When God forgives us our sins, are we cleansed from all unrighteousness, or does there remain some form of punishment that we must endure, either in this life or in the next, for us to be made worthy of heaven?

Par 1030 says, “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven”.

Again we have a repeat of the Council of Trent that says,

Canon 30, “If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema”.

The doctrine of purgatory is completely at variance with Holy Scripture. According to Roman Catholic teaching, purgatory is that place where those Christians who die in God’s grace go to pay the debt of temporal punishment due because of their sins, that punishment which has not been discharged in this life. This, of course, involves penance, works etc., thus again adding works to faith to achieve justification.

Purgatory is just one of Rome’s teachings on the insufficiency of Calvary to cleanse us from all our sin. Yet the outrageous thing is that they claim that the Mass can actually help purge those in purgatory. So the Mass can accomplish what Calvary cannot. Such a doctrine places the Roman Catholic at the mercy of the Roman Church, as it makes Roman Catholics depend on the Church’s ministries to ensure their acceptance into heaven.

This contradicts Scripture, which declares,

1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”.

 Isaiah 1:18, “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”.

 Isaiah 43:25, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins”.

 Psalm 103:10, “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities”.

 Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us”.

God’s perfect purgatory is the cross of Jesus Christ, whose blood cleanses from all sin. When we repented of our sins and trusted in the sacrificial death of Jesus as making full atonement for our sins, not only were we forgiven and saved but united with Christ by faith. God made Him unto us “wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”

1 Cor 1:30.  But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

Works are the evidence of our regeneration, the proof of our willingness to die to self and to seek the growth in our likeness to Christ. They do not merit salvation.

Once you mix up justification and sanctification, and add works to faith and grace in order to have peace with God, you end up in a quagmire of error.

Dermot Nash