31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36As it is written,‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ 37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth*, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
*Nor bishops who are women, nor bishops who are "wrongly" partnered, nor biblical literalists, nor biblical scholars, nor Lambeth, nor GAFCON, nor reasserters, nor reappraisers....
3 comments:
Amen, and amen.
True but they can cut you off from the church, a living, teaching body (which doesn't claim the power to change the apostolic ministry or bless sins against nature - Protestants claim that power) and the true gate built by God as described in John 10.
Saying those things don't matter amounts to 'God, if he exists, loves me anyway so I'll stay home on Sunday'.
Which of course is what a lot of post-modern people do.
(Moderns were utilitarian: going to church is good for society - productive, obedient workers - and for my career and social standing.)
Well, Jon, I imagine a lot of moderns did that as well (especially those who attended worship only for the "utilitarian" reasons you cite).
I guess, on this one I fit your category of "Protestant:" but, then, you knew that. It is certainly my experience as a chaplain that it is entirely possible for ecclesial communities, including groups within the Church Catholic as you recognize it, to appear and even to attempt to suggest that something within creation can come between the individual and Christ's love. Moreover (and within the Protestant part of my heritage), I simply can't go as far as Gregory the Great, much less Boniface VIII: to say that salvation requires participation in the Church, even the Church Catholic, is to challenge God's omnipotence and the infinite capacity of God's love.
But, then, once again I'm sure you expected that.
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