must do in addition to what Christ did, then obviously, He didn’t do enough. But He said, “It is finished.” Tetelestai—stamped on promissory notes, that Greek word—meant “paid in full.” Now, if Jesus says it’s paid in full, and I am going to pay something further, which is what the Catholic church does, as you know, having been a Catholic for many years—they teach that Christ must be offered again and again and again; this is why it is called the sacrifice of the Mass, and that He is literally being immolated. And they bring Christ (incredible!) back from heaven. He’s at the Father’s right hand, exalted in a glorified, resurrected body, never to die again, and the Catholic church through transubstantiation, as they teach, the priest literally brings Christ back down from heaven, puts Him in a pre-crucifixion body again, apparently, so that He can suffer once more for our sins. And then the Catholic says, “Well, this little wafer has now become the body and blood of Jesus, the wafer and the cup, and now we ingest Jesus into our stomachs.” And they do this over and over and over, whereas Hebrews 9 and 10 and other passages in Scripture clearly state He has appeared once to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. “As it is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered for the sins of many,” okay? I’m just speaking—if there are any Catholics out there listening, when you say that the Mass is the sacrifice of Christ—in fact, there is an anathema, remember, Tom, as you know…

Tom: Council of Trent.

Dave: …Council of Trent: “Whoever says that this sacrifice of the Mass is merely a commemoration of the sacrifice completed 1900 years ago on the cross and denies that this is an ongoing propitiatory sacrifice to be offered for the sins of [the] living and the dead, let him be anathema.” So, I’m just speaking from God’s Word. To any Catholics who may be listening: [when] you go to Mass, and you say, “Christ is being sacrificed again,” and you must, you know, the wafer must be turned into Jesus so that you can ingest Him into your stomach, you are denying what the Bible clearly says. And in Hebrews 10, the next passage—I was quoting from chapter 9—it contrasts the sacrifices of the Old Testament, which had to be offered again and again and again, and the writer to Hebrews says the very fact that they had to be repeated proves in itself that they could not take away sin, because if they could take away sin, they would not be repeated. And then he goes on, and he says in contrast, “But this Man,” that is, Christ, “after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” Verse 18, I think it is, it says, “There is therefore no more sacrifice for sin.” Okay? So, we’re talking about the gospel. I must believe that Christ and His sacrifice on the cross—and it wasn’t the scourging by the Roman soldiers that paid for our sins, as Mel Gibson’s movie would have you believe. It was that the Father, Jehovah, Yahweh, “laid on Him our sins, and it please Yahweh to bruise Him.”

Tom, remember in the newsletter some months ago, I said that stripes in Isaiah:53:5But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
See All..., “by his stripes we are healed,” is actually singular in the Hebrew. It indicates one blow from God. “It pleased Yahweh to bruise him.” “Thou hast put him to grief, but thou shalt make thy soul an offering for sin.” We had some pretty severe criticisms from people who wrote in and said, “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. That is plural in the Hebrew.” Well, since then, Tom, I’ve had so many Hebrew-speaking scholars and experts as well as presidents of seminaries or professors of Hebrew or whatever who have written in to say, “Dave, you are right. That is singular.” Okay, so the point is that once for all, Christ was punished for our sins by God in payment of the penalty that God’s own infinite justice required, and the Roman soldiers did not mete that penalty out, otherwise I’d be worried that they didn’t hit Christ quite enough times. Wouldn’t that be something? So, I have to believe that Christ paid the full penalty, and that there is nothing for me to do. So this verse about, “you don’t cut the stones, you don’t form them, you don’t go up by steps to My altar,” there’s nothing you can do. And look at the Tower of Babel: it’s the ultimate rejection of this. And it’s interesting that the woman riding the beast in Revelation 17, on her forehead is written, “Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots,” and so forth, because Roman Catholicism is a works religion. I mean, Tom, tell us about it. You were a Catholic. What did you have to do?

Tom: Well, Dave, again, it all began with baptism. You needed to be baptized in order to really enter in, not only to the church, but into the membership of Christ’s body and so on. And then throughout the process sacraments were absolutely key, beginning with Baptism and then the Sacrament of Confession, and the Eucharist—you had to receive the Eucharist and so on—and of course all of these things, these works…building up, you’re in Sanctifying Grace, you enter into Sanctifying Grace through baptism. Once you do, you can lose that Sanctifying Grace. Sanctifying Grace is the key to get to heaven, but certainly for almost everyone, you have to go to purgatory first and have your temporal sins, venial sins, as it were, purged away.

Dave: What about these days of obligation? Can you explain that to us?

Tom: Well, you can talk about days of obligation, Dave, but the Code of Canon Law—talk about rules and regulations! 1,752 rules and regulations, many affecting your eternal destiny, all right? The holy days of obligation, you have to go church on Sunday, depending on where you live. If you live in Europe, there are ten holy days of obligation in which you must attend Mass, all right? Six days here in this country—you need a diocese calendar to figure out which ones you go to…this is legalism to the max.

Dave: But, Tom, supposing Catholics who think they’re good Catholics don’t know the days of obligation and they fail…

Tom: Well, Dave, they sort of have that covered…

Dave: …they don’t get there to have Mass on that day…

Tom: Well, but see, a serious sin, a mortal sin within Catholicism is somebody who gets up in the morning saying, “Oh, it’s Tuesday, it’s a holy day of obligation. Ah, forget it. I’ll just cover it in confession.” Now, that would be a mortal sin. If they miss it through not knowing, you know, there is the “dispensation of ignorance,” I call it, for Catholics, but basically it’s sacramentalism. It’s these steps, it’s this process. But it’s not just in the Catholic Church, Dave, as you know. You have a statement in your book—you say, “Man’s rebellion against God is seen most clearly in his religions, all of which are but mirror images of Babel, ingenious and persistent attempts to climb up some other way instead of entering through the door which God has provided in His Son.”

