If ever a religious event highlighted the difference between true Christianity and its counterfeit, it occurred in Rome on 1 May 2011. As reported by BBC News:
The late Pope, John Paul II, has been beatified at a ceremony at the Vatican in front of hundreds of thousands of Catholic faithful. Among those at St Peter's Square is French nun Marie Simon-Pierre, who says she was cured of Parkinson's disease. Her apparently miraculous cure is part of the case for the beatification, the last stage before sainthood. It comes amid criticism of the Church for the speed of the beatification and the clerical child sex abuse scandal. Much of the abuse, or its alleged cover-up, occurred while John Paul II was Pope, from 1979-2005, and the Church has been criticised for not doing enough to punish those found responsible.
It is astonishing how anyone reading the New Testament could recognise any similarity between the religion of Rome and the plain teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles. According to the Scriptures, ‘a saint is a sinner saved by grace’, one ‘set apart’ for the service and worship of God. ‘Saint’ is a common term for ‘Christian’ (see Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2, Philippians 4:21-2, etc). Translated from the Greek hagios, it indicates a transforming holiness enjoyed by true believers in Christ, without which one cannot be a Christian. It is something started in this life, not just a perfect attainment at death. So, if one doesn’t live and die as a saint, no God-approved, Church-initiated after-life process exists to start what never began on earth!
One sometimes hears the honest confession, “I’m no saint.” If it simply means, “I’m not perfect”, then no mere mortal deserves the title. However, while growth in personal holiness is a necessary feature of the Christian life, perfection is never attained in this life. It is never taught in the New Testament that ‘saints’ are perfect believers. Our saintliness is defined in terms of being righteous and holy ‘in Christ Jesus’ (see Ephesians 1:1-4) and being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In short, a ‘saint’ is one who is ‘justified’ and ‘sanctified’.
This is where the religion of Rome and Biblical Faith part company at a fundamental level. Justification is not through baptism but by faith in Christ alone (see Romans 5:1-9) with direct access to Him (not Mary) as sole Mediator (see Matthew 11:28; 1 Timothy 2:5). The idea that the merits of the faithful are a necessary contribution to their salvation undermines the all-sufficiency of Christ’s merit. Rome’s traditional mistake in making sanctification a part of justification arises from her reliance on the Latin justificare instead of the Greek dikaioo. While the former verb means ‘to make righteous’, the latter means ‘to declare righteous’ by the remission of sins through faith in the blood of Christ (see Romans 4:5-8; 5:1, 9).
While good works are a necessary and certain fruit of saving faith (see Galatians 5:6; Ephesians 2:8-10), their imperfection rules them out from justifying us. Our persons and our performances alike always require pardon. That said, Christian sainthood is the present status of true though imperfect believers (see Ephesians 1:1-2) not that of dead believers canonised by the Church of Rome.
It all boils down to a question of definition. We either follow God’s infallible Word or Rome’s false tradition, as a great (though grossly neglected) English Reformed churchman, Dr Edmund Calamy (1671-1732) makes clear:
If the Scriptures are divinely inspired, the whole foundation of the Popish religion is rotten. Our [Protestant] religion is bottomed upon the Scriptures, which having been given by inspiration of God, cannot deceive us. The Scriptures, which came from God, and were drawn up under His conduct and influence, as a directory to His Church and People in all ages, are with us a thousand times more venerable, and unspeakably more sacred, and of greater authority, than the doctrines, or sentiments of any creatures whatsoever. One little sentence of those divine books; that sentence in particular which declares, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life” [John 3:16], with us deserves incomparably more respect and regard, than all the definitions or determinations, resolutions or decrees, of princes or doctors, popes or councils, men or angels. We keep so close to those Scriptures, being satisfied of their heavenly original, that our pastors and teachers can safely join in with the great Apostle, and say, “Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you, than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed “[Galatians 1:8]. And this is our glory. Herein lies the peculiar firmness of our religion, and that which distinguishes it from all others that it came entirely from those Scriptures that were divinely inspired.
So, let us ‘glory’ in that Grace of God that makes us saints, in ‘the here and now’! Let our assured faith be in Christ alone, our reliance on the Holy Spirit alone, our convictions based on the Bible alone!
Alan C. Clifford was born and educated in Hampshire, England, where he pursued a career in mechanical and electrical engineering at the Royal Aircraft Establishment and the Institute of Aviation Medicine at Farnborough. Converted within Anglicanism in his teens, a change of religious conviction led eventually in a Nonconformist direction. Graduating in Philosophy in the University of Wales in 1969, he was ordained at Primrose Hill Congregational Church, Northampton. Pastorates on Tyneside and in Norfolk facilitated further part-time academic study in philosophy and theology (MLitt, 1978; PhD, 1984). Dr Clifford’s doctoral thesis Atonement and Justification was published by Oxford University Press in 1990.
Since 1994, he has been the pastor of Norwich Reformed Church. Concerned with several social and ethical issues, he was involved in broadcasting on television and radio for two years. In recent years, besides several other publishing projects expounding the Reformed Faith, Dr Clifford has been involved in controversy over Islam. He was invited to address the Campaign for UK Conservatism Conference at Oxford Brookes University on Islamic issues in November, 2005. The lecture was published as Christianity, Islam & British Politics.
Dr Clifford is married to Marian. They have four grown children (three sons and a daughter), three granddaughters and a grandson.
