AP

Several years ago, in front of a large crowd the late Pope Francis was put in an awkward situation. A shy, sobbing boy asked a difficult question. The boy, Emmanuelle, asked weeping whether his unbelieving father who had just passed away would be in heaven?

His father didn’t believe in God, but he had baptized his 4 children. Now, many of us, have found ourselves in awkward situations through such delicate and sensitive questions. It was a question to which every son or daughter would dearly like to know the answer. How did the Pope answer? What is the biblical answer?

The Pope was sensitive and asked the boy to come up to him and they spoke quietly. Then, in front of the whole crowd the Pope told of the answer that he had given to the crying boy. Here was the Pope’s golden opportunity to teach the crowd about how to get to Heaven and how to escape Hell – that salvation was not by good works like getting your children baptized (or christened in Roman Catholic terminology) but through saving faith in Jesus Christ.

But that was not what happened. In a message that pandered to the unbelieving world, the Pope told the crowd: ‘The one who says who goes to Heaven is God. (But God has) a Father heart. God has a dad’s heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children ….do you think that God would be able to leave him far from Himself? Does God abandon His children? Does God abandon His children when they are good?’

Sadly, most Australians, even many church goers would believe the Pope. Many people sincerely believe they will get into Heaven by doing just enough good things. But that is not what the Bible says. If we could get into Heaven by being good, then what was the point of Jesus being on the cross? The cross teaches us many things.

One thing it clearly teaches is that all people are born sinful, not righteous. Each person is so desperately bad that only the cross of Jesus could solve the problem of sin. That is what the Pope should have said. Instead, he soothed the people into believing that good works are enough, that it isn’t necessary to trust in Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

Compare the Pope’s answer to a true historical conversation between an unbelieving Roman Catholic priest who was sincerely confused about how to get to Heaven and a pious saved elderly lady who was dying. The priest’s name was Martin Boos. The year was 1788 or 1789 – he never could entirely recall the year of the amazing conversation that led to his conversion.

Like another Martin (Luther) before him who tried to get into Heaven by his pious works, Martin Boos often lay in winter on cold floors scourging himself until he bled. He fasted, gave bread to the poor, took the sacraments, and spent as much time as he could in church. He thought that if he did enough religious things he would earn just enough points to scrape into Heaven.

One day Boos visited that elderly and dying woman. She was known for her deep humility and amazing godliness in life. Boos recounts the conversation almost verbatim.

I said to her: ‘You will die very peacefully and happily.’

‘Why so?’ she asked.

‘Because you have led such a pious and holy life.’

The good woman smiled at my words and said ‘Were I to die relying on my own piety I know to a certainty that I should be damned. But trusting in Christ my Saviour I can die comfortably … If I listen to you what would become of me? How should I be able to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, where we must give an account of every idle word? I should certainly be lost if I built happiness and Heaven on myself and my own merits and piety … Which of my actions and virtues would be found of full weight, were He to lay them in the balances? No, if Christ had not paid for mine, if He had not atoned for me and paid my ransom, I should with all my good works and pious life have eternally perished. He is my hope, my salvation and my eternal happiness’.

That is the kind of answer the Pope should have told the boy and the crowd – that we are not our own saviours, for Christ alone saves. How many people in our homes, and on our streets, and in our churches are trusting in themselves and not in Christ? What will happen to them on the Last Day?

Presbyterians cannot be cold indifferent Christians. Christians who hold to sound biblical doctrine must be extraordinary in evangelizing the confused lost masses with the clear message: Jesus saves and He alone. Their eternal lives depend on His loving sinless sacrificial death from which He rose victorious. Not only did He defeat Satan’s curse on sinners, but He paid the price of every person who by God’s grace puts his or her faith in their Lord and Saviour.

– Troy Appleton