Published: June 15, 2026 | thefinalconvergence.com
This post is addressed directly to you.
If you are a Roman Catholic, whether lifelong or recent, whether deeply devoted or nominally connected, whether you are attending Mass every week or haven’t been in years, this post was written for you specifically.
Not to take something from you. Not to attack the tradition that has shaped your life, the communities that have formed you, the prayers that have sustained you through the most difficult seasons of your existence. The Hail Marys prayed at bedsides, the rosaries carried through grief, the confession booths entered with genuine contrition, the First Communions received with genuine awe, these experiences were real, and the sincerity behind them was genuine, and nothing in this post dismisses or demeans them.
This post was written to give you something the Church of Rome has not clearly given you. The simple gospel of Jesus Christ, the four sentences Paul gave in 1 Corinthians 15 that are sufficient, complete, and available to you directly, right now, without an institution standing between you and the God who loves you.
Christ died for our sins. He was buried. He rose again on the third day. According to the scriptures.
That is what I want you to have. And I want to tell you why the system you are inside has made it very hard for you to simply receive it.
What Rome Has Added
We examined the Catholic soteriological system in detail in Day 15. But today’s post is not primarily an examination. It is an invitation. So let me state the additions briefly, and then spend the rest of the post on what lies on the other side of them.
Rome has added the sacramental system, seven sacraments that are presented as the channels through which divine grace flows to the believer. The grace Christ purchased at Calvary is not, on the Catholic model, simply received through repentance and faith. It is dispensed through the priestly administration of baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony.
Rome has added purgatory, the teaching that most souls who die in a state of grace are not yet sufficiently pure to enter the presence of God, and must pass through a process of post-mortem purification before they can be admitted to heaven.
Rome has added the ongoing sacrifice of the Mass, the teaching that in every celebration of the Eucharist, Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary is re-presented, and that this re-presentation applies the merits of Calvary to the specific recipients gathered for the Mass.
Rome has added the mediation of Mary and the saints, the teaching that prayer offered through these intercessors is more effective than prayer offered directly, and that Mary in particular holds a unique mediating role between the believer and Christ.
Each of these additions has the same effect: it positions something or someone between the individual soul and the direct access to God that the finished work of Christ provides. And the cumulative weight of these intermediaries is not a lighter burden than the simple gospel. It is a heavier one, a system of ongoing requirements, ongoing sacramental participation, ongoing cooperation with infused grace, ongoing purgatorial purification, that the simple gospel was specifically designed to replace with rest.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
The Sacrifice That Was Finished
The single most important verse for understanding what the simple gospel offers the Catholic reader is Hebrews 10:14: “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” One offering. He hath perfected, past tense, completed action. For ever, not for the duration of this life pending purgatorial completion. For ever. Completely. The sacrifice that was made at Calvary was sufficient to perfect completely and for ever the standing before God of every person who is sanctified, who is genuinely, savingly united to Christ through genuine repentance and genuine faith.
The offering does not need to be re-presented in the Mass because the offering was already sufficient. It does not need the ongoing mediation of Mary and the saints because it already provided complete access to the Father. It does not need the cleansing fire of purgatory because it already perfected the standing of those who receive it.
“But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). Sat down. The posture of completed work. A priest who has finished. Not a priest who returns to the altar daily to offer again what he offered once. Not a priest whose sacrifice requires ongoing application through the Mass. A priest who has sat down, because the work is done. Completely. Finally. For ever.
This is what the Catholic system cannot offer you, because it is built on the assumption that the work needs ongoing application, ongoing completion, ongoing supplementation. But the Word of God says the work is done. And it invites you to rest in that.
The One Mediator
Behind all of Rome’s specific additions lies the same structural problem: the interposition of human mediators between the soul and God. The priest who administers the sacraments. The Pope who speaks with the authority of Christ. Mary who intercedes with unique effectiveness. The saints whose merits can be applied to your account.
But 1 Timothy 2:5 says: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” One. Not one plus a sacramental priesthood. Not one plus Mary. Not one plus the treasury of merit administered by the church. One mediator. The man Christ Jesus. Who gave Himself a ransom for all, and who provides, through that ransom, complete and direct access to the Father for every person who comes through Him.
