I came across a discussion of church discipline recently on a web forum and the penny dropped. (There isn't a one cent coin so I hope I'm safe to talk about pennies.)
As usual a popular position in the debate was that of the MYOB (mind your own business) camp. Some went further - church discipline was un-Christian since Church is for sinners. Apparently it is only the self-righteous who engage in this sort of thing.
But hold on a minute? Isn't the sign that someone admits they're a sinner repentance? The whole point of any church discipline is that it only becomes necessary when someone refuses to admit that they are sinning.
Repentance has come up a few times lately at PBC - from the lips of John the Baptist and of Jesus. It occurs to me that repentance needs to be specific. May the Lord guard us from that culture that says 'we are all sinners' in a general sense but never in particular. If I am a sinner then I must have sins regularly to repent of. Yes, that's right, specific actions and attitudes that are wrong. I quite often meet Christians who are sinners but never actually sin, or so it would seem.
What sin have you repented of recently? (I can think of two for me today.)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
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