The Catholic church didn't exist for hundreds of years. Here, let me destroy one basic Catholic doctrine for you.
1 Cor 6:9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
See that. All Christians, that is, those that are buried with Christ (as a believing adult) in baptism are sanctified, i.e. saints. See Acts 9:13 ; Acts 9:32 ; Acts 26:10 ; Romans 1:7 ; 1 Corinthians 1:2 ; 2 Corinthians 1:1 and many others.
Is that what the Roman Catholic church teaches? No? Okay, then, false religion.
The Catholic Church was founded with the words of Jesus Christ himself in Sacred Scripture to Peter, the leader of the Apostles, the first head of the Catholic Church: Matthew 16:18. Jesus is explicitly clear as to what he is doing. The Catholic Church is the only Church on earth that can be identified with the Church of which Jesus Christ himself is speaking. To think that his is false, a person is either ignorant of history, Scripture, or willfully wishes to claim they know better than Jesus himself, who is the Truth.
Your presented verses regarding baptism and sanctification are cherry-picked, and in doing so you have missed entirely the fullness of the reality of baptism and sanctification that is evident even in the books from which they are taken.
All baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to the instruction Christ gave to his Apostles, have been freed from original sin. But we are called to participate in Christ's sanctification of the world and to remain faithful to Christ by leading lives dedicated to the Gospel and growing in holiness. The reality of evil in the world should be enough to show you that not every baptized person lives as if they have been baptized. The writings of Saint Paul are clear that we have to remain in the faith into which we have been baptized and that salvation is not a passive thing on our part. Jesus Christ himself tells us that we must take up our crosses to follow him. In St. Paul's letters he repeatedly exhorts for Christians to offer up our sufferings, and that we do not persist in sin after baptism. A person cannot at once be living in sin and in the state of grace; ie, without sin. Saints in heaven are sinless. We are exhorted by Christ to be perfect, as he is perfect. If we sin after baptism, we must repent of our sins and receive forgiveness--which is why Jesus Christ himself gave his Apostles the power to forgive sins and instituted what the Catholic Church has always taught is sacramental forgiveness of sins; ie, confession (John 20:23). We have the absolute surety that our sins are forgiven, because we have the assurance of the words of Jesus Christ himself. He commissioned his Apostles to forgive sins, and the Catholic Church, as I have already stated, is the only Church that can rightfully state to continue being led by the successors of the Apostles.
According to the logic you have expressed, a person could be baptized, murder someone, never repent, and go to heaven. Do you think that is the case? We can't absolutely know the state of someone's soul, because we aren't God, but the objective reality of a person's life isn't forgotten. God gave us free will--people choose to deny the grace they have received through baptism every time they sin. If we continue to choose to live in sin, even after baptism, a person goes to hell. It is said that no one in is hell who didn't choose to go there. Jesus himself says that not everyone who says "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, and Judas was also one of the Twelve.
The Acts of the Apostles are explicitly clear that entire households (which would include infants and children) were baptized. Jesus Christ himself asks for the little children to come to him, and that no one shall deny them. Parents have the God-given, natural right of authority over their children, to ask for their children to be baptized even as infants. In doing so, they are remaining faithful to the words of Jesus, and are not denying the graces of baptism to their children. It is the responsibility of parents to instruct children on living the faith into which they have been baptized.
Succinctly, after baptism, we have at once been sanctified, in being freed from original sin, are being sanctified as we strive to live as faithful Christians and remain in the Truth of Christ, and hope to be sanctified forever in heaven. This is what it means to be a part of the communion of saints--cooperating with God's will for our sanctification here on earth until we rejoice forever with God in heaven.
It's not the Catholic Church that's the false religion here--it's whatever religion claims to know better than the explicit words of Jesus Christ himself with regard to the founding of his Church and his sacraments, and chooses to refuse to accept the entirety of the words of both Christ and his Apostles in Sacred Scripture, because doing so doesn't suit their personal tastes, but instead they prefer to pick and choose what to Scripture verses to quote and believe whenever it happens to suit them.
According to the logic you have expressed, a person could be baptized, murder someone, never repent, and go to heaven.
Where did I say that? I simply said baptism was a requirement. So is continued obedience.
2 Peter 2:20-22 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.”
I notice you didn't dispute my definition of saint. Keep searching the scripture, and comparing it to what your church teaches.
So I guess you didn't read anything I wrote about the connection between sanctification or the communion of saints at all? At one point you just quoted a verse where someone literally only says the word "saint," when referring to a group of people; that is hardly a definition. The entire third paragraph I wrote addresses your definition, which, as I said, is lacking. It's not that you have it entirely wrong. It's that you don't have it completely right.
My Church is the reason why there is Scripture as we have in the Bible today, compiled by the Church after being written by the saints and prophets under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The Bible didn't fall from heaven like a brick in the way we have it in a book now. There's not a single thing in Sacred Scripture that contradicts what the Catholic Church teaches or believes--rather, the entirety of it reveals the glory of God's plan of salvation through the Church that Jesus Christ came to establish so that all humanity might come to know, love, and serve God, and rejoice with God forever in heaven. If the Bible is the menu for living out Christianity, the Catholic Church has the feast, and indeed the very Wedding Feast of the Lamb. We are the only Church that has the fullness of the revealed Truth, in the threefold pillars of Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic teaching authority, and Sacred Tradition received from the Apostles of Christ, so that the fullness of the Truth of Christ can be safeguarded and handed on to all people, unchanged, through the ages.
