Historically hagiolotry (the worship/veneration of saints) became a critical part of the doctrine of salvation for the Roman Catholic Church. Salvation (right standing with God) was conceived as a matter of earning points with God, called merits. You earned points if you did good things and you lost points if you messed up. This worked well for the power-mad papists who found a way to not only control the flow of merits but even found a way to sell them. Thankfully, The Roman Church reformed itself and repented of these heinous practices in response to Martin Luther’s recovery of the book of Romans and revolution his faithfulness caused.
But what has remained is the notion that salvation requires accumulating merit points with God. Now, most mortals are well aware that their sins far outpace their merits. So the bishops came up with an idea: you could pray to saints who had actually accumulated so many merits during their lifetime that they by-passed the judgment, went straight to heaven, and where they could now intercede for you. Since they didn’t need their points anymore, they might deposit some of their merits in your heavenly account. Of course, the greatest merit collector of all time is the Virgin Mary. So, you could never say enough prayers to the Blessed Virgin. God may have started your salvation by His grace, but if you want to keep your salvation,you better do more good works than bad works or else you will end up on the negative side of the ledger and lose your salvation.
The Reformers corrected this monstrous outrage against the sovereign grace of God by reaffirming the Scripture’s teaching in the imputed (declared) righteousness of God to those in Christ Jesus (Romans 4); that is, we are given the gift of faith by which we confess the sufficiency of Jesus and our sin problem is wiped away as far as God is concerned. We are fully justified by faith in Jesus (Romans 5:1, Galatians 3:24, et al). This was great good news and became the heart of the evangelical movement in the church, then and now. The doctrine of election and predestination was taught by the Apostles to correct the notion that the believer could never be sure of his or her standing with God (salvation). If you are trusting in the promises of God and believe that what Jesus did on the cross he did for you, then you are the recipient of grace and God’s effectual calling.
My good friend, Hainds Laird, shared with me an illustration told him by a wise mentor. Our election is like a poker player being dealt a royal flush. Nothing can beat that hand. We don't sit around debating why everyone didn't get a royal flush or how could a loving God not deal everyone a royal flush. Here's the only thing you have to remember: when everyone else is trying to get a better hand, DO NOT DISCARD. God wants you to know that in Christ we have received everything we need to come to the end of life possessing all the merit we need to please God and enter into His reward. No dead saint can add anything to improve that hand and no living churchman can prevent you from losing the game. When temptations come, as they will; when mistakes happen, as they will; when sin derails, as it will; it is required of us this one thing – that we not discard the eternal merit of Jesus we have been given. And we have the Lord’s promise that when we are so foolishly tempted to discard what God has given, His Holy Spirit will be there to kibitz us to glory.
In the final lesson on this subject, we look at how hagiolotry darkens the doctrine of the resurrection.
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