On Burning the Boats of Sin

I recently attended a “Life in the Spirit” —Catholic charismatic—talk. It troubled me; I think it got a critical matter wrong. I fear the speaker misrepresented the scriptures.

His main claim was that, if you accept Jesus as your personal saviour, all your sins are forgiven. You will not be blamed or called to account for your sins. 

“Thanks to the death of Jesus, we also die to sin, because a dead person cannot be blamed for any of his past errors.”

This is clearly not traditional Catholic teaching. What about the sacrament of reconciliation, aka penance? What about purgatory? What about the Last Judgment?

To illustrate, the speaker refers to Cortez burning his ships so his soldiers could not retreat from the conquest of Mexico. Once you accept Jesus, there is just no turning back to sin.

Really? Why then does Paul tell the Philippians to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” What is the fear? Why the trembling?

According to this new happy happy joy joy version of Catholicism, Jesus’s love is unconditional. So all we need to do is recognize his love, and all is well between us.

But this is contradictory: it seems his love is indeed still conditional, if there is a need for us to recognize it. That is a condition. But does it seem a fair and just condition, worthy of a just and merciful God, to make that the test? We get to heaven just by feeling good about ourselves? And if we instead feel bad about ourselves, we ought to go to hell as punishment?

The speaker does cite scripture. I quote:

“And there is no longer any condemnation for me, that I am in Christ Jesus. This is marvelous. And I don’t say it; Paul says it in the epistle to the Romans.”

That is, Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” 

But what does it mean to be “in Christ Jesus”? The speaker would have it that this means accepting Jesus as your saviour. This is not self-evidently so. It might mean taking on the spirit of Jesus, thinking and behaving as Jesus does and did, and as he commands us. And we avoid condemnation only so long as we can remain in this frame of mind.

Seeming to bear out this latter interpretation, further on in the same passage of Philippians, Paul says those who live in Christ Jesus “do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” “Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”

So it seems to me the speaker in this talk is misrepresenting scripture.

The speaker goes on to give three examples from the Gospels of sinners who had their sins forgiven. But each time, he falsifies the passage in a critical way: he leaves out the need for repentance.

First is the woman taken in adultery, John 8; ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” When no one else will stone her, Jesus sends her off with the command, “go and sin no more.”

The speaker takes this to mean she has been given the power never to sin.

“When she was found out, she knew that the only door open to her was the door of being stoned. But she met Jesus, who is the saving door. … What she needed most was peace. Peace with herself, peace with her accusers, peace in this world…. But now, with his forgiveness, she will be able to overcome sin, and she will do so in peace.”

What she needed, then, was to stop feeling guilty about her sin.

But the gospel says nothing about her inner thoughts, about her needing or finding peace. The one clear indication of her inner thoughts is that, when all her accusers fade away, she remains standing there. Jesus is looking away, at the ground. She refuses to take the obvious opportunity to escape death. She insists on facing judgement, and consents that she deserves death. Only then is she forgiven.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

11 “No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

It is not that she found peace, but that she accepted guilt and found remorse.

Zaccheus is our speaker’s second example: the tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus passing by.

 “This man, Zacchaeus,” our interlocutor explains, “regained peace with himself. And not only with himself, the whole family of Zacchaeus, because it says that he [Jesus] ‘entered this house, this family.’ Such was the salvation given by Jesus to Zacchaeus.”

Once again, this false teacher omits the critical detail that Zaccheus repents of his sins—and also offers full restitution and more. “But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, ‘Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.’”

Our false teacher’s third example is The Good Thief. Quoting again: “He is one of the few who call Jesus by name, the thief is very confident and says to him, ‘You are Jesus, which means: you are the Savior, the salvation of God for this world, for me. And I do not ask much of you, I ask only that you remember me when you are in your kingdom, because I know that you are King, I know that crown of thorns is your glory. I know that that cross is your throne. Remember me now when you die, for I know that you have only a few minutes to live. But you are going to sit on the eternal throne of David. So, remember me.”

But this is mostly invention. 

The actual passage:

“38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the jews.

39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: ‘Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’

40 But the other criminal rebuked him. ‘Don’t you fear God,’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.’

42 Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’”

It is not heroic to call someone by their name. Nor is it a striking act of faith for the thief to acknowledge Jesus as king and messiah. That might just as well be mockery. If not, it looks like Pascal’s wager: you never know, and what did the thief have to lose?

But the striking thing is that the thief acknowledges that his sins deserve crucifixion. That is heroic. Not only that— he rebukes the other thief for asking for rescue, because his punishment is just. He will not ask to be saved from punishment; he wants justice.

This is how God combines perfect justice with perfect mercy; only when we are prepared to accept the full measure of punishment can we be forgiven.

For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

Sometimes helpfully guided by false prophets.