The Catholic church didn't exist for hundreds of years. Here, let me destroy one basic Catholic doctrine for you.
1 Cor 6:9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
See that. All Christians, that is, those that are buried with Christ (as a believing adult) in baptism are sanctified, i.e. saints. See Acts 9:13 ; Acts 9:32 ; Acts 26:10 ; Romans 1:7 ; 1 Corinthians 1:2 ; 2 Corinthians 1:1 and many others.
Is that what the Roman Catholic church teaches? No? Okay, then, false religion.
The Catholic Church was founded with the words of Jesus Christ himself in Sacred Scripture to Peter, the leader of the Apostles, the first head of the Catholic Church: Matthew 16:18. Jesus is explicitly clear as to what he is doing. The Catholic Church is the only Church on earth that can be identified with the Church of which Jesus Christ himself is speaking. To think that his is false, a person is either ignorant of history, Scripture, or willfully wishes to claim they know better than Jesus himself, who is the Truth.
Your presented verses regarding baptism and sanctification are cherry-picked, and in doing so you have missed entirely the fullness of the reality of baptism and sanctification that is evident even in the books from which they are taken.
All baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, according to the instruction Christ gave to his Apostles, have been freed from original sin. But we are called to participate in Christ's sanctification of the world and to remain faithful to Christ by leading lives dedicated to the Gospel and growing in holiness. The reality of evil in the world should be enough to show you that not every baptized person lives as if they have been baptized. The writings of Saint Paul are clear that we have to remain in the faith into which we have been baptized and that salvation is not a passive thing on our part. Jesus Christ himself tells us that we must take up our crosses to follow him. In St. Paul's letters he repeatedly exhorts for Christians to offer up our sufferings, and that we do not persist in sin after baptism. A person cannot at once be living in sin and in the state of grace; ie, without sin. Saints in heaven are sinless. We are exhorted by Christ to be perfect, as he is perfect. If we sin after baptism, we must repent of our sins and receive forgiveness--which is why Jesus Christ himself gave his Apostles the power to forgive sins and instituted what the Catholic Church has always taught is sacramental forgiveness of sins; ie, confession (John 20:23). We have the absolute surety that our sins are forgiven, because we have the assurance of the words of Jesus Christ himself. He commissioned his Apostles to forgive sins, and the Catholic Church, as I have already stated, is the only Church that can rightfully state to continue being led by the successors of the Apostles.
According to the logic you have expressed, a person could be baptized, murder someone, never repent, and go to heaven. Do you think that is the case? We can't absolutely know the state of someone's soul, because we aren't God, but the objective reality of a person's life isn't forgotten. God gave us free will--people choose to deny the grace they have received through baptism every time they sin. If we continue to choose to live in sin, even after baptism, a person goes to hell. It is said that no one in is hell who didn't choose to go there. Jesus himself says that not everyone who says "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, and Judas was also one of the Twelve.
The Acts of the Apostles are explicitly clear that entire households (which would include infants and children) were baptized. Jesus Christ himself asks for the little children to come to him, and that no one shall deny them. Parents have the God-given, natural right of authority over their children, to ask for their children to be baptized even as infants. In doing so, they are remaining faithful to the words of Jesus, and are not denying the graces of baptism to their children. It is the responsibility of parents to instruct children on living the faith into which they have been baptized.
Succinctly, after baptism, we have at once been sanctified, in being freed from original sin, are being sanctified as we strive to live as faithful Christians and remain in the Truth of Christ, and hope to be sanctified forever in heaven. This is what it means to be a part of the communion of saints--cooperating with God's will for our sanctification here on earth until we rejoice forever with God in heaven.
It's not the Catholic Church that's the false religion here--it's whatever religion claims to know better than the explicit words of Jesus Christ himself with regard to the founding of his Church and his sacraments, and chooses to refuse to accept the entirety of the words of both Christ and his Apostles in Sacred Scripture, because doing so doesn't suit their personal tastes, but instead they prefer to pick and choose what to Scripture verses to quote and believe whenever it happens to suit them.
According to the logic you have expressed, a person could be baptized, murder someone, never repent, and go to heaven.
Where did I say that? I simply said baptism was a requirement. So is continued obedience.
2 Peter 2:20-22 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.”
I notice you didn't dispute my definition of saint. Keep searching the scripture, and comparing it to what your church teaches.
So I guess you didn't read anything I wrote about the connection between sanctification or the communion of saints at all? At one point you just quoted a verse where someone literally only says the word "saint," when referring to a group of people; that is hardly a definition. The entire third paragraph I wrote addresses your definition, which, as I said, is lacking. It's not that you have it entirely wrong. It's that you don't have it completely right.
My Church is the reason why there is Scripture as we have in the Bible today, compiled by the Church after being written by the saints and prophets under the direction of the Holy Spirit. The Bible didn't fall from heaven like a brick in the way we have it in a book now. There's not a single thing in Sacred Scripture that contradicts what the Catholic Church teaches or believes--rather, the entirety of it reveals the glory of God's plan of salvation through the Church that Jesus Christ came to establish so that all humanity might come to know, love, and serve God, and rejoice with God forever in heaven. If the Bible is the menu for living out Christianity, the Catholic Church has the feast, and indeed the very Wedding Feast of the Lamb. We are the only Church that has the fullness of the revealed Truth, in the threefold pillars of Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic teaching authority, and Sacred Tradition received from the Apostles of Christ, so that the fullness of the Truth of Christ can be safeguarded and handed on to all people, unchanged, through the ages.