The Three Rs of Salvation—Repent, Receive, and Remain

The Catholic Church teaches what we must believe in order to be saved.

After college, I traveled the country with a pro-life organization whose staff were evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants. This made for interesting conversations around the trays of lasagna we ate in the evenings. (If you’ve ever had to feed thirty missionaries, you understand the utility of lasagna.)

One night, we were having a slightly technical discussion about specific topics related to salvation—like whether justification involves an “infused” or “imputed” righteousness—when an older man who was friends with our dinner host politely inserted himself into the conversation:

“Look, I don’t know about all this theology stuff. I’m just a simple man, and I know that when the jailer asked Paul, ‘What must I do to be saved?’, Paul just said to believe in Jesus. I love all you Catholics here, but Paul didn’t say anything about the pope, or purgatory, or rosaries. Just believe in Jesus, and you will be saved.”

The Simple Catholic Plan of Salvation

This man isn’t alone in his attitude toward Catholicism. I remember reading one Protestant website that described the “Catholic plan of salvation” as containing over fifty steps, whereas the “biblical plan of salvation” is just an arrow drawn from “faith in Christ” to “eternal life in heaven.” The attitude could be summed up like this: “God loves us, so he made it simple to understand how to get to heaven. The Catholic view of salvation is anything but simple. Therefore, being Catholic must not be God’s plan for our salvation.”

It’s a common attitude, but it’s not accurate.

Catholic teaching on salvation is biblical, and it can be easily summarized. It only seems complicated if you try to list every single action a person must do or not do to be saved. Moreover, many Protestant plans of salvation would seem just as complicated if they listed everything people will do as a sign that they are saved. 

Let’s start with the claim that Catholicism overcomplicates salvation. 

As support for this claim, Protestants mention things like the sacraments, the papacy, rosaries, purgatory, indulgences, and many other parts of Catholic doctrine or spirituality. Unfortunately, even some well-meaning Catholics contribute to this misunderstanding when they say that Protestants believe in salvation “by faith alone” (Latin: sola fide), whereas Catholics believe we are saved by “faith and works.” But the Catholic Church does not simplistically teach that we are saved by a combination of “faith and works.” 

When I explain the Church’s plan of salvation, I put it this way: Repent, Receive, and Remain. Here’s how it has worked in my own life.

The Three Rs of Salvation

During my conversion in high school, I repented of my sins and received Jesus Christ into my life.

Today, I live out my faith in the knowledge that, if I remain united to Christ until death, I will enter into heavenly glory with him.

That’s all of it: repent, receive, and remain. 

You don’t have to pray the rosary to be saved. You don’t have to perform a certain number of “good deeds” to be saved. And you don’t have to receive all seven sacraments to be saved. (Very few Catholics have ever done that, anyway.) Just repent, receive, and remain.

One reason Protestants and Catholics often talk past each other on the issue of salvation is that many Protestants view salvation as a single moment in our lives—the instant they “got saved.” Catholics agree that there is a single moment in our lives when we go from being a condemned sinner to being a saved child of God. That’s why I referred in the past tense to having repented and then received Jesus Christ when I was in high school. 

But Catholics also recognize that salvation is a process. It doesn’t consist only of the moment we go from being damned to being “saved.” It has a “first moment” and a “last moment.” Our process of salvation continues throughout our lives, as we choose to remain united to Christ until we die and then go to be with him. That’s why Paul speaks of “the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain” (1 Cor. 15:1-2).

Catholics believe in the gospel. We believe we are saved by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that this is good news! Catholics and Protestants agree that Jesus’ victory over death is good news that we accept through faith; we just disagree on how God wants us to respond to that good news.

One of those big differences is on what you must believe to be saved. Whereas Protestants say Catholics overcomplicate salvation, many Protestants, especially “non-denominational” Christians, dangerously understate what we must believe to be saved.

And this is where we see the first reason salvation comes from the Catholic Church: the Church reveals what we must believe to be saved.

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