Only where grace rules
“[The] life of the children of God is always a life for Christ’s sake. The foundation of the Church is also its law and its limit. . . . By its inmost nature the Church is forbidden to want independence of Jesus Christ, or sovereignty in thought or action. If it did, it would relapse into the unjustified and unsanctified nature from which it is withdrawn in Christ. This will always find plenty of means to assert itself in its life. But it cannot want to relapse into it. It is born of the omnipotent Word of grace; it would only die if it were to become or to be anything but the fulfillment of that Word. Grace holds good only where grace rules. The rule of grace which is unfailing where men are God’s children for Christ’s sake, the dependence of these men upon the Word of which they are reborn – this is the reality of the Church . . . . And in the light of it, it is and must be true that extra ecclesiam nulla salus.” (Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.216)
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