Success Strategy for Purgatory

"The purpose of purgatory is to cleanse one of imperfections ... souls suffer for a time of purging that prepares them to enter heaven ..."
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Broderick, ©1987

The Bible teaches that Jesus' death at Calvary paid in full the eternal death penalty of sin, but that there are still temporal penalties for sin before we get to heaven.

Sometimes, the consequences for sin have a clear cause and effect—showing up drunk and being fired, committing a crime and being arrested, having an affair and being divorced.

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, "See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you."
~ John 5:14 (NKJV)

A clear cause and effect is often less evident. When does God prevent the affair brewing by bringing a layoff? When is the person running from God halted in their tracks by a tragic accident? When does God allow the toxins bred in a bitter heart to run a physical course throughout a body?

And when, like Job, does sin have no direct role in the suffering designed for a higher purpose?

And His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.
~ John 9:2-3 (NKJV)

Whether we suffer for our own sin or humanity's collective sin, one of the purposes of our time on earth is to be cleansed of sin. We suffer, for a time, the purging that prepares us to enter heaven.

That might not line up perfectly with the full definition of purgatory in my Catholic Encyclopedia, which says purgatory is a place visited after death. But the above excerpt does line up with how I've come to view the hell we've made of the earth, this purgatory we visit before death.

The success strategy for life in purgatory is to remember:

• Our purpose in life isn't to be happy, but to be holy (1 Peter 1:15-16).

• Jesus was our substitute on the cross, in payment of sin's death penalty, and we now live as His substitute, in living testimony to God, in the place even our Master grew weary of (Mark 9:19).

• For the soul sealed by Jesus' blood and Spirit, this world is the only hell or purgatory we will know. For the soul who wills not to know Him, this world is the only heaven.

Thursday: Hell's Unpardonable Sin

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This post is part of the "One Word at a Time" blog carnival hosted by Peter Pollock. You're invited to visit his site and see what others are saying about today's one-word theme: Strategy.

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