{"id":133,"date":"2007-07-22T00:32:46","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T04:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/2007\/07\/22\/how-to-annoy-a-catholic\/"},"modified":"2007-07-22T00:32:46","modified_gmt":"2007-07-22T04:32:46","slug":"how-to-annoy-a-catholic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/how-to-annoy-a-catholic","title":{"rendered":"How to annoy a Catholic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Voris of St. Michael’s Media here in Detroit is aghast at my claim<\/strong> <\/a>that I am as holy as St. Paul.\u00a0 I made the statement in response to his attempting to justify praying to the saints in heaven on the grounds that, by virtue of their position in Heaven, they are holier than believers on earth and therefore have an “in” with God our prayers don’t.<\/p>\n

The biblical facts are, the righteousness St. Paul possessed on earth was not his righteousness, it was the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed to him, the same as mine:<\/p>\n

“For (Christ’s) sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:8b – 9)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This righteousness was not imputed to St. Paul by any effort of his own, but rather by the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ given to him as a free and unmerited gift, same as me:<\/p>\n

“I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ who lives within me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of<\/strong> the Son of God<\/em>, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20)<\/p>\n

“For by grace are you saved through faith, and that (faith) not of yourselves, but the gift of God; not of works lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8 – 10)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even after this righteousness of Jesus Christ was imputed to St. Paul, he understood himself to be the chiefest of sinners and the least of all the saints: (1 Timothy 1:15; Ephesians 3:8), same as me.<\/p>\n

Nothing about the fact that the saints are in heaven and we are on earth makes them any more holy than us in terms of our standing with God. Their struggle with sin is certainly ended, so in that sense they have an advantage we do not. But saints in Heaven are still in a state of incomplete redemption, just as we are. We are all waiting for the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23), which will be completed at the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:50-56), at which time God “will transform our vile bodies\u00a0to be made like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20,21) and we shall finally and forever be delivered from “the body of this death” (Romans 7:24).<\/p>\n

None of this is true of St. Paul yet<\/em>, just as it is not true of any believer on earth yet<\/em>.\u00a0The dead in Christ (St. Paul and all the saints) as well as those who are alive and remain, have not yet experienced final and complete redemption. So in that sense I (and every believer) am just as holy and righteous as the saints now in Heaven. Thus, their prayers are no more powerful than our own because both are the prayers of redeemed sinners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Voris of St. Michael’s Media here in Detroit is aghast at my claim that I am as holy as St. Paul.\u00a0 I made the statement in response to his attempting to justify praying to the saints in heaven on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}