Thoughts from Martin Luther on the Roman Catholic priesthood and mass

(The following from Luther is not to say that there is no such thing as pastors who are called to lead the flock, serve spiritual needs and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper--that's clearly not what he intended. Instead, he’s showing that the teachings of Roman Catholicism on the priesthood and the so-called sacrifice of the mass are without proof of any kind in the Bible—strictly man made. On the otherhand, the Bible is clear Who the real Priest is and what that means for all true Christians.)

First, let us deal with the priesthood. Every true Christian really ought to know that in the New Testament there is no outward, visible priest, except those whom the devil has exalted and set up through human lies. We have only one single priest, Christ, who has sacrificed himself for us and all of us with him. Peter speaks of this in 1 Peter 3:18: “Christ died once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us—dead in the flesh but alive in the spirit—to God.” And Hebrews 10:14 says: “For by a single offering he has finished and perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

This is a spiritual priesthood, held in common by all Christians, through which we are all priests with Christ. That is, we are children of Christ, the high priest; we need no priest of mediator other than Christ. “Every priest (Hebrews 5:1) is appointed to order that he might pray for the people and preach.” Thus every Christian on his own may pray in Christ (the high priest) and have access to God (Romans 5:2) as Isaiah has proclaimed in chapter 65:24: “It shall come to pass that before they call I will answer, and while they are speaking I will hear them.”…Hence it comes that Christ says in John 6:45: “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’”

…Go to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves build up on him, to be holy priesthood and to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:4-5).” And a little further on (1 Peter 2:9): “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy people, dearly bought, that you may declare the might of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

Let this be the first assault on the fictitious popish priesthood: how strong and mighty an assault it is, let every pious Christian judge. Here all the splendor and pomp of the popish mass comes to naught (nothing)…For the priesthood and law change together (Hebrews 7:12). If now the priesthood and the law are nothing, then the sacrifices and the works which are supposed to take place through the priest…are even less. From this it follows that the pope’s law is sheer deceit and falsehood; the papal priesthood is nothing but a mask and outward show, and the papists’ mass, which they call a sacrifice, is idolatry and a shameful misuse of the holy sacrament.

Pages 138 – 142 Luther’s Works Vol. 36 Word and Sacrament, The Misuse of the Mass

Luther on the gospel and those who seek their own sacrifice...

Martin Luther relates the gospel as he prepares to point out ways that the “silent mass” of those days departed from that gospel. …


First, I want to remind each one of the ground on which our faith and all our preaching rests. I shall repeat it briefly. But I preach now only to those who accept the gospel as the Word of God and nothing else, for those who still do not know that or are in doubt about it will not accept this ground of our faith. Well, you have heard in the gospel and learned from it that the problem of our salvation from sin, death, the devil and an evil conscience, the problem of attaining true righteousness before God and eternal life, is by no means solved or helped with works or laws, no matter what they may be or may be called. For God will accept no other mediation and no other mediator than his only Son, whom the Father sent into the world and whom he caused to shed his blood for the sole purpose that he might thereby obtain for us the treasure of faith.

That, briefly, is the sum total of the gospel that we preach. And if anyone seeks another way to be freed from his sins and stand before God, he blasphemes and insults God and accuses him of lying, as if he had let his Son shed his blood in vain and his death had accomplished nothing and was of no importance. For this is what God insists on and nothing else, that on one shall stand before him except by that innocent blood alone. And if anyone undertakes some other method, such as his works or order or station in life, he shall belong to the devil much more than anyone else. For it is a very serious matter with God and he will have no jest made of it, because for this purpose he gave his Son to die. For that reason we know and have no other sacrifice that that which he made on the cross, on which he died once for all as the Epistle to the Hebrews (9:12, 20) says, and thereby put away the sins of all men and also made us holy for eternity.

That, I say, is our gospel, that Christ has made us righteous and holy through that sacrifice and has redeemed us from sin, death and the devil and has brought us into his heavenly kingdom. We have to grasp this and hold it fast through faith alone. We have preached this and reiterated it so often that everyone can know it well and can conclude from it that all our own works undertaken to expiate sin and escape from death are necessarily blasphemous. They deny God and insult the sacrifice that Christ has made and disgrace his blood, because they try thereby to do what only Christ’s blood can do.

–Luther, April 1525 as found in “The Abomination of the Secret (or Silent) Mass”

Distilling the truth--on Holy Communion

The Heidelburg Catechism differentiates between the Mass and the Lord's Supper.

