Matthew Everhard is a Presbyterian pastor. His YouTube channel, that goes by his name, has 80,000 subscribers. Today we’ll be taking a look at his video, “Witnessing to your Roman Catholic Friends and Family: How to Share the Gospel with Catholics” (4-8-26). His words will be in blue. I use RSV for biblical citations.
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0:01: We all have Roman Catholic family and friends that we care for. We want them to be saved. We want them to go to heaven when they die. We want them to know Christ and we want them to know a true version, the true version of Christianity and to be saved from a man-made religion that is filled with errors.
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It’s extraordinary — and I say, historically, logically, and theologically impossible — for any Christian or anyone at all, to sum up Catholicism as a “man-made religion” — as if it is totally foreign to the Bible. How different was the view of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. He wrote:
- Christ himself came upon the errors of scribes and Pharisees among the Jewish people, but he did not on that account reject everything they had and thought (Matt. 23[:3]). We on our part confess that there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy; indeed everything that is Christian and good is to be found there and has come to us from this source. For instance we confess that in the papal church there are the true holy Scriptures, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys to the forgiveness of sins, the true office of the ministry, the true catechism in the form of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the articles of the creed … I contend that in the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity and many great and devoted saints. . . . (Concerning Rebaptism, written against the Anabaptists in January 1528; translated by Conrad Bergendoff and published in Luther’s Works, Vol. 40, pp. 229-262, from the original German in WA (Weimar Werke), Vol. 26:144-174; this quote from pp. 231-232)
I just went through this argument ten days ago in my article, Catholics R Christians! DUH! (vs. Steve Christie). I highly doubt that Pastor Everhard will offer us any new arguments on this score. It’ll be — I guarantee, even before listening — the same tired, regurgitated myths, whoppers, and distortions that Catholics have been confronting for over 500 years. There’s nothing new under the sun.
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The anti-Catholic Protestant never goes after other Protestant denominations. You never see a video or articles called, “How to Share the Gospel with Lutherans” or “How to Evangelize Non-Denominational Pentecostals.” They’re all in the fold, no matter how many disagreements they have. But Catholicism is relegated to a sub-Christian category. It’s not true. Luther himself knew this as well as anyone, since he wrote that “everything that is Christian and good” in the Catholic Church was inherited by the fledgling Protestants. So how could Catholicism not be Christian? Good question! If Protestantism is Christian, Catholicism cannot possibly not be Christian.
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0:27 Roman Catholics can be saved. They can know Christ. They can trust in Christ. Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic and he got saved. And John Calvin was a Roman Catholic and he got saved.
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This is the obligatory disclaimer. But it’s not accurate with regard to Luther, because he acknowledged the validity of Catholic baptism (as we see in the quotation above; he never got “re-baptized”), and believed in baptismal regeneration and regarded baptism as essentially the same as justification. Therefore he was already saved according to his own theology; he didn’t have to “get saved” after he was no longer a Catholic. The same was true of John Calvin. He wrote:
Catabaptists . . . deny that we are duly baptised, because we were baptised in the Papacy . . .; hence they furiously insist on anabaptism. Against these absurdities we shall be sufficiently fortified if we reflect that by baptism we were initiated not into the name of any man, but into the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and, therefore, that baptism is not of man, but of God, . . . But if baptism was of God, it certainly included in it the promise of forgiveness of sin, mortification of the flesh, quickening of the Spirit, and communion with Christ. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, 15:16)
We ought to consider that at whatever time we are baptised, we are washed and purified once for the whole of life. Wherefore, as often as we fall, we must recall the remembrance of our baptism, and thus fortify our minds, so as to feel certain and secure of the remission of sins. For though, when once administered, it seems to have passed, it is not abolished by subsequent sins. (Inst., IV, 15:3)
God, regenerating us in baptism, . . . (Inst., IV, 17:1)
The last advantage which our faith receives from baptism is its assuring us not only that we are ingrafted into the death and life of Christ, but so united to Christ himself as to be partakers of all his blessings. . . . Paul proves us to be the sons of God, from the fact that we put on Christ in baptism (Gal. 3:27). (Inst., IV, 15:6)
If Calvin thought he was regenerated in his Catholic baptism, received forgiveness of sins, quickening of the Spirit, communion with Christ, a state of being united to Christ, became a partaker of all his blessings and a son of God, and put on Christ (all his own words), then he couldn’t possibly have not been a Christian when he was a Catholic. Therefore, he didn’t have to get “saved” before or after leaving Catholicism, either. And none of this is harmonious with the ludicrous claim that Catholicism at some point ceased to be a Christian system and became merely “a man-made religion that is filled with errors.“
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0:35 But the problem is this. When we get saved, we want to know what the true Bible truly teaches about God, faith, salvation, grace, heaven, hell, and so forth.
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There is virtually no difference between Catholics and Protestants with regard to the nature of God, heaven, and hell. So I don’t know why Pastor Everhard includes those things. And we’re not as far apart on faith, salvation, and grace as he thinks, but there are real differences there, at least. If he wants to find a denial of eternal hell, then that’s found in the Seventh-Day Adventists, who are Protestants, and an increasing number of professed “evangelicals” like John Stott and Kirk Cameron, who have started denying hellfire because it’s now the fashionable and “cool” thing to do.
