I sometimes wonder what it would look like if Amazon started selling indulgences.
“SoulPrime™ — Skip the wait for forgiveness!
One-click grace, Prime-eligible!”
Basic Mercy ships in three to five business days, or upgrade to Prime Grace™ for instant absolution with angelic delivery.
And in the fine print: “No refunds after death. Terms subject to divine sovereignty.”
We laugh — and we should.
But then I have to ask, isn’t that what we try to do sometimes?
Find an easier way to feel clean?
A quick checkout for the soul?
Grace can’t be ordered or shipped.
It was already delivered — once for all — on a cross.
And that’s where the real fire fell: the fire that doesn’t burn.
I once met a man who worked the furnaces in a steel mill on the south side of Chicago. He said the heat had a voice. When the doors slid open, the blaze didn’t just glow; it spoke. It hissed at the rust, roared at the scrap, and turned what was crooked into something straight. He told me, “You don’t just fix metal here, you redeem it. But you never want to be on the wrong side of the flame.”
Most people understand that without a theology class. Somewhere deep in us we know there is a fire in the universe that is more than heat. It’s holy. It’s the “no” of a righteous God to everything that destroys His children. And because we know that, religions across the world have invented ways to manage it—rituals, candles, prayers, penances—insurance policies for the soul. Somewhere in that tangle, the Western church imagined a hallway between earth and heaven, a place to finish the cleansing for those who died in God’s grace but still smudged with earth. They called it purgatory. It wasn’t born from hatred of God; it was born from the fear of meeting Him unprepared.
I understand that fear. I’ve looked in the mirror enough to know there are smears a quick rinse won’t remove. Words I wish I could recall, thoughts that wandered where I don’t want to confess, moments I loved myself more than the One who first loved me. If heaven is pure and I am not, how will I stand there? That’s the honest question purgatory tried to answer.
But before we go there, let me walk you down a German street five centuries ago. A monk in black is listening to a sound he can’t bear anymore. It’s the jingle of coins in a wooden box and the chant of a Dominican friar named Johann Tetzel. The man has set up shop like a traveling carnival of religion. He preaches fire hot enough to blister a crowd. He paints purgatory in colors that make old men cry and children cling to their mothers. Then he lifts his voice and boasts, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”
What a business model. Weaponize fear. Monetize forgiveness. Offer a discount on pain. He wasn’t selling second chances to rebels determined to run from God. He was selling hope to grandmothers who missed their husbands and farmers who buried their babies. He was selling relief to sons who couldn’t sleep for thinking about their father’s temper and what that might mean on the other side. He was selling to people just like us—people who knew about the furnace and wondered if there was any way to face it and live.
They called it an indulgence, a purchase order on mercy. The money helped raise the marble of St. Peter’s in Rome. But one sad monk named Martin Luther heard the sales pitch and something broke. He didn’t start with rage. He started with a question. Then another. Then ninety-five of them, nailed to a church door in a little town called Wittenberg. Those nails were not the end of the world; they were the beginning of one. And under every question you could hear the same aching refrain: If forgiveness can be bought, what did the cross buy?
Now, friend, I’m not here tonight to throw stones across five hundred years. I’m here to say something gentler and truer and nearer: indulgences didn’t die with Tetzel. We still buy them—only we use different currency. We trade a week of better behavior for a lighter conscience. We tip heavy at lunch and call it kindness to quiet the memory of a sharp tongue. We promise God we’ll do better next time and slip a little spiritual coupon onto the counter of heaven. We tell ourselves we’re paying something down. And the cross—God help us—becomes a receipt.
Listen to me with love: when forgiveness is for sale, grace becomes a commodity, and the cross becomes a transaction. But Calvary was never a transaction. It was an invasion of mercy. It was God saying, “Stand back from the furnace. I’m going in.”
This is why Luther’s hammer still echoes. He wasn’t crusading against coins; he was defending a Savior. He saw that any money, effort, or ego spent to improve what Christ already finished turns religion into a business plan and turns worship into branding. He learned a phrase that should be carved into the lintel of every church door and the front of every pulpit: Money spent to improve what Christ already finished is filthy lucre. Money spent to proclaim what He finished is holy offering. Motive makes the difference. One tries to buy grace; the other broadcasts it. One says the cross almost saved me; the other says the cross completely saved me. One jangles a strongbox. The other lifts up Jesus.
