Point of View

Don Walton is founder of Time for Truth Ministries and a full-time evangelist and conference speaker. For more information visit www.timefortruth.org.

As soon as the death of Pope John Paul II was announced on April 2, 2005, the Catholic faithful began calling for the sainthood of their beloved pontiff. These calls reached a crescendo at the pope’s funeral, when thousands of mourners began chanting, “Santo Subito,” which is translated “Saint at Once!” Canonization—the process by which the Catholic Church formally declares an individual a saint—normally takes years, and sometimes centuries. The canonization of Pope John Paul II, however, appears to be on the fast track, racing forward at breakneck speed and soon to be accomplished in record-breaking time.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, those canonized by the church may “proffer the merits which they acquired on earth” from their “heroic virtues” to anyone willing to venerate them in public and seek their intercession in prayer. In other words, by bowing down to images of the saints and appealing to the saints to petition God on their behalf, Catholics augment their shortage of personal merits by securing for themselves stipends of the saints’ surplus “merits.” Once canonized and decreed a current occupant of Heaven whose merits were more than enough to bypass purgatory and go straight to paradise, Pope John Paul II will be able to dole out his leftover merits to those lacking sufficient merits of their own.

According to the Bible, salvation has nothing to do with the sufficiency of our personal merits or the proffering of the “saints” surplus merits. Instead, it is based upon the merits of Jesus Christ alone. Salvation is made possible because of who Jesus is and what He has done. It has nothing to do with who we are and what we have done.

If the perfect life and propitiatory death of the Son of God was insufficient for our salvation, then we are hopelessly, helplessly, and eternally undone. No amount of spiritual brownie points from so-called saints can save us. Neither can the “filthy rags” of “our [own] righteousness” ever earn us a right relationship with God (Isaiah 64:6). To believe otherwise is to descend into the depths of heresy and to ascend to the height of folly!

Contrary to the heretical teaching of the Catholic Church, sainthood is not something the church posthumously bestows upon its most dearly departed, but something divinely bestowed upon the church universal. It is not an attainment, but a gracious gift of God, given to all who believe in the sufficiency of Christ’s sinless life, vicarious death, and bodily resurrection. Becoming a saint—one who is saved by God and set apart for God—doesn't take years or centuries; it only takes a split-second. It happens the instant you forsake all hope of meriting your own salvation and place your faith in the merits of Christ alone. Why not come to Christ at once and become a saint right now? “Santo Subito!”