Love cannot exist in isolation: away from others, love bloats into pride. Grace cannot be received privately: cut off from others it is perverted into greed. Hope cannot develop in solitude: separated from the community, it goes to seed in the form of fantasies. No gift, no virtue can develop and remain healthy apart from the community of faith. "Outside the church there is no salvation" is not ecclesiastical arrogance but spiritual common sense, confirmed in everyday experience.
Friday, 31 January 2014
The Gospel is for a People
"A believing community is the context for the life of faith," writes Eugene Peterson in Reversed Thiudner: The Revelation of John & the Praying Imagination (HarperCollins, 1988), 43.
