Voluntary works—besides, over and above God's
commandments—which they call works of supererogation, cannot be taught without
arrogancy and impiety. For by them men do declare that they do not only render
unto God as much as they are bound to do, but that they do more for his sake
than of bounden duty is required; whereas Christ saith plainly: When you have
done all that is commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.
You know, when your teacher put bonus questions on the test or let
you write essays and book reports for “extra credit”? Well, jokes on you. There’s no such thing as extra credit.
No matter how much “extra” work you did, you could never earn more
for your final grade than the same 100 points possible for the students who
didn’t do “extra” credit. In fact, if a
teacher sets up his/her grade book properly, the only way to get a 100 average
is to do all of the regular assignments perfectly. That so-called extra credit was really
make-up work. In the final grade, your
extra points can’t earn you anything extra. THERE’S
NO SUCH THING AS EXTRA POINTS in a classroom.
No such thing as extra points in Heaven either.
Way back in the day, the Roman Catholic Church began teaching the doctrine of supererogation.
Supererogation is based on the (false) assumption that you can do enough good
works to merit a place Heaven. The idea
of supererogation is that after you’d earn enough spiritual brownie points to merit
salvation, all the other good you did was credited as extra points of sanctification.
These extra points were like extra dollars in the bank. Priests
and nuns, who went the extra mile with their vows of celibacy, and the
officially recognized saints of the church, who were extra good and extra holy,
all deposited extra good works into this account. Add their deposits to the infinite merit of Jesus
(which they believed was held in Heavenly escrow), and the Church had enough bonus
points to issues extra credit to favored parishioners like a bank giving bonus checks
to favored employees or a teacher gives extra credit to favored students.
Those extra bonus points are called indulgences. You could buy
an indulgence by making an extra-generous donation to the Catholic Church. Get a big enough collection of indulgences,
according to the Catholic doctrine, and you could redeem the points and buy
your way out of Hell without even bothering with repentance. You could even have indulgences allocated to
a loved one who hadn’t been quite good enough to get into Heaven. You heard it right, folks. For the right price, you could pay somebody
else’s way into Heaven.
It’s a very convenient system, especially if you’ve got money,
like the wealthy European nobles who financed the building of cathedrals, or if
you’re a powerful church that needs to finance the building of cathedrals all
over Europe.
Then came along the founders of the Protestant movement who saw a “small”
problem with the Catholic doctrine of supererogation. The problem is that supererogation IS TOTALLY
MADE-UP AND THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS. Supererogation
is a myth. There is not extra credit.
The Bible gives a least 4 reasons why we don’t do supererogation:
1. We can’t be good enough.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6: 23)
Salvation and grace are called gifts
but scripture calls death our wages. The only thing you, I, celibate clergy, and
canonized saints have earned is the judgment of eternal death in Hell. When we receive grace and salvation it’s
because God gave us what we did not deserve.
Job was such a good man that God called him “blameless” (Job 1);
but even Job affirmed that it was impossible for him or anyone else to be demand
grace on the basis of personal merit.
Then Job answered and said: “Truly I know it is so, But how can a man be righteous before God? If one
wished to contend with Him, He could not answer Him one time out of a thousand.”
(Job 9: 1-3)
In the New Testament, Paul, one of the officially recognized
saints of the Roman Catholic Church, reiterated that nobody is good enough, “for all have sinned
and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
2. We can’t buy God’s grace.
We can
give financial offerings to the Lord through church and charity, but you can’t
give one of God’s representatives a check and then demand a spiritual gift from
Heaven when they cash it. Just trying to
do that ticks God off. Just ask Simon
the magician (Acts 8).
But there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practiced
sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was
someone great,... And when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’
hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this
power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”
But Peter said to him, “Your money perish with you, because
you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money! You have neither part nor portion in this
matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of
this your wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be
forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by
iniquity.” (Acts 8: 9-24)
Peter (whom Catholics call a saint and the first pope) didn’t
grant Simon and indulgence, he hit Simon with a curse for having the
blasphemous audacity to think he could purchase a spiritual gift like it was a
pizza. (Or whatever people ordered in
the 1st century.)
3. Works are not transferable.
Your works and your sin are between you and God. Mine are between me and God. When it’s time for judgment, we each
individually mind our own business.
The soul
who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father
bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon
himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. (Ezekiel 18:
20)
This Old
Testament principle was always meant to apply to the New Testament Covenant of
the church. That’s why in Jeremiah 29,
God restated the Mosaic principle of individual responsibility AND connected it
to the prophesied new covenant.
But every
one shall die for his own iniquity; every man who eats the sour grapes, his
teeth shall be set on edge. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I
will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah… (Jeremiah
31: 30-31)
4. We already
owe God EVERYTHING.
Jesus said: “
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first
commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark
12: 30-31)
ALL. You can’t store up extra when you’re required
to give ALL.
It is our
duty to give God every good deed we’ve done, every good deed it’s possible for
us to do, and all the good deeds we will never have a chance to do.
Jesus
broke it down for His disciples in Luke 17.
He sarcastically told them that expecting extra reward for serving God
was like a household servant in the first century expecting his master to let
him eat before he fixed the master’s supper.
“So likewise
you when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are
unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ ” (Luke 17: 10)
We don’t
get extra points for tithes, or love offerings, or sowing seeds, or whatever
we’re calling money this week.
Technically, we already owe God 100%.
We don’t
get bonus points for helping the less fortunate. It is our duty to do unto the least of these
as though we were doing it unto Jesus.
(Mark 25)
We don’t
get extra credit for attending church regularly. That’s our duty. (Hebrews 10:25)
There are
no extra points for shouting, responding to the sermon, and praising God.
Randomly pick 3 Psalms and you’ll see praise commanded in at least two of them.
In Him we
live and move and have our being (Acts 17: 28).
There’s nothing extra left over from that.
One day I
was trying to convince a young man to be more active in church life. He said, “Rev. I’m saved.
Ain’t that enough. Do I get extra
points for doing more stuff.”
I won’t
tell you what I said back, but I wish I had said, “Sorry, but there are no
supererogatory works.”
It’s not
enough to get saved and just be saved.
You’re
not doing God a favor by showing up to church and Bible study and work in the
community.
There’s
no such thing as extra credit. You’re
just doing what you are supposed to do, anyway.
And
honestly, we owe Him even more than that.
---Anderson T. Graves
II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry,
and rural leadership development.
Rev. Anderson
T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey
Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the
Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO); and director of rural
leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Support by
check or money order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel
CME Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al
35064
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