Church Discipline and the Assurance of Love

The Assurance of Love

"In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul told the Corinthian congregation to wake up to the truth and to realize that they had someone in their number who was living as an enemy to the gospel he professed. A man was committing adultery with his father's wife (a serious crime even in pagan Corinth)! But the man is not the direct object of Paul's rebuke; that was reserved for the congregation. Why? Because the congregation was allowing the man to continue thinking of himself as a follower of Jesus when he was in open and unrepentant sin. His sin was as leaven in the loaf (as Paul goes on to say); it was infection in the body. The infection itself was serious but not nearly as serious as the congregation's toleration of it. To be welcoming and tolerant at this point was not simply an individual infection; it was a failure of the body's entire immune system. It showed that something essential to the body's life and health was missing, and it would quickly lead to the death of that local body if not immediately addressed. A body that could not resist such an intrusion would soon succumb to it.

Considered from the point of the individual disciplined, what Paul was calling them to implement was an act of love. Given that this man was obviously continuing to regard himself as, and was being regarded by others as, a Christian, he was clearly self-deceived. We know that professing Christians can be self-deceived. Paul later wrote to the Corinthians, "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves" (2 Cor 13: 5; cf. 1 Pet 1: 10– 11). We should realize that offering someone assurance of their salvation, based merely on their profession of faith in Christ, may not be the most loving thing we can do. And if that is true for us as individuals, it is doubly true of our congregations. Joining a church is joining an assurance-of-salvation cooperative. We are to observe evidences of God's grace in one another's lives and to encourage one another. We are to correct one another when occasion requires. Paul was urgent in 1 Corinthians 6 that the Corinthians not be deceived about who would inherit the kingdom of God. That warning sprang from love. Membership functions to assure us that we truly know God's love and that we truly love God in response."

-Mark Dever, in Those Who Must Give an Account: A Study of Church Membership and Church Discipline http://www.amazon.com/Those-Who-Must-Give-Account/dp/1433671190/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365087341&sr=1-1&keywords=Those+Who+Must+Give+an+Account%3A

Is Your Church in Sin?

Great new book by Mark Dever. Newly released, this book contains all the material that Dever taught us during the January class on the Church. If I had known this, I wouldn't have taken notes!

"In these passages [Matt. 18:15-20; 1 Cor. 5; 2 Cor. 2:6] on discipline, the meaning of  membership is seen. Discipline draws a circle around the membership of trhe church. Careful practices of membership and discipline are means to mark off the church from the world and thereby define and display the gospel.

Churches which practice no formal membership and discipline at least make it more difficult for the believers who are part of it to follow Christ and more difficult for those elders to know for whom they are to give account (Heb. 13:17). In fact, I would go a step further and say that churches which practice no self-conscious membership are in sin, since Christians cannot follow basic biblical commands without it. According to the New Testament, church leaders need to know who is and is not a member of the congregation. And perhaps even more important, Christians need to know this--for their own souls' sake!" 

--Mark Dever, The Church: The Gospel Made Visible

 http://www.amazon.com/The-Church-Gospel-Made-Visible/dp/1433677768/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334766868&sr=1-1

 

Four Reasons Why Non-attending Church Members Are Toxic

"Biblically, if a member shows prolonged negligence in gathering with God's people, how can he say he loves them? And if he doesn't love them, how can he say he loves God (cf. 1 John 4:20-21)?

Pastorally, if a member who could attend continually neglects to meet with the people of God, church leaders are simply no longer in a position to externally witness the fruit of his life, and for that reason can no longer externally affirm his conversion by uninterrupted membership.

Evangelistically, meaningless membership damages the corporate evangelistic witness of the church in the surrounding community. Members usually go AWOL to cover up more serious sin; but they are committing that sin as people who are still likely to be know by others in your community as members of your church! In other words, they are sinning in ways that make your church look hypocritical to the unbelievers in your community.

Most seriously of all, when we allow prolonged nonattenders to keep their names on the membership rolls, we actually help deceive them into thinking they are saved when their behavior is in fact calling their salvation into question."

--Mark Dever, The Deliberate Church 

Church Membership and the Consumer Mentality

More from Jonathan Leeman. (If you haven't read the other excerpts from him, type his name into the search box in the upper left corner of this blog.)

"Christians these days have a hard time submitting to the body, not just because we resent the idea of authority, but because our minds can't hep but respond like consumers. A consumer has authority. A consumer thinks he is the head, and the rest of the body exists to serve him and fulfill his personal narrative. Not only that, but he gets a little nervous when others are different from him. Jews and Greeks? Slaves and free? No thank you, I'll stick with the free Greeks. The consumer is always looking for the right fit..."

--Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love,  

http://www.amazon.com/Church-Surprising-Offense-Gods-Love/dp/1433509059/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322923839&sr=1-1

 

Why Be Part of a Church?

"A living, breathing congregation is the only place to live in a healthy relationship to God. That is because it is the only place on earth where Jesus has chosen to dwell."

--Tim Stafford, "The Church: Why Bother?" Christianity Today, January 2005

Church Membership and Casual Nibbling

If you've never read anything by Jonathan Leeman, then let me introduce you to him. For readers of this blog who are members of Grace Baptist Church in Hartsville, TN, Leeman has three claims on our peculiar affection. (1) He conducted the wedding of our brother and sister Jared and Maggie Lake. (2) While working at Boyce College in Louisville, he encouraged our brother Chris Davis to run for student council. (3) As a current elder at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., he is an elder over our beloved Josh and Abigail Abbotoy.

So let those points recommend his books to you. He has published two so far, and has a couple more in the works. I will link you to his current published works after I give you these excerpts from his book on church membership.

“If we try to conduct our discipleship with Christ by casually nibbling and grazing wherever we please, moving back and forth between one field and another, it’s difficult to see how we will ever truly submit to the church of God. We may give of ourselves to this or that Christian or church, but we will never truly give ourselves. Submitting to the church on earth means walking up to a group of people and saying ‘I believe what you believe. Now put me to work supporting our mutual cause however you need me. You can count on me.’ In short, the nature of authority and submission requires professing Christians to submit to the local church. It requires commitment.”

        [Note: In the following lengthy passage, Leeman talks about 1 Corinthians 13, the famous chapter on love. What Leeman points out here is that while we often use this chapter at weddings, in context it is mainly describing love in the local church. It is situated right between 1 Cor. 12 and 1 Cor. 14, both of which deal with the church in Corinth, which, in many ways, was a pretty sorry church. So here’s what Leeman says about love in context of a sorry church.

“It’s in this context that Paul grabs back the pretty lyrics of 1 Corinthians 13 from the wedding party and reads it to the local church. Do you want to exercise, practice, embody, and define the glorious love of heaven, he asks us? Then do it in a local church, a church where factions are pitted against one another (1 Cor. 1:12-13), where people have big heads (4:8), where members are sleeping with their fathers’ wives (5:2), where members are suing and defrauding one another (6:1-8), where members are getting drunk on the communion wine and not leaving enough for others (11:21-22), where spiritual gift one-upmanship is rife (chaps. 12 and 14), where the meetings are threatened by disorder (14:40), and where some are saying there is no resurrection from the dead (15:12). Bind and submit yourself and your gifts to these kinds of people. Love them with patience and kindness, without envy or boasting, without arrogance or rudeness, not insisting on our own way, not irritably or resentfully, not rejoicing at wrongdoing but rejoicing at the truth. 

People often complain about the sinners they find in the local church, and with good reason. It’s filled with sinners, which is why Paul calls Christians to love one another by bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. If you won’t love such backstabbers and defrauders like this, don’t talk about your spiritual gifts, your vast biblical knowledge, or all the things you do for the poor. You’re just a noisy gong. Don’t talk about your love for all Christians everywhere; you are just a clanging cymbal. But if you do practice loving a specific, concrete people, all of whose names you don’t get to choose, then you will participate in defining love for the world, the love which will characterize the church on the last day perfectly because it images the self-sacrificing and merciful love of Christ perfectly.”   

Jonathan Leeman, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God's Love; see also his book Reverberation