How Should Missionaries Address Sacramental vs Gospel Assurance for New Believers From Catholicism?

How should missionaries address sacramental vs gospel assurance for new believers coming from Catholicism?

Believers coming from a Catholic background may have used the words grace, faith, cross, hope, gospel. But we need to be aware of the fact that these words, although similar in the sound, they have a very different meaning in the Catholic account of the gospel. And so even though people may talk about salvation by faith, what I mean is not what the Bible means— that is, it is not a salvation that is received by faith alone as a gift of God, but is always considered as to be something that is a mixture, a combination of what God does and what we do in order to merit it.

And so the sacraments are external observances that help the Catholic believer to be reassured and to walk in the journey of hoping to then receive possibly salvation at the end, after going through in the afterlife a time of purification in purgatory.

The gospel, the good news, is exactly the opposite— that is, that Christ has accomplished the work of salvation for us, and salvation is a gift from beginning to end. And we don't have to add on top of it, we don't have to do something more than stretching the empty end of our faith and receiving the gift.

And so that brings a responsibility in discipleship, because people coming from a Roman Catholic background, they struggle with the issue of assurance, still thinking that the assurance is the result of their works, and not relying and resting on the fact that the assurance that God gives us rests on Christ's complete, accomplished work on the cross and the resurrection, waiting for His Second Coming.

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