I just posted on my blog, reacting to a release from Pope Benedict XVI:

Just read this very interesting article (link was on MSN.com):

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Funny, I thought Jesus came in order to save the lost (Matthew 19:10). His apostles were commanded to be His witnesses (Acts 1:, and as they shared the good news of Christ, bodies of believers began to form. We are social beings, and we need this! (Hebrews 10:25) Paul addresses many issues arising from this social interaction throughout the epistles. Check out I Corinthians 12:12-31 for starters. And how about Ephesians 4:2-6.

But how twisted we humans have made this! The line that bothers me the most is the statement that other bodies are "not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the 'means of salvation.' ” (quote from the article, but emphasis mine).

When Jesus was talking with Nicodemus, he didn't tell him to go to church, but spoke of God's amazing love that caused Him to make the ultimate sacrifice. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him whall not perish but have eternal live. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (John 3:16-17) Paul later expanded on this point, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly...But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!... Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." (Romans 5:6, 8-9, 11)

And lastly, several chapters in Hebrews are devoted to Christ's role as our High Priest (see 7:23-8:2 and 10:19-22, 13:20) There is no human role in salvation, other than each of us accepting the gift. And it saddens (and even angers!) me to read that the Pope, considered by so many to be the holiest person on earth, is changing this message.

(originally posted at

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I am disheartened by the article...I pray that God's truth be spoken even louder and heard even more for it is His Word that has more power to change the hearts of men than the Pope, regardless of how famous he is...

Romans 12:5
...so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

1 Corinthians 12:12, 13
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

1 Corinthians 12:27
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Ephesians 5:21-30
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body.