But I told you we’d answer the honest heart behind purgatory. Here it is. Scripture says, “Nothing unclean shall enter” the city of God. Heaven is not a gated community for good people; it is a home for holy people—people who have been made clean. And most of us will not die with our Bibles underlined and our halos on straight. We’ll die half-formed, half-grown, mid-sentence in our sanctification. So the longing makes sense: “Lord, if there’s grime left on me, could there be one more wash before glory?” That is the reverent fear that mothered purgatory.
I want to honor that fear. It’s not wicked to want to be clean before you see Him. It’s wise. The problem is not the longing. The problem is the location of the fire. The gospel doesn’t deny the need for cleansing; it simply moves the furnace. It places it not beyond your funeral but back at the cross. The fire we fear is the fire that already fell. And it did not fall on you.
Do you remember Moses in the desert, weary and dry, keeping a flock that was not his, in a land that was not home? He saw a bush that burned but was not consumed. Fire that did not devour. Heat that did not destroy. Holiness that did not harm. He took off his sandals because the ground was holy, but he did not run. That’s what you will find if you will dare to stand at Calvary and look long: a fire that burns the guilt but refuses to burn the guilty. A blaze that consumes the sin but holds the sinner with nail-pierced hands. The holy fire of God in the body of a man, crucified between thieves.
A dying criminal understood this better than a thousand philosophers. He did not ask for time to be purified. He did not bargain for a provisional program of postmortem improvement. He just turned his head as far as the nails would let him and said, “Jesus, remember me.” And the Savior—His back lacerated, His lungs collapsing, the furnace of judgment focused and full—did not say, “After you have burned away your residue.” He said, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Today. Not after a hallway of pain. Not after a quota of flame. Today. Why? Because the cleansing was in the blood beside him, not in a fire beyond him.
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Let me come back to Tetzel for a moment—not to scold the past, but to rescue the present.
He sold paper promises to terrified people who believed the fire would finish what grace began.
And Luther heard the coins and watched the tears and said, “No more.”
He read Romans and found a door standing open with “Faith” carved over the arch.
He whispered first to his own trembling soul and then to the world, “The just shall live by faith.”
Not by installments.
Not by indulgence.
Faith—not as a mood, but as a receiving.
Faith—not as a deed, but as an empty hand.
Faith—not as a payment, but as a yes.
Do you see the difference?
Indulgence is what we pay to feel safe.
Faith is what we say to be saved.
One counts; the other trusts.
One hoards; the other lets go.
One keeps the furnace outside the city, roaring in the dark.
The other sees that the furnace has already been brought into the very heart of God.
The Son steps into it for us and then steps out carrying us, and the only fire He leaves behind is called the Holy Spirit, who burns in us like a lamp that does not go out.
So then, what is purgatory’s main claim and how does the gospel answer?
Purgatory claims to protect a holy heaven by finishing a half-done soul.
The gospel proclaims a holy heaven opened wide to a blood-bought soul, and then the Spirit finishes the growth in the light of love.
Purgatory imagines a fire after grace to make us worthy.
The gospel reveals a fire in grace that makes us welcome.
Purgatory tries to solve the problem of lingering sin with pain.
The gospel solves it with a Person.
And that Person said, “It is finished.”
Now let me turn and face a different temptation, because the devil plays both ends of the table.
If he can’t trap you with indulgence—paying for forgiveness—he’ll try to lull you with indifference—assuming forgiveness means sin no longer matters.
“If Jesus paid it all,” he whispers, “why worry how you live?”
That is not grace; that is anesthesia.
Real grace wakes you up.
Real grace makes you hungry for holiness because you finally know holiness will not throw you away.
Real grace sends you back to your enemies with new words and back to your spouse with new ears and back to your temptations with new strength.
The same fire that did not burn you at the cross now burns in you for others.
You become merciful because you were spared.
You become truthful because a Man told you the truth and loved you anyway.
You become pure not because you are afraid of a furnace beyond the grave, but because you have walked into a furnace called Calvary and came out loved—and love cleanses better than fear ever did.
Let me speak to the one who has a very specific guilt.
You wronged someone you cannot find now.
A parent is gone.
A friend will not answer your calls.
A marriage is a field of stumps where a forest used to be.
You imagine God holding you at the edge of the dance until a certain amount of sorrow has paid the tab.
Hear the word of the Lord:
“The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.”
All sin is a phrase with no back door.
All sin lifts the calculator out of your hand.
All sin tells you there is no purgatory for the forgiven, only the patient, purifying companionship of the Spirit until the day you see Jesus and—oh wonder—become like Him in an instant because you see Him as He is.
We talk a lot about sanctification, and rightly so.
