New Heavens, New Earth by Gordon Haddon Clark

Author:Gordon Haddon Clark [Clark, Gordon Haddon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780940931367
Amazon: 0940931362
Published: 1993-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

17. A Complex of Ideas

1 Peter 3:1822־

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:

By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;

Which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffer-ing of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a prepar-ing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.

A Single Sacrifice

That Christ died once is hardly a startling statement. Neither the ancient Pharisees nor the modem Unitarians would deny it. But fre-quently a verse or phrase becomes important with reference to some false doctrine. If the doctrine had not been invented, the phrase would have remained in obscurity; but once the error is broadcast, the ne-glected phrase comes into its own.

The Roman Catholic mass is a denial of the phrase that Christ died once. The word once means just once, or once for all. When Christ died, his work was finished; he did not have to die again. The merit of his death is sufficient for all time, and nothing more need be added.

But the Roman Church teaches that the mass is a sacrifice, a repetition of Christ’s death on the cross. The sacrifice is offered by a priest, and the priest transforms the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus.

The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (Twenty-second Session, September 17, 1562, Chapter II) states:

[I]n this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated.... [T]his sacrifice is truly propitiatory.... [W]herefore, not only for the sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities of the faithful who are living, but also for those who are departed in Christ and who are not as yet fully purified, is it rightly offered.

It is to be noted that the mass is said to be a propitiatory sacrifice, and is rightly offered for sin and satisfaction, or atonement. And the same Christ dies every time the mass is celebrated.

But all this is far from the teaching of Peter and the other apos-ties. It is an eloquent testimony to the apostasy of the Roman church that the Pope and the Councils should be able so violently to wrest the word of God to their own destruction.

The epistle to the Hebrews is particularly explicit in this regard. Not only does it speak of Christ’s sacrifice as more excellent than the Jewish rites, but it expressly contrasts the many previous sacrifices with Christ’s one sacrifice that does away with all others. “Nor yet that he should offer himself often .

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