al and hierarchical church life as established in the apostolic Christian community.
Where truth is not mixed with falsehood and where the ideals of Christian perfection are not mixed with false principles of human behavior; where men in perfect awareness of their weakness and sins commune with God in the fullness of His divine self-manifestation in grace, there is the one, holy catholic and apostolic Church, which is the presence and power of the Kingdom of God on earth. Only in this Church is genuine Christian unity, the unity of all men, given by God.
The Orthodox Church is the one Church of Christ. From the time of our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles, the Orthodox Church has accepted no wrong doctrines and no false ideals of life, despite the corporate and personal failings of the members of the Church – «If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us» (I John 1:8).
The Orthodox church is the one, indivisible Church of Church, not because of the works of men, but because by the grace of God expressed in the blood of the martyrs and the witness of the saints, the Orthodox Church has preserved to this day its God-given mission to be for the world «the Church which is His Body, the fullness of Him Who filleth all in all» (Ephesians 1:23).
There can be only one Church, for Christ founded but one Church. It is into this one Church that all must enter to live in perfect communion with God, with each other, and with all of creation, Orthodox Christians must never forget that their own nationalism and ethnicism often obscure and betray this divine mission of the Church. We will have to answer before God for the great gift of Orthodoxy which He has given to our care. All persons may partake freely of the truth and love a
Страницы: << < 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 > >>