LORD'S DAY 30
80. What difference is there between the Lord's Supper and the Pope's Mass?

The Lord's Supper testifies to us that we have full forgiveness of all our sins by the one sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which He Himself once accomplished on the cross;[1] and that by the Holy Ghost we are ingrafted into Christ,[2] who, with His true body, is now in heaven at the right hand of the Father,[3] and there to be worshipped. [4] But the Mass teaches that the living and the dead do not have forgiveness of sins through the sufferings of Christ, unless Christ is still daily offered for them by the priests, and that Christ is bodily under the form of bread and wine, and is therefore to be worshipped in them. And thus the Mass at bottom is nothing else than a denial of the one sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ,[5] and an accursed idolatry.

[1]Heb. 7:27; 9:12, 25-28; 10:10, 12, 14; Jn. 19:30. [2]I Cor. 6:17. [3]Heb. 1:3; 8:1. [4]Jn. 4:21-24; 20:17; Lk. 24:52; Acts 7:55; Col. 3:1; Phil. 3:20-21; I Thess. 1:9-10. [5]See Hebrews chapters 9 and 10; *Mt. 4:10.

81. Who are to come to the table of the Lord?

Those who are displeased with themselves for their sins, yet trust that these are forgiven them, and that their remaining infirmity is covered by the suffering and death of Christ; who also desire more and more to strengthen their faith and to amend their life. But the impenitent and hypocrites eat and drink judgment to themselves.[1]

[1]I Cor. 10:19-22; 11:28-29; *Ps. 51:3; *Jn. 7:37-38; Ps. 103:1-4; *Mt. 5:6.

82. Are they, then, also to be admitted to this Supper who show themselves by their confession and life to be unbelieving and ungodly?

No, for thereby the covenant of God is profaned and His wrath provoked against the whole congregation;[1] therefore, the Christian Church is bound, according to the order of Christ and His Apostles, to exclude such persons by the Office of the Keys until they amend their lives.

[1]I Cor. 11:20, 34a; Isa. 1:11-15; 66:3; Jer. 7:21-23; Ps. 50:16-17; *Mt. 7:6; *I Cor. 11:30-32; *Tit. 3:10-11; *II Thess. 3:6.


Needed adjustments -- according to bible-based bro. Jim...

The Heidelburg is right when it comes to point 4--this is how the Roman Church changes the gospel. It sacrifices the gospel that CHrist died to win the salvation of those who believe in him to make the Mass necessary for the forgiveness of the latest sins committed on earth as well as a way to reduce the time of the "holy" souls in Purgatory.

Nevertheless, we would adjust the reformation viewpoint on 3 to reflect the true reception of Christ's body and blood (perhaps worded like below) for us BibleCatholics.

[3] and also by his glorified body is fully able to be received by us on earth through the elements of bread and wine as promised by Christ himself. --bro. Jim

Cautions against Romanism and the priesthood's proper place

(Short note from Bro. Jim...)

While the late Bishop J.C. Ryle of Liverpool (died 1900) and I may not see exactly eye to eye on the Lord’s Supper (see below), on many matters we are in very real agreement--much of the following included. It's all very worthy of consideration for BibleCatholics. We have much to thank Ryle and others in the old Anglican Church and especially those of the so-called “low church” like Ryle, who are indeed a near dead breed in the days of the ecumenical Roman takeover. Here are some important thoughts Ryle had against the creeping adoption of Roman Catholic errors among Anglican priests and some specific cautions to keep the priesthood itself in proper perspective. (I made a few comments in parenthesis)

Bishop Ryle (pictured at right) wrote:

2. For another thing, I charge you to beware of Anglo-Romanism, and do all you can to resist it.

Resist it in little things. Resist strange dresses, sacrificial garments, the eastward position in consecrating the bread and wine, idolatrous reverence of the consecrated elements, processions, banners, incense, candles on the communion table, turning to the East, crosses and crucifixes in the chancels, and extravagant Church decorations.

Resist it in great things. Oppose with might and main the attempt to re-introduce the Mass and Auricular Confession in our parishes. Send your boy to no school where auricular confession is ever tolerated. Allow no clergymen to draw your wife and daughter to private confession. Oppose sternly, but firmly, the attempt to change the Lord’s Supper at your parish churches, into the Romish sacrifice of the mass. Draw back from the communion in such churches, and go elsewhere. The laity have a great deal of power in this matter, even without going to law. They should tell the clergy their minds. They cannot do without the laity any more than officers in a regiment can do without privates. Let the English laity all over England rise in their might, and say, “We will not have the mass and auricular confession.”

