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

We Have Erected an Idol and Called it 'Love'

I'm rereading Jonathan Leeman's book for a J-term class on the Doctrine of the Church. I have never read another non-inspired book quite like it. Anyone who is struggling with their church, or is thinking of walking away from the 'institutional church' needs to carefully read it before they do anything rash.

I will likely be posting excerpts from it frequently in the coming days. In this chapter, he is discussing the factors in our culture that make Christians reluctant to join a church and churches reluctant to practice discipline.

"We have erected an idol and called it 'love.' And this idol called love has two great commands: 'Know that God loves you by not permanently binding you to anything (especially if you really don't want to be), and flowing from it, 'Know that your neighbor loves you best by letting yuo express entirely and without judgment.'

--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_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324506097&sr=8-2

A Quieter and More Lasting Kind of Interest

“People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the RAF and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of their first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.” 
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

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

 

Falling Out of Like

"I can guarantee that, whoever you marry, you will fall “out of like” with them. Powerful feelings of affection and delight will not and cannot be sustained. It is quite typical to lose the head-over-heals feelings for your mate even before you get married, because our emotions are tied to so many things within our physiology, psychology, and environment. Your feelings will ebb and flow, and if you follow our culture’s definition of “love,” you may conclude that this can’t be a person you should marry [or stay married to]...

When we first are attracted to someone, we think, “I want it to stay like this! I don’t want to lose this passion.” But as we have said, that ego rush cannot be sustained and cannot take you very far down the road of learning to love the person you really married. To use Lewis’s metaphor, you must let this more immature incarnation of your love “die” if it is to rise again and live. You must stick to your commitment to act and serve in love even when—no, especially when—you don’t feel much delight and attraction to your spouse. And the more you do that, slowly but surely, you will find your more ego-heavy attraction being transformed into a love that is more characterized by a humble, amazed reception and appreciation of the other person. The love you will grow into will be wiser, richer, deeper, less variable.
Sadly, many people never let this happen, because they have accepted the culture’s definition of marriage, and when the thrill wears off, they feel it is time for a change. This view of things leaves married people very vulnerable to affairs, since it is quite natural that you will meet others who are attractive and who will hold out the promise of getting the thrill back that was there in the beginning of your relationship with your spouse."

--Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage