Purgatory is the topic today. We briefly touched on purgatory in three past APJs in Episode 1150, 1162, and 1290, but nothing at length. And that changes today with a question from Sydney, who lives in the beautiful state of Arizona, along with me. Hi, Pastor John. I know that some older Christians believed in a secondary refinement or purgatory, purging of the soul after death and before heaven.

C.S. Lewis once rhetorically wrote, "Our souls demand purgatory, don't they?" He explained that Christians should want purgatory as a sort of self-cleaning up before we're ready to enter into the eternal presence of God. He said this in his book, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, page 108. Coming from Lewis, purgatory seems like a humble, preparatory step before we enter eternity.

Biblically speaking, 1 Corinthians 3, 10-15 is the most common biblical proof for it. There we read that "each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done." That's verse 13.

"And if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, although he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." That's verse 15. But does the Bible confirm purgatory? This is really interesting that this question would come just now, because I am listening to Lewis's book, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, at this very moment.

It's on my phone. So I'm sort of primed. As much as I love C.S. Lewis and stand in awe of his gifts of logic and poetic vision and his capacities to express things in vivid, concrete, inimitable, analogical ways, nevertheless, his position and his reasoning on purgatory miss the mark.

He says flat out in Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, page 108, quote—I'll give you a longer quote than was given to us. "I believe in purgatory. Our souls demand purgatory, don't they? Would it not break the heart if God said to us, 'It's true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here'"—meaning heaven—"and no one will upbraid you with these things nor draw away from you.

Enter into the joy. Should we not reply, 'With submission, sir, if there's no objection, I'd rather be cleansed first.' It may hurt, you know. Even so, sir." End quote. It's good writing. I love it. I love it. It's dead wrong, man. I love it. No, it's not quite dead wrong.

I'll try to explain. Now, what's typical of Lewis here, as most places, is that he rarely quotes Scripture. If you've read Lewis—I've read almost all of Lewis—you don't go to C.S. Lewis to watch serious biblical exposition in the making. You don't. No doubt he knows his Bible. Goodness gracious.

He can quote his Greek New Testament probably better than I can. He's probably got parts of it memorized, and his theology is generally true. He's not a heretic, but if he had tried to support this belief with Scripture, he would have been hard put to do it. Now before I go into particular texts that make purgatory, I think, untenable biblically, let's define it the way the Roman Catholic Church does, because they're the ones who promote this doctrine, and let's see whether Lewis's argument stands on its own terms.

So here's what the Catholic Church, the catechism of the Catholic Church, says in defining purgatory. Quote, "All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation, but after death they undergo purification so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

The church gives the name purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned." So that's all from the catechism of the Catholic Church. There is no doubt that we must be purified completely without sin in order to enter the very presence of God in our final state.

Otherwise we'd be incinerated, and God would be defiled and dishonored. None of us believe that is going to happen, so we're all in agreement about that. That's not going to happen. Nobody's going into the very presence of God with any stain or inner sin left. But here's the assumption that Lewis and the Catholic Church bring to the situation.

Their assumption is that it requires another process beyond the process of this life to get abiding sin out of our lives. Now why would they assume that? Because we had a relatively long process of purification or sanctification in this life by the Holy Spirit, and it did not perfect us.

We realize it's going to take a divine stroke or word of purification by the hand of God or the Word of God the way Jesus purified people instantaneously with a word in order to finish this purifying work. Why would we not rather assume that God does it first progressively in this life and then at the end finishes it instantaneously?

But enough with our human reasoning. Let's go to the Bible. The Roman Catholic Church includes some books in their Bible, the Apocrypha—it's called the Apocrypha—which Protestants don't have in our Bible. One of those books is 2 Maccabees, and in chapter 12, verses 42 to 45, there is this sentence, "Therefore Judas Maccabeus made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin." Now from that statement, the Catholic Church infers that not only should you pray for the dead, but the dead have sins from which they must be delivered, which leads them to postulate purgatory.

Now Sidney in his question points out that if you're going to go after any New Testament text at all to support purgatory, the one you would go to most is 1 Corinthians 3, 13 to 14, and I'll quote it again to show how inapplicable it is to purgatory. "Each one's work," so each Christian's work, "will become manifest, for the day will disclose it." So this is the judgment day in which we are going to be shown to be true or false, and our works are going to be shown to be stubble or valuable.

"Because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." Now in that text, there's no hint of passing through an extended period of time with the aim of cleansing us from our own impurities.

This is a picture of a single one-time event where our works from this life are shown to be either stubble, for which there's no reward, or precious stones, for which there will be a reward. There's no foundation here for purgatory in a text like this. On the contrary, several texts point in the opposite direction about what happens when we die as Christians.

Here's what Paul says in Philippians 1:23, "My desire is to depart"—that's die—"and be with Christ, for that is far better." So the picture is death and an immediate, joyful fellowship with Jesus. Same thing confirmed in 2 Corinthians 5, 6-9, only it's even clearer. He says, "We are always of good courage.

We know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. We would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him." I don't know how it could be much clearer than to say, "Away from the body is at home with the Lord." That's our immediate hope, not any intervening purgatory between being away from the body and being at home with the Lord.

But to be away from the body is to be at home with the Lord, which Paul says is far better. So let me go back and suggest why what C.S. Lewis imagined between the dirty saint and God happening at the pearly gates—this discussion they had—would, in fact, never happen.

Now, you recall, Lewis pictures God saying, "It's true, my son, that your breath smells, your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here, and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you, so enter into the joy." Now, if that were to happen, the saint surely would indeed say, "Yes, Lord, nothing impure shall enter your presence." Would you now then, in great mercy, complete the purchase of your son, namely my cleansing, and simply say the word, be clean, the way your son did?

When the apostle Paul pictured the resurrection of all the imperfect saints in 1 Corinthians 15, he said, "Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed." Now that instantaneous change of our bodies at the resurrection is a better, more biblical picture of what happens to the imperfect soul at death.

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, God says to us, just like Jesus said to the leper in Luke 5:13, "Be clean," and immediately his leprosy left him. That will happen physically at the resurrection, and for those who die before the resurrection, it happens spiritually at death.

Glorious. There is a metamorphosis to be had before we can enjoy eternity forever, and it happens in the blink of a camera flash. We will see Christ and become like Him in the same moment. Beautiful. Thank you, Pastor John. Thank you for joining us today. You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast.

All that can be done at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well you don't have to be a Christian to see the destructive power of pornography on the human brain. You don't have to be a Christian to discern the difference between love and lust. You certainly don't have to be a Christian to know that adultery destroys marriages.

But you must be a Christian to see the battle for sexual purity within its fullest reality. So how do we battle lust like Christians? And how does sexuality find its ultimate purpose and right place in our lives? Next time we will take a look at the key to it all.

The key to it all. That's no overstatement. The key to it all. Don't miss it. I'm your host Tony Reinke, and we'll see you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening.