In the same way Paul rebuked Peter in Galatians 2:11 for giving the “impression that he agreed with the Judaizers,” we too must diligently rescue the gospel from even appearing off course. In short, conceding to blurred lines for the sake of unity is spiritual compromise. “We must remind the world that the gospel of the New Testament is for the spiritually needy who have nothing to offer God; they come not to give but to receive; they come not just to be helped but to be rescued.Their contribution to salvation is their sin; God’s grace supplies everything else.”

Is the Reformation over? Have the issues that divided Protestants and Catholics been sufficiently resolved that we can now pursue a return to unity? At the very end of his book Rescuing the Gospel, an account of the Protestant Reformation, Erwin Lutzer offers a compelling answer. While he admits that both Protestantism and Catholicism have developed since the sixteenth century and while he points out areas in which Protestants and Catholics are working in a common cause toward common goals, he insists that the Reformation has not yet come to an end. Any unity would come at the expense of the gospel. “On the most critical issue, namely the salvation of the human soul, Luther’s Reformation is far from over … No matter how many changes the Catholic Church makes, it will not—indeed cannot—endorse an evangelical view of salvation.”

Many make the argument that Catholicism has changed, that the church of the twenty-first century is so vastly different from the church of the sixteenth century that the old disagreements and arguments no longer hold. But here Lutzer points to 5 contemporary teachings of the Roman Catholic Church that must continue to divide us.

Mary. “The church still holds to the traditions it has always held about Mary, her perpetual virginity, her immaculate conception (which denies the biblical truth that all have sinned), the assumption of her body and soul into heaven, the queenship of heaven, and—most seriously of all—the ‘infallible’ teaching that she is the mediatrix of all grace, thus sharing with the Lord Jesus Christ in providing salvation for mankind. The catechism says, ‘By her intercession she continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation … Therefore the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix.” It is to her “protection that the faithful fly in all their dangers and needs.”

Transubstantiation. The updated 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to teach transubstantiation, the doctrine that “the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice … the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and offered in an unbloody manner.” “Catholics are taught to worship the consecrated wafer … indeed, parishioners are instructed to give these consecrated elements the highest form of worship—the same degree reserved for the Holy Trinity. Historically (and to this present day) the Catholic Church has taught that salvation comes only through the grace given in the sacraments which, they say, unite the participant to Christ.”

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