“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:19-20). Boldness to enter into the holiest. By the blood of Jesus. A new and living way. Not a new and living way that runs through a sacramental system administered by an ordained priesthood. A new and living way that runs through the blood of Christ alone, consecrated by His flesh, available to every believer directly, requiring no human intermediary.
You have access. Right now. Without a priest. Without the Mass. Without the intercession of Mary or the saints. Through the blood of Christ alone; directly, boldly, completely.
The Freedom the Simple Gospel Offers
What the simple gospel offers the Catholic reader is not less than what Rome offers. It is infinitely more.
Rome offers access to God through a system of ongoing sacramental participation. The simple gospel offers direct, immediate, complete access through the finished work of Christ, available to every person who comes through genuine repentance and genuine faith, without institutional mediation.
Rome offers the hope of eventual entrance into the presence of God after the purification of purgatory is complete. The simple gospel offers what Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 5:8, absent from the body, present with the Lord. No intermediate state. No purgatorial purification. Complete access to the presence of God at the moment of the resurrection at His second coming, because the standing was not maintained by their progressive purification but by the finished work of Christ imputed to them through faith.
Rome offers the peace of ongoing confession and absolution administered through a human priest. The simple gospel offers what 1 John 1:9 describes, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us, the direct, personal, immediate forgiveness of a faithful God who does not require the human mediation of an ordained priest to restore the believer who returns to Him in genuine repentance.
This is not less. This is more. It is the freedom that Christ purchased when He sat down at the right hand of God, the freedom of every believer to approach the throne of grace boldly, directly, without the weight of a system between them and the God who loves them.
A Word About What You Will Lose
If you receive the simple gospel, if you come to Christ directly, through faith alone, without the mediation of the Catholic system, you will lose some things that have genuine value.
You may lose the community that has shaped your entire life. The parish, the priest, the fellow parishioners who have been present for the baptisms, the weddings, the funerals. The rhythms of the liturgical year that have structured your experience of time and faith for as long as you can remember. The aesthetic beauty of the Mass, the art, the architecture, the sense of participating in something ancient and vast.
These losses are real. The community was real. The beauty was real. The sense of historical rootedness was real. I do not minimize them.
But the question is not whether the community is real or the beauty is genuine. The question is whether the thing that the system has been doing for your soul is the thing that the finished work of Christ was designed to do. And the answer to that question, when it is brought honestly to the Word of God, is no. The sacramental system has been doing for your soul something that the blood of Christ already did completely. It has been standing between you and a direct access that was already purchased.
The community of genuine believers, the church that gathers around the simple gospel of Christ crucified and risen, that celebrates baptism and the Lord’s Supper as testimonies to what Christ has already accomplished rather than mechanisms through which grace is dispensed, can offer you something the parish community cannot. The peace of Romans 5:1. The freedom of Hebrews 10:19. The direct access of 1 Timothy 2:5. The perfected standing of Hebrews 10:14.
The simplicity that is in Christ. Available to you. Right now.
The Invitation
This is the invitation that the Reformers died to extend.
Come to Christ. Not through a sacramental system. Not through the mediation of Mary or the saints. Not through the ongoing re-presentation of Calvary in the Mass. Not with the hope that purgatory will eventually complete what the cross allegedly left incomplete.
Come directly. Through genuine repentance, the honest acknowledgment of your sin before the holy God who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all, and the genuine turning of your will away from sin and toward the God who is offering you what no institution can offer.
Come through genuine faith, the full personal entrusting of your soul to the finished work of Jesus Christ as the complete and sufficient ground of your standing before God. Not faith plus the sacraments. Not faith plus ongoing merit. Faith alone. In Christ alone. By grace alone.
The sacrifice was finished. Tetelestai. One offering. Perfected for ever. For every person who comes.
That includes you.
“For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” — Hebrews 10:14 KJV
📖 The Simplicity of the Gospel: What It Is, What It Is Not, and Why Everything Else Falls Short Available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Written by Menno Zweers | Book 2 Get your copy on Amazon →
thefinalconvergence.com | Follow on Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube
The Final Convergence 
Leave a comment