That does not answer my question of who has the authority to decide. If such an authority did exist in the church where is it today? Where was that authority in the 16th century when the disputes over the Reformation arose?
Jesus said that all authority was given to HIM.
There is no where in Scripture where He set men as authorities to make decisions for His body to run people’s lives for them.
We all answer to Christ individually.
He did indeed give us teachers and preachers, along with other gifts of the Spirit for the building up of the body, but not as a top down authoritarian governing structure.
When I first heard the gospel and heard people talking about going directly to Jesus without any intermediaries, it was beyond my comprehension that someone could or would actually do that.
I didn’t think that God would be interested in me or willing to hear me or have that level of concern for me. It left me with a feeling of being very vulnerable and in an actually dangerous place, fearing what direct contact with God would do to me. As with the Catholics on this board, I thought it was incredibly presumptuous for someone, anyone, to do something like that.
I also saw them as thinking that they thought pretty highly of themselves that God would accept them and that they felt the boldness to go directly to God. My thoughts were, *Just who do they think they are? They must think they’re pretty special. How arrogant to think that they’re so good or so much better than everyone else.*
To me it looked like a lot of pride and arrogance.
But that’s because of the way I had been raised and what I had been taught, that is that a priest is necessary to go between me and God.
However, once you are brought to the end of yourself and you cry out to God in absolute desperation and see yourself as you really are, you find out that God will meet you there and begin the work of transformation in you, conforming you into the image of His beloved Son.
And believe it or not, it is far easier to go to God through a priest than to do it one on one with Him yourself.
Going through a priest can give you a sense of feeling insulated from God.
Going one on one, leaves you exposed to the God who sees and knows everything last little thing about you. There is no hiding there. You can fool a priest and even lie to him, but you can’t with God.