That is the Spirit’s daily, kindly work—peeling your fingers off your idols one by one, teaching you to prefer quiet prayer to noisy worry, turning your appetite from gossip to intercession, bending your will toward the poor, the unseen, the ones Jesus calls “the least of these.”
Sanctification is not a hallway of pain after you die.
It is a hallway of presence while you live.
It does not add to the cross; it shows the cross in your life.
The wedding ring doesn’t make you married; the vows did that.
The ring displays the vow.
Sanctification is the ring.
The cross is the vow.
Do you know what happens when a church believes this?
We stop selling spirituality by the ounce.
We stop turning forgiveness into a fundraiser.
We still pass the plate because mission costs money, but we do it with laughter, not fear—with open hands, not strongboxes.
We build buildings so there will be rooms for prodigals to come home, not to add square footage to our righteousness.
We give not to buy shorter lines at the judgment but to make longer tables at the feast.
We sing “Jesus Paid It All,” and then we pay for groceries for a single mom because paid-for people love to pay it forward.
We confess quickly because we’re not trying to maintain a score.
We repent deeply because we’re not afraid the One we turn toward will throw us away.
The fire that used to terrify us now lives in us like a lamp on a cold night, and we carry it into the dark.
Someone here is thinking, “Pastor, I hear you. But I still feel dirty. I still feel like there’s something left to burn.”
That is the devil’s favorite echo in a tender heart.
He loves to take reverence and twist it into reluctance.
He loves to turn reverence for holiness into a hesitation to come home.
I want you to hear heaven talk back:
“There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Not “less condemnation.”
None.
“By one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.”
Not “improved most of the way.”
Perfected—forever—while the Spirit keeps shaping your today.
Today.
We began with a furnace that could devour a man.
We end with a bush that does not consume, and a cross where the fire burned once for all and did not leave ash where a man had been, but left an empty tomb where death used to boast.
This is the fire that doesn’t burn.
This is why we can bring our worst to Him without fear.
This is why revival isn’t a mood; it’s a meeting—with a Person whose eyes are flames and whose hands are gentle.
I want to ask you to do something brave and simple.
Trade in your indulgences tonight.
All of them.
The promises you make to buy yourself a peaceful sleep.
The secret bargains you strike with God—the “if You’ll do this, I’ll do that” contracts you’ve kept in your pocket.
The certificates you write for yourself that say, “I’ll be better next time, and then God will smile.”
Bring them to the cross and let the Man with the wounds mark them Paid in Full.
And then, with those same empty hands, take what He has wanted to give you since the first day you learned your name: Himself.
If you are not sure you belong to Him, if you have believed in a Jesus who needs your help, if you have lived in a hallway of fear, I invite you to step into the room where the fire is love.
Pray with me as if it were the first time, or the first true time:
> “Jesus, I am done buying.
I am done bargaining.
I am done standing outside Your love with my coupons and my promises.
I bring You my sin and my shame, my proud achievements and my private failures.
I bring You my fear of the fire.
I trust Your cross.
I trust Your blood.
I trust Your Word that says it is finished.
Cleanse me now.
Fill me with the Holy Spirit—the fire that does not burn me, but makes me new.
I am Yours.
Today. Amen.”
Church, the bush still burns.
The ground is still holy.
And the fire still doesn’t burn.
So take off your sandals—your pride, your pretense, your purchase orders—and come close.
Look again at the Man on the middle cross until the old economy in your soul dissolves and the new one takes hold, where everything is gift, and the only price ever paid was paid by Him.
Then rise and go...
°° Love your neighbor like someone who will never be thrown away.
••Give like someone who has already received everything.
°°Sing like people who will never stand in a line paying down a debt with years of sorrow.
°°Live like children warmed by a fire the world does not understand.
And when the Accuser comes tonight with his ledger and his calculator, let him hear the sound of another hammer, older than Wittenberg, ringing out on a hill.
°°Let him see a banner over your life written in red.
°°Let him stand baffled at a bush that blazes and a heart that refuses to be consumed.
Tell him, “I am not on the wrong side of the flame anymore.
My Savior walked into the furnace, and when He walked out, He carried me.
The only fire left for me now is love.”
If you will live there, you won’t need indulgences.
You will not fear purgatory.
You will not be haunted by the math of mercy.
You will be held by a Person whose holiness is your home.
And when your final day comes—and it will—you will not say, “Give me time to burn.”
You will say, “Take me home.”
And you will hear—not after a season, not after a syllabus of suffering, but as the first word you hear on the other side—“Today.”
The fire has spoken.
It fell on Him.
It freed you.
Walk in the warmth.
And let the world see what happens when grace stops being a product and becomes a Person again.
Amen.
