The main issue I have this morning, for again this is a passage that does not need elaboration, is finding a title. For we cannot rely on the fact we are a member of a church for our salvation. The very standards that we have and keep and need to keep we break ourselves.
All of us are damned: by our own actions. We can argue about predestination if you want, but since the day Adam and Eve fell, we have all broken the laws within our own heart, and in our guilt we have made our own hell.
But for Christ. And a gospel that does not preach our broken state is no gospel at all.
28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. 29They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die – yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.
1Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. 2You say, “We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.” 3Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? 4Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? 5But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. 6For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: 7to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; 8while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. 9There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, 10but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. 11For God shows no partiality.
I’m going to quote from a Catholic traditionalist to make a point, not because I am one (Mundabor is hilarious, and states this blog is so heretical to be unreadable. An insult like that from a supporter of SSPX is to be cherished) but because it describes an error that many churchians have. The higher loyalty he talks about is to the gospel, to the church, by the traditions in which he was raised, but it is also more. I think FFI is an order of Franciscan Nuns who prefer to remain true to the rules of their foundress.
Either this higher loyalty exists, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, Traditionalism in any form whatsoever should not exist – actually, the very word should not exist – in the first place. If it does exist, then it is if not necessarily mandatory, at least always legitimate to decide that, when this higher loyalty cannot be preserved without great detriment to the Truth, disobedience to wrong orders should be the choice. As the smart Italian soldiers used to say, gli ordini sbagliati non si eseguono, “the wrong orders are not carried out”.
Add to this that whilst Volpi & Co. would have a short-term argument to persuade those who do not need persuading anyway, a robust defection of FFI male and female members would be a permanent thorn in the side of NuChurch, and expose the failure of such attempts to purge orthodoxy from the Church and get away with it. On the contrary, a robust defection would show that Modernism will not be allowed to make itself comfortable within the Church without resistance, and every action will cause a reaction.
Again, it is a matter of higher Loyalty. Or is there anyone of you who thinks Athanasius should have been obedient to Liberius, and meekly accept the massacre of Catholicism in the serene confidence God will, at some point, set things right?
God sets things right by motivating brave men and women to set them right, not by sending Angels on earth to clean the mess in the kitchen, whilst the cooks look and do nothing. At some point, resistance must be legitimate. Common sense and love for the Church say that it must be so.
The dynamic that is happening within the Roman world — and I see the same thing in the presbytries of my broken Kirk — is that the legislation of this generation has some validity, and that in obedience to that we should ignore the very words of salvation, is an error. Paul corrects it. Being a Jew, being of the Law, is of no use unless you turn to the cross. And to demonstrate this he firstly describes the end state of paganism — in the most Hobbesian manner — and then turns on those who think they are righteous. For none is righteous, but God.
The one reason I have time for the Romans is that they preach the gospel. The one reason I support the traditionalists within that group is that that subset preaches the gospel more frequently than the liberals blindly chasing after the fashions of the day.
But part of this gospel is that we are damned without Christ. For we are.
And that should make us humble, not proud. Beware of the priest who takes pride in his righteousness, for he is more likely to lead you to error. And there are many “good protestant leaders” who are more tyrannical in their insistence that they stand between the cross and us than any Catholic has ever been.
