A Requirement for Salvation 3: Repentance

"Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin."

Repentance from sin is a necessity for salvation, as the words of Our Lord state in Luke 13:3: “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” There cannot be any salvation without abandoning a life of mortal sin, and if we return to mortal sin after repentance we indeed are no longer in a State of Grace, which is a way of saying we lose our salvation and die spiritually. On this doctrine many Protestants actually do agree with the Catholic Church. Churches with an Arminian theology background agree that you can indeed lose your salvation, whereas Churches with a Reformed (Calvinist) background teach that you cannot lose your salvation. 

John Calvin taught that God predestines a small number of people to heaven, and no matter what they do they will go to heaven. On the other hand, God predestines the rest to damnation, and no matter what they do they cannot get into heaven. Calvin taught that one could only be saved if God forces him to be, and that our good deeds and Christian obedience was simply a sign that we were of the “Elect,” or God’s predestined individuals to salvation. The Catholic Church teaches that God reaches out to us and offers us all salvation, and we can cooperate with God, or like Satan, willingly choose to rebel and go our own way. Love does not force another to do something against their will. God is not a cosmic rapist. 

The reason I am elucidating some of John Calvin’s teaching at a very high level is because many modern Protestants in the United States reject John Calvin’s teaching on predestination, but keep Calvin’s teaching on the Perseverance of the Saints. This teaching only makes sense in the context of predestination. Calvin taught that you could not lose your salvation, because you were forced to accept it, and any apostate was not really an apostate, but was never in the true faith to begin with. 

Truly, Calvinism is a terrifying theology. A Protestant will typically witness many people leaving their faith over their lifetime, many of which were at one point very devout and Godly. A Calvinist can never be sure if they are surely of the Elect or deluding themselves. They can only be emotionally satisfied or unsatisfied based on how well they are following their conscience. Therefore, many Baptists, Evangelicals and Pentecostals reject Calvin’s doctrine of predestination. But they also reject Jacobus Arminus’ teachings, particularly around free will. They instead have an illogical third-way theology that teaches that as long as you commit your life to Jesus once, no matter what you do, you cannot lose your salvation. You can become an abortion doctor or mass murderer, and you will still be saved, although you are not likely to do either thanks to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 

Luther expressed similar beliefs, even once saying that you could murder 1000 people and still not lose your salvation, so on this Lutherans are often aligned with Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Of course, this is yet another example of an area where Protestants disagree on absolutely critical and essential doctrine. None of the Protestants get it right here. Arminius is in many ways closer to the truth than Calvin, but his theology has several heretical elements, not to mention it does not have a way to confess one’s sins to the Church, which is a requirement for restoration if we mortally sin post-baptism. 

Firstly, repentance is necessary to enter a State of Grace, or to be saved in the first place. As Jesus said in John 8:11 to the adultress who was about to be stoned to death, “go now, and leave your life of sin.” It is necessary to be in a State of Grace to receive the Eucharist as well, another necessity for salvation. The Holy Eucharist forces us to take steps to keep us in a State of Grace, and restore us to one if we fall out of it, because if we receive it unworthily we can be cursed. 

1 Corinthians 11:27-30 says “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” 

Receiving the Lord Jesus Christ in a state of mortal sin is so insulting to God that He may choose to afflict us or even kill us. This is indeed proof that the Eucharist is indeed not a symbol, and is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. St. Paul urges us to examine ourselves. The Catholic Church urges all members to perform a regular “examination of conscience,” comparing ourselves to the Ten Commandments and verses which list mortal sins such as 1 Corinthians 6:9-11: ”Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

Have we worshiped idols (of our own making or something pagan), committed adultery, engaged in homosexual acts, committed serious theft, behaved as a drunkard? Then we have committed mortal sin. Fortunately, God has made a way to restore us to a State of Grace, the Sacrament of Penance. James 5:16 says “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects.” The Bible does not say only to confess our sins to God, but to the Church. In particular, Church authority. 

Jesus tells the disciples in Matthew 18:15-18 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Here we see that Jesus gives the Apostles, the original Bishops, the power to excommunicate people. The Church is given the ability to kick people out, which is barring them from the Holy Eucharist. Excommunication is being banned from receiving the Eucharist until you repent. We also see that in verse 18 the Apostles, again the original Bishops, are given the authority to “bind and loose” in heaven itself. They can forgive sins, as they inherit that power from Christ. It is God who ultimately forgives the sins, but He works through the Apostles. 

