I was raised in the Catholic church and attended Catholic elementary school through the fifth grade.
Then, during high school, I was born again by the Spirit of God!
When I started attending college as a young Christian, God began working with me to uproot many wrong doctrines I had been taught in the Catholic church.
This started when I mentioned something I had been taught in the Catholic church and a Christian friend asked "Where is that in the Bible?" I was sure it was in the Bible because it is what I had been taught from childhood. But it wasn't in the Bible.
What a shock to learn I had been taught things that are not in the Bible!
After that, various doctrines were brought to my attention, and I began checking to see if they lined up with scripture.
Some times I would just be reading in the New Testament and a scripture would strongly stand out to me and I would be reminded of a doctrine I had been taught that was contrary to this scripture.
As I chose to believe what God has said in the Bible above all else, many wrong doctrines were uprooted from me.
One scripture used by God with me was:
I Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;
I was reminded of the Catholic church doctrine in which we were taught to go to a Catholic priest to confess our sins. After confessing our sins, the priest would then assign "penance" we were to do to pay for the sins. (Usually the penance was saying some memorized prayers a specified number of times.)
Yet here, in the New Testament of the Bible, we are told that there is ONE mediator between God and men, and that is Jesus.
Reading this, it was so clear that we are to confess our sins to God, not to a Catholic priest.
And it is only through Jesus Christ, by the payment HE has already made for my sins by His blood, that my sins are forgiven. There is nothing I could ever do to pay for my sins. But Jesus has already paid for my sins.
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