Resist it for Christ’s sake. His Priestly and Mediatorial offices are being injured and dishonoured. They are offices He has never deputed to any order of ordained men.

Resist it for the clergy’s sake. The worst and cruellest thing that can be done is to lift us out of our proper places, and make us lords over your consciences, and mediators between yourselves and God.

Resist it for the laity’s sake. The most degrading position in which laymen could be put, is that of being cringing slaves at the foot of a brother sinner (the priest).

Resist it, not least, for your children’s sake. Do what in you lies to provide that, when you are dead and gone, they shall not be left to the tender mercies of Popery. As ever you would meet your boys and girls in heaven, take care that the Church of England in your day is maintained a Protestant Church, and preserves her Articles and the principles of the Reformation wholly uninjured and undefiled.

--From "What do we owe the reformation" by J.C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool

ON THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND SACRAMENTS
(3) I go on to say that Evangelical Religion does not under value the Christian ministry. It is not true to say that we do. We regard it as an honourable office instituted by Christ Himself, and of general necessity for carrying on the work of the Gospel. We look on ministers as preachers of God’s Word, God’s ambassadors, God’s messengers, God’s servants, God’s shepherds, God’s stewards, God’s overseers, and labourers in God’s vineyard.

But we steadily refuse to admit that Christian ministers are in any sense sacrificing priests, mediators between God and man, lords of men’s consciences, or private confessors (and they are certainly not "another Christ" as taught by Roman Catholicism). We refuse it, not only because we cannot see it in the Bible, but also because we have read the lessons of Church history. We find that Sacerdotalism, or priestcraft, has frequently been the curse of Christianity, and the ruin of true religion. And we say boldly that the exaltation of the ministerial office to an unscriptural place and extravagant dignity in the Church of England in the present day, is likely to alienate the affections of the laity, to ruin the Church, and to be the source of every kind of error and superstition.

(4) I go on to say that Evangelical Religion does not undervalue the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is not true to say that we do. We honour them as holy ordinances appointed by Christ Himself, and as blessed means of grace, which in all who use them rightly, worthily, and with faith, “have a wholesome effect or operation.”

But we steadily refuse to admit that Christ’s Sacraments convey grace ex opere operato, (I'm with that) and that in every case where they are administered, good must of necessity be done. We refuse to admit that they are the grand media between Christ and the soul,—above faith, above preaching, and above prayer. We protest against the idea that in baptism the use of water, in the name of the Trinity, is invariably and necessarily accompanied by regeneration. We protest against the practice of encouraging any one to come to the Lord’s Table unless he repents truly of sin, has a lively faith in Christ, and is in charity with all men. We protest against the theory that the Lord’s Supper is a sacrifice, as a theory alike contrary to the Bible, Articles, and Prayer-book. And above all, we protest against the notion of any corporal presence of Christ’s flesh and blood in the Lord’s Supper, under the forms of bread and wine, as an “idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.”

(I still maintain that we should believe that partaking of the bread and wine is the same as receiving the very body and blood of Christ, as he promised us. "This is my body...this is my blood.." Paul tells us that those who recieve without faith are guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. How can we be "guilty of the body and blood of our Lord" if it is not true?  "...whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord." 1 Cor. 11:27. This is not idolatry as long as we keep to his promise in the Lord's Supper--but it most certainly is when we try to take the elements out of the context Christ gave us--as in so-called Eucharistic adoration--which is most definitely idolatry.)

--From “Evangelical Religion” by J.C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool

Read more Ryle at http://www.tracts.ukgo.com/john_charles_ryle.htm
Short overview at the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_Ryle

From the Heidleberg Catechism...

The Lord's Supper...

Question 75. How does the Lord's Supper remind and assure you that you share in the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross and in all his gifts?

Answer. In this way: Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken bread and to drink of this cup. He has thereby promised: First, as surely as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me and the cup shared with me, so surely his body was offered and broken for me and his blood was shed for me. Second, as surely as I receive from the hand of the one who serves and actually taste the bread and the cup of the Lord which are given me as sure signs of the body and blood of Christ, so surely he feeds and nourishes my soul to everlasting life with his crucified body and shed blood.