This place where men must go after death to purge their sins is an invention of religion. The word purgatory comes from the word purge, and the Bible says that Christ βby Himself purged our sinsβ without any help from us (Heb. 1:3).
The Lord told the dying thief, βTo day shalt thou be with Me in paradiseβ (Luke 23:43). This is significant, since the inspired Word of God calls this man a thief, and it was his own testimony to the other thief that βwe receive the due reward of our deedsβ (v. 41). That is, he was admitting he had not been framed or misjudged, but had indeed committed crimes worthy of the death penalty. If there was a Purgatory, this man would have gone there, yet we have the Lordβs word on it that he did not.
If anyone needed to go to Purgatory, it was the carnal Corinthians! Yet Paul told even these sinful believers that they could be βconfidentβ that βto be absent from the bodyβ is βto be present with the Lordβ (II Cor. 5:8). Because of the perfection, completion, and sufficiency of Jesusβ sacrifice, we are immediately in the Lordβs presence after death, fully cleansed, free from sin, glorified, perfected, and ultimately sanctified.
Jesus suffered for our sins so that we could be delivered from suffering. To say that we must also suffer for our sins is to say that Jesusβ suffering was insufficient. To say that we must atone for our sins by cleansing in Purgatory is to deny the sufficiency of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus (1 John 2:2). The idea that we have to suffer for our sins after death is contrary to everything the Bible says about salvation. source 1 source 2
