Scripture could not be more clear on the adequacy and finality of Christ’s atoning work. Yet, in every mass, Rome asserts that Christ, cannot really be seated anywhere in heaven, but is ready, waiting, and being summoned back down for additional sacrifice to atone for sin. On this teaching alone Rome renders herself a desecration to Jesus Christ. Furthermore, if anyone calls Rome’s mass into question, he is declared anathema
This Saturday, October 31, commemorates nearly 500 years since one of the greatest movements of God in church history; the Protestant Reformation. Up to the time of the Reformation, much of Europe had been dominated by the reign of Roman Catholicism. To the populace was propagated the idea that salvation was found under Rome and her system alone.
But as the cultural and theological fog cleared in Europe and beyond, God’s people gained a clarity that had been mostly absent for centuries. The Reformers gained this clarity from keeping with a simple principle: sola scritpura, or, Scripture alone. As they searched the word of God, they discovered that Rome deviated radically on the most critical points of biblical Christianity. With one mind, God’s people discerned from Scripture that, tragically, Roman Catholicism was a desecration to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today, nothing has changed. To my evangelical and Catholic friends, it’s important that we no longer erroneously say that Roman Catholicism differs from Scripture only on minor points of doctrine and history. As the Reformers saw clearly, and will be demonstrated here, the differences could not be greater.
In keeping with that movement of God by the word of God, here are a few reminders of how Rome is a desecration to Christ:
- The Roman Catholic Priesthood.
The existence and doctrine of Rome’s priesthood renders itself illegitimate on several grounds. First, the office of priest was annulled by the finished work of Christ, the great High Priest, to which nothing could be added for justification (Heb. 10:11-14). But this is, in part, the reason that Rome’s priesthood continues: Christ’s propitiatory work is insufficient in itself to render sinful men justified before God. In reference to the priest’s work, Roman Catholic scholar John O’Brien writes:
When the priest announces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man…The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command. Of what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest who is thus privileged to act as the ambassador and the vicegerent of Christ on earth! He continues the essential ministry of Christ…No wonder that the name which spiritual writers are especially fond of applying to the priest is that of alter Christus. For the priest is and should be another Christ.
Not even the old covenant priesthood dared to use such language as this of their office and role (Heb. 10:2-4). And, Scripture teaches that old priesthood is terminated because it has been fulfilled in Christ’s solo priestly role (Heb. 7:11-14). Christ is the only Christ, who alone holds the priesthood. He certainly does not bow “his head in humble obedience to the priest’s command,” or that of any other sinful man, especially to be “offered up again…for the sins of man.”
Further, Rome asserts in the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, in Canon 2, that, “If anyone says that by those words, Do this for a remembrance of me, Christ did not institute the Apostles priests; or did not ordain that they and other priests should offer His own body and blood, let him be anathema.”
We must conclude with John Calvin: “The Lord has given us a table at which to feast, not an altar on which a victim is to be offered; He has not consecrated priests to make sacrifice, but servants to distribute the sacred feast” (Institutes IV, xviii, 12).
Rome’s priesthood is quite another thing, and, therefore, a desecration to Christ.
- The Roman Catholic Mass.
Similar to the priesthood, Rome’s mass violates the person and finished work of Christ. In its 22nd session, on Doctrine Concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass, the Council of Trent reads:
“If anyone says that in the mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God; or that to be offered is nothing else than that Christ is given to us to eat, let him be anathema” (Canon 1).
“If anyone says that the sacrifice of the mas is one only of praise and thanksgiving; or that it is a mere commemoration of the sacrifice consummated on the cross but not a propitiatory one; or that it profits him only who receives, and ought not to be offered for the living and the dead, for sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities, let him be anathema” (Canon 3).
In other words, if you believe that Christ’s substitutionary atoning death, in itself, made complete propitiation for sin such that God’s wrath due our sin is satisfied, Rome declares you as under God’s curse. But this clashes with the Christian teaching of the sufficiency of Christ’s propitiatory sacrifice:
“He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself” (Heb. 7:27).
“And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 10:11-12).
Scripture could not be more clear on the adequacy and finality of Christ’s atoning work. Yet, in every mass, Rome asserts that Christ, cannot really be seated anywhere in heaven, but is ready, waiting, and being summoned back down for additional sacrifice to atone for sin. On this teaching alone Rome renders herself a desecration to Jesus Christ.
Furthermore, if anyone calls Rome’s mass into question, he is declared anathema: “If anyone says that the canon of the mass contains errors and is therefore to be abrogated, let him be anathema” (Council of Trent, 22nd session, Doctrine Concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass, Canon 6).
- The Roman Catholic Papacy.