Dave: Well, Tom, I want to go back just one moment to the Catholics, because I’m really concerned. You’ve got a billion Catholics who think that somehow the church is going to save them. And you know the Latin term, ex opere operato: you deny that in the very act itself the sacrament administers grace, anathema to you. But now we have an anathema pronounced in Vatican II, and you know what it is: whoever denies that indulgences are essential, whoever denies that there’s a place called purgatory, and that indulgences are essential, you deny that the church does not have the power to offer indulgences to release you…Tom, the whole idea of purgatory is that the suffering of Christ paid for the eternal penalty, but that, as you said, temporal penalties have to be paid by each individual, okay, in the flames of purgatory or suffering in this life. But, in fact, there’s a contradiction there, because you can suffer, as you know, you could suffer for the sins of someone who’s in purgatory, or there could be masses said for them so they don’t actually have to. But there are Catholics who deny—they don’t believe in purgatory anymore, they don’t believe in indulgences anymore, and I like to tell them, “Wait a minute, guys, you can go to Mass, you can go to confession, but you deny that, the church has anathematized you.”

You say, “Well, I don’t care.” Well, if you don’t fear the church’s anathemas, why do you believe her promises of getting you into heaven? But, Tom, we spent too much time on that, I’m sorry. But it’s a concern on my heart, because, as you are trying to point out here, if we don’t believe the gospel, that we’re saved by grace through faith in Christ alone because He paid the full penalty for our sins, then we are, in effect, rejecting what God has said, and we’re trying to climb up by steps of our own making. And just like Babel, the Tower of Babel, they’re going to get to heaven—“We’re going to build a tower, and we’re going to put steps in here, and we are going to climb to heaven.” Well, you know that’s absurd, because heaven is not a place in space, and if it were, it’s too far away; you couldn’t do it by steps. But you can’t do it morally, spiritually, you see?

Tom: Dave, I remember you telling a story about when you were in Russia, and you were there with a woman [who] had grown up in the Orthodox Church, and she gave a definition which is very similar to the idea of Roman Catholicism, although this was Russian Orthodox, but it’s like a ladder—you’re climbing this ladder. Jesus…yes, He has paid the eternal penalty, but He’s up at the top of the ladder and you’re trying to work your way up this ladder, and of course, if you commit a mortal sin, you fall off the ladder. Then you have to be re-justified, as it were, through confession, and then receiving the sacraments, and you work your way up the ladder. But it’s a process; this is a works process. So, we’re talking about steps here, but I think that’s an analogy that most Catholics would understand.

Dave: God says, “No flesh will glory in my presence.” Tom, it’s also applicable to those who believe in falling away. If you could lose your salvation, then it’s up to you to keep your salvation. So one day when you walk the golden streets, you could be able to say, “Okay, Christ, it was wonderful what You did, Your grace and mercy, but I kept my salvation. I lived a good enough life, or I was faithful enough.” Now, this is the problem with a Catholic. He’s got to participate in his salvation; he has to do something for his salvation. If that is the case, then you can glory in the presence of God, but that is not allowed. Salvation is of the Lord. We can do nothing for our salvation. Now, we have plenty to do when it comes to pleasing the Lord for rewards and out of love for Christ. Paul says, “Whereunto I labor, striving according to his working that works in me mightily.” Or he says in Philippians:2:13For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
See All..., “Work out your own salvation.” Now work for your salvation, but work out the salvation that God has given you. He’s “created us in Christ Jesus unto good works.” So, now we are to work this out, we are to do good works. Now, we have a responsibility there as far as living the Christian life to walk by faith, to give everything we’ve got, all of our efforts, all of our strength—I’m going to do my best to be what God wants me to be now that He has provided salvation for me in Christ. I often say [that] I think I’ve knocked on more doors than most Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons, but I never knocked on doors in order to earn my salvation, but out of gratitude for the One who gave me salvation. But as long as a person thinks they can do something, then they have robbed Christ of saying, “It is finished,” He completed it all, and they have made it possible for them to glory in God’s presence and He will not allow that. We cannot have that.

Tom: Dave, you have a line in the book that I just think is so important. It’s very simple—you say, “If man is to come to God, it must be solely by God’s grace and provision, not by any human work.” Now, the reason that hit me, see, I can talk to some Catholics, some friends of mine, family members and so on, [and] they say, “What are you talking about? We believe that you’re saved by grace.” But when they say that, what they’re meaning is that God provides the grace to do the works in order for them to attain salvation. But when you put in the phrase “and provision,” you have to understand, God has provided it all, and there’s nothing you can do. So grace and provision—if you don’t understand provision, I don’t know what somebody would be receiving. I don’t know what gospel—well, except another gospel, as Paul points out in Galatians. It’s certainly not the gospel of God, the gospel of Christ.

Dave: Well, Tom, we’ve taken up this entire segment of the program, this particular segment in which we’re going through this book, and I guess we’ve hammered away pretty hard on this point: “It is not by works of righteousness that we have done, but by his mercy he has saved us, not of works, lest any man should boast. Now to him that worketh not, but believeth on him who justifies the ungodly,” that’s a powerful Scripture. But, Tom, Romans:4:5But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.
See All...: “To him that worketh not,” that is, for your salvation, “but believes on him who justifies…” The guy who cleans up his act, the guy that makes himself good enough for God to accept? No. The God who justifies the ungodly, and unless I’m willing to admit I’m ungodly, I am unworthy, I’m a wretched sinner who deserves hell, there’s no salvation for me, because Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, not the righteous. Christ said, “I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” because there are no righteous.