Previously I have argued why a church ought to subscribe to a confession of faith. Do we want our community to clearly know what we believe? But what a church believes may be nullified by the way that church members behave. If we preach what we are not then I think we bring truth into contempt. Isn’t that one of the lessons learned from some notorious tele-evangelists? Scripture and our own experience teaches us that God will not normally bless even his own truth when it is held with an unrighteous life. Good doctrine with bad living does not lead to the spread of Christianity but to a society that becomes skeptical and eventually pagan.

In the past one of the signs of a true church was that it practiced discipline. There is formative discipline that we receive directly through the Word and the Spirit mainly through the preaching of the Word. There are occasions, however, when formative discipline alone is insufficient and corrective discipline becomes necessary.

Corrective discipline becomes necessary when heretical doctrine or disorderly, immoral, or scandalous conduct appears among the members of the church. As a general rule and whenever feasible, an effort must be made to resolve difficulty, correct error, and remove offense through counsel and admonition before more serious steps are taken.

The goals of corrective discipline are:

1. the glory of God,
2. the welfare and purity of the church, and
3. the restoration and spiritual growth of the offender.

One should note that without a clear and comprehensive statement of faith corrective discipline is difficult. Admittedly, one can always go to the Bible and delineate particular ‘sins’ that might merit discipline. But even then, without a systematic statement the elders (or whatever un-biblical leadership a church has) are in real danger of taking their personal preferences and making them ‘law.’ For example, would you discipline a person for smoking? If so would you also discipline a man for gluttony? Which one of those ‘sins’ are mentioned in scripture? A statement of faith (such as the 1689 London Baptist Confession) is a marvelous tool that we can use to guide us in guarding against legalism and capricious and unbalanced judgments.

We ought to strive to be known as a church that knows (and lives) the scriptures and, in addition, has leaders that take seriously their responsibility to the welfare and purity of the church and the restoration and spiritual growth of their membership. If society is to be awakened one day from its deep slumber, it will only be done by Christians who have first woken up themselves to the full splendor of their privilege and who have taken seriously the call to live wholly and entirely for God. Believers ought to be men and women who are fully awake in a world where others are either half asleep or fully drugged.

listen to this audio clip for a short explanation of our desire to follow the Bible

Posted by Robin on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 8:59 am.