A New Blog To Check Out

 

 

A friend and pastoral colleague of mine has started a new blog,

“3. Step three – Church Judgment

“If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

(Matthew 18:17 ESV)

Public church discipline is written into every church constitution, but rarely are Church’s willing to follow through with it. In a modern-day culture of inclusivity, and a live and let live attitude, the concept of a church publicly disciplining a fellow Christian by excommunication, seems awful and judgemental. We cringe at judgement as if it is unbiblical, when in fact it is very biblical within the prescribed framework.

First let’s establish who is at fault here, it is the brother who has not repented. Every chance has been given to him to let go of his pride and change his ways. If a whole church agrees over someone’s actions being sinful, only a sinful ugly pride attached to the individual can be the answer. However, Jesus points out that step three is not straight up excommunication. There is still room to repent. But if he even refuses to listen to the church, Jesus writes the person off as an unbeliever. He says, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. What does this mean? The words gentile and tax collector in NT language is synonymous with the worst sinful people you can imagine.

I talk about the words, the ways, and the works of Jesus. In this case to understand the words of Jesus we must look at his ways. We know that Jesus spent time with sinners, rather than avoiding them completely. But first let me clarify that this does not mean that Jesus somehow has a live and let live attitude. Jesus does want to spent time with what we might could woke people today, not to tell them he loves them and to continue living in sin, but the opposite.

30””And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” 31 And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 32 I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance”” (Luke 5:30-32 ESV).

A liberal reading of this text would interpret that Jesus avoided hanging out with religious people and loved hanging out with sinful people, but this is not the intention. Firstly, every single person is a sinner, and secondly, Jesus points out to the grumbling Pharisees that he has come to call the sinners he is hanging out with to repentance.

What is Jesus’ purpose, when he says to treat them as Gentiles and tax collectors? In every instance that Jesus spends time with tax collectors or prostitutes, he always moves the conversation towards faith and repentance, always!

But the direct context of this passage is focused more how you treat someone who has claimed to be a Christian, but falls away in sin and refuses to repent.

Now there is still room for some kind of communication and contact with these people under certain circumstances. The kind of contact and conversation would be what Jesus has displayed, to talk to them in order to lead them to repentance. To plead with them to change their ways, but the rest of the NT reveals that under no circumstances is the unrepentant brother to be allowed to take part of things like worship services, communion and prayer meetings. This is a limited shunning or excommunication. They are not to take part of the gathering of the church but there is still room to speak with them.”

The author is a good man that I know and a fellow Baptist pastor, and I would like to encourage you to support his new effort to speak into the public sphere. We were talking the other day about the fact that those who write and have children are those who will win the future. We need more good pastors writing on a host of issues and Dan writes well. You can check out his blog or his Substack.