When Jesus first appeared to the Disciples after rising from the dead, He said to them in John 20:21-23 “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” 

He reiterates their authority to loose and bind. He says they have the authority to forgive sins, or to retain sins. He also says that “as the father has sent me, even so I send you.” So they have the same authority to forgive sins as Jesus Christ, as they are sent from Jesus as God sent Jesus Himself. They sit “in persona Christi,” or “in the person of Christ.” Today, the Bishops of the Catholic Church sit in the person of Christ, as they have inherited Apostolic authority from the original Apostles. Without any Apostles in the world, it is impossible to follow the Bible, just as surely as it is impossible for a modern Jew to follow Judaism fully without the Temple. 

St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:10 “And to whom you have pardoned any thing, I also. For, what I have pardoned, if I have pardoned any thing, for your sakes have I done it in the person of Christ.” Here we see St. Paul, a Bishop, sitting in “persona Christi,” forgiving sins. God commanded us to confess our sins to the Church, and He has made it extremely easy. 

In the Confessional, we get to confess our sins in total privacy, to a Priest absolutely sworn to secrecy, who will die before he gives up anything. God wants us to go to Confession, He is like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son, and wants us to come home immediately. He makes it as easy as possible to repent and be restored. God operates through His Priests, just like God operated through the Priests in the Old Testament. 

You can go directly to God for forgiveness, and if you are contrite of heart He will truly forgive you. But, this does not negate the need to follow through and go to Confession, because James 5:16 is a commandment to the believers. It is best to make it a monthly habit to go to Confession, because even if you do not commit any mortal sins since your last Confession, it is a grace of God that keeps us on the narrow path. It is the way in which we wash our robes. Revelation 22:14 says “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.” Regular confession is how we behave as one who washes their robes. This gets us a right to the tree of life, just as mortal sin earns us hell. This is also not “works salvation” as the Confessional is a free gift. We cannot earn forgiveness, but we can reject it by refusing to let go of our sins and embrace it. Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and it is not a “work” to open the door to Him. 

That said, James 2:24 says “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Martin Luther had the Book of James deleted from his personal bible canon. He said that salvation was by faith alone. However, the only time the words “faith alone” appear in the entire Holy Bible, the word “not” is in front of them. “Little James” in James 2:18-23 says “But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish fellow, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, and the scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God.”

I have said this in other articles before, but faith in Christ means to believe what He said. Our faith saves us, not our works of righteousness. But Jesus said to do certain things, just as God told Abraham to offer Isaac upon the altar. If Abraham failed to offer Isaac, a “work,” he would have failed God. If we fail to be baptized, receive the Eucharist or repent, we fail God. We reject the free gift of salvation. We do not have faith in Christ. We should have a faith in Christ that trusts in Him to get us to heaven, but that faith is not simply “mental ascent.” It is believing in what Christ said, and only the Catholic Church has a flawless interpretation of what Christ said. 

As 1 Timothy 3:15 says, the Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. And as John 16:13-15 says “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” 

We are given ALL of the truth. Protestants rarely even believe this in modern times, even though at one point they largely did. Almost no Protestant really believes Lakewood Baptist Church, or one of the various Methodist breakaway churches, is the pure truth of God and has a monopoly on the entire truth. They believe that Jesus’ promises were false, and that there is no way to have all the truth, only “the essentials.” However, us Catholics declare that the Catholic Church has ALL the truth, and Jesus did not lie. Jesus said there is a Church with all of it, and that Church must have been around since day 1, never have been wrong on a single doctrine, and can never have not-existed for a time, or have been an obscure sect. It is a shining city upon a hill, never a secret institution. 

Jesus in Matthew 5:14 states “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.” The true Church is never hidden, it is always public, and obvious, throughout every age. Only the Catholic Church meets this criteria. Lakewood Baptist didn’t exist in 500 AD. The Lutheran Missouri Synod did not exist in 1300. “The Message Bible Church” did not exist in 1900. When you drive by a Catholic Church, that is the true Church of God. It’s where you can receive baptism, the Eucharist and attend Confession. You can’t do this at these false churches. No one confesses their sins properly to their Protestant prayer group or whatever. Confessing sins is typically humiliating, which is why Protestant leaders sought to eliminate it. It severely wounds one's pride to confess your sins to another sinful man, even if they are in the Person of Christ. Luther and Calvin were clearly extremely prideful men, and I could tell that even when I was a Protestant. 

Going straight to God with repentance but avoiding confession is a convenient way to preserve one’s pride, and I am also convinced it is a chief reason many avoid joining the Catholic Church, and a chief reason why there are people who leave it and apostatize. As I said, it is humiliating. You must confess your individual sins with sufficient detail and number. Many will rather be damned to hell forever than do that. As James 4:6 says: “But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’” 

Speaking of apostasy, the Bible is very clear that one can apostatize. In both the Old and New Testaments, we see warnings about apostasy and we see apostates. Some Hebrews committed apostasy by worshiping the golden calf, and the Levites slew about 3000 of them for their crime of apostasy. You can read about this in Exodus 32, and it also says in verse 33 regarding those who apostatized, “whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book” They were in God’s Book of Life, but are no longer. 

2nd Peter 2:20-22 says “for if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

If these people were never saved or in a State of Grace in the first place, then they never escaped the defilements of the world. You don’t get to escape the defilements of the world with a false repentance and false profession of faith. You cannot turn back from the way of righteousness unless you were actually on it in the first place. There are a lot of verses about apostasy. The idea that you cannot lose your salvation is a very recent invention, and one that many Protestant sects also reject. 

Notice that those who worshiped the golden calf apostatized by their actions. They committed mortal sin. I would say that it is both easy and hard to lose your salvation - to be taken out of a State of Grace. It is easy because the devil can tempt us with exactly what our wicked heart wants. He can throw the most beautiful women at us, put us in a position to obtain extreme material wealth at the cost of our soul, and do other things that are all too easy to give into. However, it is also hard to lose your salvation. You cannot accidentally commit a mortal sin. A mortal sin is a sin that is done with full knowledge of its evil, a full consent of the will, and it must be a grave matter. If you do something wrong with full knowledge and consent, but it is a trivial matter, then it is a venial sin. If you do something with full consent and it’s a grave matter, but you do not know that it’s evil, it’s a venial sin or you are simply not guilty. If you do something with full knowledge and it’s a grave matter, but you did not consent, then it is a venial sin or you are simply not guilty. 

1 John 5:16 says “If any one sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that.” We can pray for God to forgive people’s venial sins, but if someone commits a mortal sin, only they can take care of that. The Bible clearly teaches mortal sin and non-mortal (venial) sin. Catholics are not typically falling in and out of salvation every day. Some remain in a State of Grace for years until their death. But frequent Confession helps ensure we are not tricking ourselves about something serious, and imbues us with grace that helps us grow holier over time. A monthly Confession helps ensure we don’t avoid Confession following a mortal sin. We need to regularly examine our consciences, especially because taking the Eucharist unworthily can lead to severe consequences. This is why the Church in the US makes adult converts attend OCIA prior to being Confirmed. The Church wants to be sure someone understands the severity and importance of what they are about to do, especially in regards to the body and blood of Christ. 

We are required to leave all mortal sin behind to come into the Church and be saved, in a State of Grace. We can indeed, of our own free will, choose to leave a State of Grace. Mortal sins are actions which renounce the faith when committed, and renounce our love for God. God in His mercy, established a way of being restored to the Church, via confessing our sins to the Church, which we do with a Priest, who sits in the Person of Christ as granted faculties by his bishop (or he may even be a bishop himself. I once did confession with a bishop who was in the Confessional at a Parish in my former city). Going directly to God and avoiding the practice of humility by attending Confession, as the Bible commands, simply exposes a lack of contrition in many cases, and without contrition there is no forgiveness. 

I would end by saying some Protestants are forgiven their sins without going to Confession, because many truly do not know better. I personally do not believe the bar for a perfect act of contrition is very high. But it requires a firm purpose of amendment - a resolution not to do the sin again (even if you will do it again). This is true for Catholics too when they attend Confession - they must be contrite and have a firm purpose of amendment of their ways. However, a Protestant lives their entire life in a dangerous place without the Eucharist to quicken their spirits, and without Confession. They do not live their lives in obedience to the Bible and Church, but to what they think the Bible says. 

With the Catholic Church, we do not have to guess what the Bible means. Repentance is a necessity for salvation. Repentance is not a “work,” as it’s not some good deed that earns us salvation. Some Protestants teach that requiring repentance is requiring works for salvation, but Jesus actually offers repentance to us as a free gift. He gives us the means to resist sin for free, and He gives us the means to confess our sins, for free. So, repentance is a work of God, and like Baptism or the Eucharist it’s something we can cooperate with or reject. True love does not force another person to do something, and we know God truly loves us in that He gives us the ability to choose whom we will serve - sin or Jesus. 

Matthew 6:24: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” 

John 8:34: “Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin.”