"We must feed the hungry. Shelter the widow and orphan. Have mercy. Love God and our neighbor. Eat the Body of Christ. Drink the Blood of Christ. Baptize in the name of the Trinity. And so on."
Aside from your doctrine of transubstantiation, I would agree with you.
...But here's the thing: the Biblical standard for those things is PERFECTION. In other words, not ONCE can you fail to do those things. Even the wrong motive would be considered failure.
James 2:10 - "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it."
Good luck being perfect aside from the righteousness of Christ.
An excerpt from
"The Gospel Part One":
Consider the current Catholic system. If you commit even once
any one of these sins without confessing before death you have a one-way ticket to Gehenna whether you believe Jesus died for you or not. In fact, every single time you commit a "mortal sin" in Catholicism you become unsaved and are "re-saved" upon confession and priestly pardon. Notice that this process completely decouples forgiveness from faith in Jesus' finished work. Instead, the Torah system of the endless sacrifices of bulls and goats is replaced with the Catholic system of the endless sacrifices of the Mass, and priestly confession, and other sacraments, because no one can truly live up to the Catholic standard just as no one could live up to the Levitical standard.
In light of the Catholic system consider also Jesus' standard where hatred = murder and lust = adultery. Are people so blind as to not see how at any given time the vast majority of Catholics would be unsaved under their own standard?
I'm staking my life on the perfect perfection and obedience that Jesus already had, and which God credits to my account by grace through faith.
"However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness." - Romans 4:5
Because I have been freely pardoned, I am freed to actually do works with the right motives:
"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." - 1 John 4:18
Please clarify this for me.
Do you believe that - if you were to commit murder and did not repent of it before death - you would still go to heaven because you are ‘saved’?
It’s a heck of a rhetorical question, I know.