The Real Purpose
of Life
Roman Catholic Claim
Old catechisms asked, "Why
did God make you?" The answer: "God
made me to know him, to love him, and to serve
him in this world and to be happy with him
forever in the next." Here, in just 26
words, is the whole reason for our existence.
Jesus answered the question even more briefly:
"I came so that [you] might have life
and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).
God’s plan for you
is simple. Your loving Father wants to give
you all good things—especially eternal
life. Jesus died on the cross to save us all
from sin and the eternal separation from God
that sin causes (CCC 599–623). When
he saves us, he makes us part of his Body,
which is the Church (1 Cor. 12:27–30).
We thus become united with him and with Christians
everywhere (on earth, in heaven, in purgatory).
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Christian Response
The overwhelming
assumption in Roman Catholic theology is that God
has a purpose for each and every person in the world
that can be thwarted [frustrated] by that person.
The enormous underlying axiomatic presupposition in
Rome is that man’s alleged free-will is the
final determining factor in his future. Essentially,
Rome believes that Jesus Christ died on the cross
for each and every person in the whole wide world.
Based upon this understanding of the atonement of
Christ, Rome reasons that God wants
to save each and every person in the whole wide world.
Notice the supposition: “Your loving Father
wants to give you all good things-especially
eternal life.” God wants to save everyone but
God cannot. Why can He not? Because, some men will
not let God save them. Unless man lets Him God cannot
save anyone. When Rome says, “When he saves
us, he makes us part of his Body, which is the Church”,
Rome means when we let God save us
and when we let God put us in His
Church.
The mere idea that
God’s absolute sovereign will, that brings to
pass all things according to His counsel, can be stymied
by the will of man is bad enough. The Bible explodes
this mythology of Rome in numerous instances. Let
one example be sufficient for now.
ROM 9:14 What shall
we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?
May it never be! ROM 9:15 For He says to Moses, "I
will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I have compassion." ROM 9:16
So then it does not depend on the man who wills or
the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. ROM 9:17
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this
very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power
in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout
the whole earth." ROM 9:18 So then He has mercy
on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.
ROM 9:19 You will say to me then, "Why does He
still find fault? For who resists His will?"
ROM 9:20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who
answers back to God? The thing molded will not say
to the molder, "Why did you make me like this,"
will it? ROM 9:21 Or does not the potter have a right
over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel
for honorable use, and another for common use?
However, Rome further
distances herself from Christian theology by insisting
that God has provided a way of salvation for man within
the Roman Catholic religion. Not only does Rome deny
God the sovereign power to save whom He wills, Rome
substitutes her religious rituals in the place of
God’s method of salvation.
In this way the water of Rome is doubly poisoned.
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