Where Are Sins Purged?

Recently, I was asked to explain why I didn’t accept the Roman Catholic teaching on Purgatory. I wanted to share my response with our blog readers. Understanding the problem with a place like Purgatory has everything to do with the meaning of the gospel.

The idea of purgatory is offensive to anyone who understands the gospel of salvation through faith in Christ. In short, I don’t believe there is a place called purgatory for the following reasons:

(1) it is no where taught in Scripture;

(2) it is based on the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church centuries after the apostolic age (even though Catholic history claims the idea of purgatory existed before the apostolic age, this cannot be supported);

(3) when a person dies, according to Scripture, they either go to heaven or to hell; there is no intermediate state (in the OT, “Abraham’s Bosom” was a Jewish idiom for paradise where God is – i.e. heaven);

(4) most importantly there is only one place ever given in Scripture where sins can be purged from believing sinners — that is on the cross of Jesus Christ in His person and through His finished work on our behalf.

To “purge” means to clear of guilt; to free from moral or ceremonial defilement. According to Scripture, this can never be done by man on his own behalf; only God can clear of guilt brought by sin. The Old Testament sacrifices were a shadow of the purging and sacrificial work of Christ on Calvary.

On the cross, all of the sins of every person who would ever believe were purged from us and credited to Jesus; in turn, all of Christ’s perfection, holiness, and righteousness was credited (or imputed) to His people through faith in Him. From the cross Jesus declared, “It is finished!”

Whenever the Bible speaks of believers’ justification, it always speaks of a past-tense event that occurs at the moment of faith: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1).

“Having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him” (v. 9).”There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Our justification is an accomplished fact, not an unfinished project to be completed by us in purgatory.

No person can suffer to pay for their own sins either in this life or in the life to come. Purgatory is an invention of men and must be rejected for the reasons stated above.

With love in the truth,
Pastor Grant