America is abuzz at the arrival of the latest occupant of the papal throne. Pundits are going back and forth about whether he is a conservative or a progressive. Progressives like his stand against capitalism and his support for the global warming agenda. Conservatives like his position on abortion and marriage. Everyone, it seems, is attempting to recruit him to their cause.
In the flurry of excitement, it seems to me that we have forgotten what this man, and, in particular, what his office claims. He claims to be the official and only spokesperson for Jesus Christ on this earth. When he speaks "from the throne," he believes that he is uttering the very infallible words of God Himself. He believes that what he speaks stands as equal in authority to the Scriptures.
Yet at the same time he leads a church that still pronounces justification by faith alone as anathema. He is part of a church that venerates Mary to the point that some within it claim that she is co-redemptrix with Jesus. He leads an institution that believes that every time the Mass is celebrated the real body and blood of Jesus are re-sacrificed to obtain atonement for the participants. He presides over a priesthood that believes they are the necessary mediators between God and man. He violates the Holy Word of God.
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, (1Ti 2:5 ESV)
In the flurry of excitement, it seems to me that we have forgotten what this man, and, in particular, what his office claims. He claims to be the official and only spokesperson for Jesus Christ on this earth. When he speaks "from the throne," he believes that he is uttering the very infallible words of God Himself. He believes that what he speaks stands as equal in authority to the Scriptures.
Yet at the same time he leads a church that still pronounces justification by faith alone as anathema. He is part of a church that venerates Mary to the point that some within it claim that she is co-redemptrix with Jesus. He leads an institution that believes that every time the Mass is celebrated the real body and blood of Jesus are re-sacrificed to obtain atonement for the participants. He presides over a priesthood that believes they are the necessary mediators between God and man. He violates the Holy Word of God.
For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
(Heb 9:24-28 ESV)For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, (1Ti 2:5 ESV)
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