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And how strange it is sometimes to hear such speeches: “I believe in God, but I do not recognize the Church, because the Church is a human organization.”
Those who speak this way reveal their extreme spiritual ignorance.
They do not understand at all what the Church is, and it is not easy to explain it to them, for they are alien to the Church in spirit, and the Word of God is not an authority for them, since the only authority they recognize for themselves is their own authority - their "reason", as they say, or rather - their own stubborn prejudice against everything that does not agree with their proud, self-important, preconceived thoughts and feelings, with their unshakable confidence in their supposedly absolute rightness.
They do not want to, and cannot, understand that the Church is not at all a human organization (no matter how some try to make it so!), but a Divine institution, that the Church is not only bishops and priests, but all true believers in Christ, who make up the body of Christ, the Head of which is Christ Himself (Col. 1:18; Eph. 1:22-23; 1 Cor. 15:20; Rom. 8:29); that individual bishops and priests, as people, can sin and err and fall away from the Truth of Christ's teaching, but that the whole Church as a whole can never sin and deviate from this truth , for it has been given a great promise by its Divine Founder Himself: “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18), and the great Apostle of the Gentiles testified “The Church of the living God is the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
After all, all those sins and vices, shortcomings and imperfections of the Church's ministers, which its enemies and unbelievers and those of little faith love to point out, are their personal sins, for which they will answer to God, but they are not the sins of the Church itself, which is "holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:27). And whoever blasphemes the Holy Church blasphemes God Himself, who founded the Church not for blasphemy and mockery, but for the eternal salvation of people. He blasphemes the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the Church. And this is a sin that, according to the words of Christ the Savior, will not be forgiven "neither in this age nor in the age to come" (Matt. 12:31), because such a blasphemer becomes incapable of repentance, without which there is no salvation.
That is why, when criticizing unworthy ministers of the Church, one must be very careful not to extend this criticism to the Church itself, as such.
And the Truth, which is sacredly and inviolably preserved by the true Church - the Orthodox Church, not subject to any chaotic changes of such a fickle “spirit of the times”, is what was believed in everywhere, what was always believed in, what everyone believed in (St. Vincent of Lerins).
Whoever rejects this one true Church, rejects God Himself, who founded the Church, which is why the great man of Christian antiquity, the holy martyr Cyprian of Carthage, says: “For whom the Church is not a mother, God is not a father.”
Source: https://myrophoros.blogspot.com/2026/07/blog-post_04.html#more