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0:50 And so we want people who are Roman Catholic to come out of the man-made innovations that are the corruptions to true biblical Christianity.
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We can hardly do that if we’re given no biblical reasons to do so, and ignore our biblical reasons for why we believe these true doctrines that Pastor Everhard calls “innovations” and “corruptions.”
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4:06 You’re going to try to define your terms and to clarify what you mean by the gospel. And you’re going to try to elicit from them a definition of what they think they mean by the gospel.
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And I’m gonna do what everyone should do: see what the BIBLE states about what the gospel is (what a novelty, huh?), and see if Catholics are outside of the circle of those who believe it and follow it.
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6:55 they’re going to have a ton of human-made doctrines that are nowhere in the Bible.
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He obviously has never been to my blog (see relevant links below). :-)
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7:03 faith alone is the mechanism of salvation, not by works or by religiosity.
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That’s not biblical teaching, which is that we are saved by grace through faith, and that this faith contains within it works, without which it is dead. The Bible doesn’t exclude works from the equation of justification and salvation. See:
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Bible vs. “Faith Alone”: 120 NT & 30 OT Proofs [from 26 out of the 27 NT Books] [8-26-24; revised and expanded on 1-18-26]
Bible vs. “Faith Alone”: 120 NT & 30 OT Proofs [from 26 out of the 27 NT Books] [8-26-24; revised and expanded on 1-18-26]
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9:12 Romans chapter 3:21-26 which has very clear language about what the gospel means what it entails and what is it what it promises.
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Catholics believe all that Paul teaches there (as we believe everything in the Bible). So if this is the gospel it doesn’t have to be preached to us: we already believe it (i.e., as a Church). Paul here teaches 1) faith in Jesus Christ, 2) we’re all fallen and in need of salvation, 3) salvation by grace alone, 4) made possible by Jesus redemption on the cross. No disagreement there. What is neglected is that Paul also repeatedly teaches that faith includes works within itself:
Romans 2:6-10 For he will render to every man according to his works: [7] to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; [8] but for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. [9] There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, [10] but glory and honor and peace for every one who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek.*Romans 2:13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.*Romans 6:22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.Romans 8:13 for if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.
Romans 8:17 . . . heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
Colossians 3:23-25 Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, [24] knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ. [25] For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-8 . . . when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, [8] inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. . . .*1 Timothy 6:11-12 But as for you, man of God, shun all this; aim at righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. [12] Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called . . .*1 Timothy 6:18-19 They are to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, [19] thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed.
St. Paul defines the gospel in Acts 13:16-41 as the resurrection of Jesus:
Acts 13:30-33 But God raised him from the dead; [31] and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are now his witnesses to the people. [32] And we bring you the GOOD NEWS that what God promised to the fathers, [33] this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.’
And to the Corinthians Paul reiterates that the gospel is His death, burial, and resurrection:
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you THE GOSPEL, which you received, in which you stand, [2] by which you are saved, if you hold it fast — unless you believed in vain. [3] For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, [4] that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, [5] and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. [6] Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. [7] Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. [8] Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
This is why it’s so absurd when anti-Catholic Protestants accuse Catholics of denying the gospel. We completely agree with them on all the things that the Bible itself proclaims as the gospel. It’s not a mere [novel Protestant] soteriological theory. It has to do with what God did for us, so that we can be saved, and about how we must necessarily receive it and respond to it. The explicit scriptural proclamations and definitions of the gospel strikingly exclude “faith alone,” while other actions by Jesus and the apostles contradict it by force of example. The gospel is – as Paul teaches – the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. This is the “good news” (which is what gospel means). The prophets foretold these events, not a fine-tuned theory of application of those events to the believer. How could a mere theological abstract reasonably be called “good news”?
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So if the Catholic Church already teaches the gospel, according to Paul, then if a Protestant evangelist runs across an ignorant Catholic who doesn’t know this, and doesn’t know what the gospel is according to the Bible, the evangelist ought to read to him 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, tell him that his own Church agrees with it and send him on his merry way, rather than tell him that his Church doesn’t preach the gospel and that he has to come out of it as a consequence, which is a lie and bad and unnecessary advice. Anti-Catholicism has to always be based on lies and misrepresentations, which is why it’s a tiny part of overall Protestantism.
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And while we’re talking about what saves us, it’s good and helps folks to get saved, to discover that the Bible also has 14 passages that assert baptismal regeneration, or salvation through baptism, and six verses about salvation by partaking of the Holy Eucharist (Jn 6:48-58).
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Photo credit: drawing of Presbyterian pastor Matthew Everhard, for the page, “Matthew Everhard — Sermons & Audio Messages (MP3 Resources)” at Monergism.com.
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Summary: I go through the biblical definition of “gospel” and explain why it’s absurd and self-defeating for anti-Catholic Protestants to think it needs to be preached to Catholics.
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