Do Protestants prefer self to God? Blindness to sight? Disobedience to obedience? Death to life?
The brief passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews 5:8-10 could not be clearer: “Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered; and when He was made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.”
Could St. Paul be clearer? And, for whom is his clear message intended? He is writing not only to Judah and his own Tribe, Benjamin, and not only to the Ten Northern Tribes. How large an audience is he addressing?
The name “Hebrew” appears in throughout Europe in many forms. There are lands and rivers with names including Iberia and Eber and Hibernia from Turkey to Spain to Ireland. St. Paul is telling all the sons of Abraham, all the Hebrew people, in all the lands to which they have spread over the preceding generations how to get to Heaven. Genetically, he is writing to our own Hebrew ancestors, and to us, as well.
St. Paul reminds every person, Catholic or Protestant, lost or saved, of the only thing that makes us fit for Heaven: “obey Him”.
How could St. Paul be clearer? Who is too pig-headed to understand “He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.”?
There is a “Tungsten Triangle” of belief to embrace:
1. We obey in our choice of Church (“Thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church. . .”).
2. We obey by receiving Communion in The Only Church He Founded (“If you do not eat My Body and drink My Blood you do not have life in you.”)
3. And, by obeying Him, we become His friends (“If you obey My Commands you are My Friends.”)
We must pray for those who will not see. Their pride hurts them in this life and the next. We must plead with God, asking Him to set them free from their precious pustules of vanity that keep them from heeding Him.
Only obedience brings salvation.
