Tuesday, February 07, 2006
On Confrontation
Matthew 18:15-17
"And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. And 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-gatherer."Sometimes I think these are the most forgotten words that Christ ever uttered. Somehow they have been overridden but the oft-quoted
John 8:7 - But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."Once again it seems that people fail to make a distinction between those in the church and those outside of it. In the first quotation, Jesus is telling us how to deal with sin in our midst, while in the later he is making a statement about how God's grace deals with sin for those outside of the church.
The church is not a collection of sinners, that's the world. The church is a collection of those in the process of sanctification, and that process places expectations on us. Those expectations are different depending on the place in the process that each individual may be, but all have some expectations. And it is the responsibility of all to hold all others in the church accountable to those expectations.
But in this day and age we seem to be afraid to treat anyone, even paedophilic, predatory, homosexual priests "as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer." Why is this? - Especially in that specific instance where the world seemingly finds the sin more heinous than the church does?
There is much talk here in the Godblogosphere about how the church is not really distinguishable from the world. It seems to me that if we dealt with our own in accordance with Matthew 18 and dealt with the world in accordance with John 8 we might go a long way towards rectifying that problem. Paul seemed to say the same thing
1 Cor 5:9-13 - I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler-- not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.We need to be far more careful about who we call our brethren.
Related Tags: church, the world, confrontation, sin, sanctification, Christianity
