Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here

Michael Spencer June 16th, 2009

OK Let’s get this out of the way early: I’m a Catholic-friendly guy.

I’m a major appreciator of most things Roman Catholic. Nothing you will be reading below changes that at all. OK? I love all of you. Benedict. My buddy Alan. Everyone in between.

So what’s up? I have a lot of friendly dialog with Roman Catholics. No one is really out to convert anyone else, though I do have 140+ emails telling me I need to join the RCC. My Catholic friends and I have a friendly ongoing debate. No one is going to let the other guy have the absolute last word, but we do take extended breaks. I’ve learned a lot and hopefully my friends have learned a few things from the Reformation side of the fence.

So this week I was talking with a friend I’ll call Millie, a very knowledgeable and articulate Catholic woman in Europe. Millie knows her history and theology better than 99% of Catholics. She’s a formidable conversation partner who never lets me get by with anything that doesn’t square with the actual teachings of the church. She’s done a lot to help me stop speaking out of ignorance (“Catholics worship statues!”) and get a better grip on the truth of what the RCC teaches.

Yesterday we had a brief exchange over the doctrine of purgatory. I don’t believe in it, and the idea deeply offends my sense of what is the Gospel. Millie understands what the RCC does and does not say on this subject, and she’s keeping me honest….when she lets this one go. The evangelical idea of assurance of salvation needs purgatory because….

“…no one has ever lived a perfect life or died a perfect death.”

I know. I know. That was exactly my reaction, too.

If you heard me preach, I have camped on this exact phrase for years. Jesus, our substitute, has lived a perfect life, a life we could not live, FOR US. Jesus, our substitute, has died a perfect death, even though he was completely innocent of all sin, FOR US.

The Gospel puts us in an interesting predicament. We must abandon all hope that we can save ourselves. Further, in the Reformation Gospel, we must abandon all hope that we can contribute anything to our salvation.

The Gospel doesn’t come to imperfect people. It comes to dead people. If your salvation plan isn’t dead, you aren’t going to hear the Good News about Jesus the same way as others.

Our ship is doomed. We didn’t take to the lifeboats to look for land. We aren’t hoping for a bigger ship to come and help us. We aren’t going to stay in the boat until we drift to shore.

When the ship went down, we drowned. We don’t need a lifeguard or a rescue vessel. We need a resurrection.

This is the issue at stake in the Reformation Gospel. I can’t speak for Millie, but I’m fairly sure she would say Jesus provides a perfect salvation which we appropriate via the sacraments of the church, faith and love. Because our appropriation won’t be complete or perfect, purgatory finishes the job. (Don’t laugh at purgatory. C.S. Lewis, who was smarter than you, believed in it….but he was wrong.)

I can’t find hope in that message. Infusion versus imputation may seem like a theologian’s debate, but it’s the difference between death and life. If I am in the position of determining how much of the salvation purchased by Jesus comes into my life, then we have an immediate problem: I’m alive. And when I am alive, I create problems.

The law slays me. It doesn’t wound me. It runs over me….as many times as it takes to kill me. I have to abandon anything that is a command and embrace the reality of faith. When I die to the possibility of contributing to my own salvation, then my own salvation comes to me as a gift in Jesus.

Millie’s words are exactly true….with the exception of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lived the one life and died the one death that matter. In him all die and in him all will be made alive. In him the perfect salvation of God comes to those who abandon all the alternatives and embrace the grace of God in the Gospel.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Ironically, Dante's words are the Christian's instructions when it comes to anything other than the perfect life and death of Jesus. Abandon hope of saving yourselves.

Abandon hope of anything that isn't the perfectly accomplished, freely given salvation from Jesus.

Michael Spencer is The Internet Monk. He's currently working on a book about Jesus. He's abandoned all hope of saving himself and thinks Martin Luther would have approved.

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