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There is a perfect balance to all things in God’s Word. Lots of people genuinely love God and what He did for them, but they simply have not been taught everything yet or they have been taught the wrong things. In these cases God will hold the teachers and preachers accountable, not the people who truly love Him.

Don’t get wrapped up in who is saved and who is not, or whether or not someone can go to heaven if the do or don’t do things commanded in the Bible. If you are called to minister then God’s instructions to you are simple: 1. Obey His commandments, and 2. Declare His message. If you do those two things, it is His responsibility to burden the hearts of your audience toward repentance.

~Shalom www.facebook.com/TruthIgnited

Link Hudson [09/29/2015 7:45 PM]
John 14:21
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

Link Hudson [09/29/2015 8:02 PM]
When we are talking about people who are called ‘brothers’, if they sin and won’t repent, there is a time for the saints to stop keeping company with them, like I Corinthians 5 and several other passages teach.

Levi Allen Goff [09/29/2015 8:20 PM]
That’s a legalist attitude. I agree that we shouldn’t surround ourselves in sin, but if someone is sinning, sometimes they need to be put back in line, and that’s where a brother comes in, as a reminder. It’s easy to cast away thief’s and tax collectors like the pharisees and saducees. I was once lost too, and I would hate for somebody to consider themselves too self righteous to point out my flaw. Remember he came not to call the righteous, but the sinners.

Link Hudson [09/29/2015 8:24 PM]
Levi Allen Goff, what’s a legalistic attitude? that there is a time for church discipline? It’s in the Bible. I even even gave one of the chapters that deal with it.

It’s a last resort, though. First, if it’s a sin against an individual, that individual confront the one who sins, and if he won’t repent, takes one or two others as witnesses, and if he won’t repent, brings it before the church, and if he won’t hear the church, Jesus said, ‘let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a tax collector’– so it is interesting that mentioned tax collectors.

In other cases, those who are spiritual should confront the brother who sins with meekness, knowing that they also can be tempted.

But when that person won’t repent, then we need to be concerned with the body, so that a little leaven doesn’t leaven the whole lump, and so that the man’s spirit might be saved in they day of the Lord Jesus.

Levi Allen Goff [09/29/2015 8:26 PM]
Very well explained.

Tom Steele [09/29/2015 8:27 PM]
Guys, you are BOTH right… that’s exactly what I am talking about, that there is balance in the Word. Jesus also told us to forgive and keep on forgiving. It should be an absolute last resort if you have to cut someone off, but yes, there is Biblical grounds for such actions. This should always be a decision of senior leadership within a group of Believers.

Levi Allen Goff [09/29/2015 8:29 PM]
There is balance in the word! This discussion is a great example!! I love it!

Link Hudson [09/29/2015 8:40 PM]
I had a conversation with a church planter who planted house churches and churches in other venues in the Atlanta area. He said that in one of the house churches, there was a woman who kept sleeping with guys in the group. The men felt awful about it, confessed their sin, and repented. But she had this kind of gnostic attitude, he said, that what she did with her body did not affect her spirit. They practiced church discipline, including her dad as one of the pople because she wasn’t married.

He said you can get excited about wanting to do things Biblically, but if you get too excited about church discipline, something is wrong with you because it is very painful. I thought that was a good quote.

On the one hand, church discipline is so often ignored. I have even heard a preacher say that unbeliever complain that there are hypocrites in church. He said that if they are hypocrites, they need to be in church to hear the word of God. But I believe some churches need to expell those hypocrites so they will repent. But we need to have a culture of encouraging and exhorting each other in every church. We need to love our neighbor like Leviticus says where it says not to hate your brother in your heart, but rebuke your brother frankly lest you share in your sin, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. The Proverbs are full of exhortations regarding accepting rebuke from others. Paul told his readers that they were ‘able also to admonish one another’.

Link Hudson [09/29/2015 8:42 PM]
If a church has leadership, I certainly believe they should take the lead in church discipline. I’m not sure if any elders were appointed in Corinth when Paul wrote I Corinthians, but they still had a responsibility to take care of these things.

One thing I am convinced of is that the type of church discipline in Matthew 18 and I Corinthians 5 is not supposed to be done in some back office with the pastor. In both chapters, the whole congregation is involved. In Matthew, there are two or three witnesses. There is talk of binding and loosing. This is legal terminology that they would have used in reference to the Sanhedrin hearing a court case.

Practically, if people in the church are going to not keep company or eat with someone, they have to know church discipline is going on. And it’s going to be hard to get ‘buy in’ if it happens in some secret meeting somewhere.

Levi Allen Goff [09/29/2015 8:51 PM]
That makes sense. Paul also wrote “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to discuss what they do in secret.”

It really is a shameful act to go behind someones back and talk about them rather than to bring a matter to their attention. Some feel this brings shame upon an individual but as Peter said,

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8

John Kissinger [09/30/2015 1:41 PM]
Tom is this the same 6-point star as on your Mercedes Benz?

Tom Steele [09/30/2015 2:29 PM]
I don’t have a Mercedes Benz and it’s the same Star of David emblem that I have in my ministry logo. I designed it to have a ‘fire’ effect to represent the Holy Ghost Pentecostal side of my teachings, but the Star of David represents the Jewish foundations of Christian faith. If you were to look on my ministry page you will see a tagline that sums up the vision “Uniting The Torah And The Gospel”.

John Kissinger [09/30/2015 2:32 PM]

Charles Page [09/30/2015 3:51 PM]
Do we have to use the name Yeshuah? Can we refuse to use it and still be brothers?