I think I understand your point. :)

Blessings,
Chris

You are right. There are no Lone Ranger Christians. If you will think about that you will see the point of this post and of my comment.

cb

There are no lone ranger Christians. If you are a Christian you will have a body/gathering/congregation or if you choose to alienate you are in sin,….just like the Apostle Paul encourages Timothy, Titus and others in the body/gathering/congregation that it is not the will of God that there be lone ranger overseers.

Blessings,
Chris

I had assumed that you were with us….when I said:

“So, if you come to our town and come to us (our local gathering of believers) confessing Jesus Christ is the Son of God and a desire to unite with us,…then say in six months to a year, for whatever reason,….”

I am certainly not saying that you just waltz into town without then uniting with a local congregation. In that case you were just another guy waltzing through town…probably some evangelist with a good story.

In fact, I believe that I even said, once we did not have any effect at bringing you back to the body through restoration,…you may even try going down the street to another congregation.

I’m not following your argument here.

If your not part of us…then we have no obligation but to share the gospel with you, treat you as another brother in Christ, celebrate the love of Christ, etc. … but if your simply a guy come to town to create havock and not of us…we can’t help or edify you much at all.

Blessings,
Chris

There is a weakness in you position here, in my opinion. That weakness is that you do not see the authority of a local church.

If I come to your town and I am known to you as a brother and act in a way that is unbecoming (demon gone wild) you may come to me (and you should) as a brother in Christ and warn me, rebuke me, pray for me or whatever the case may call for, but you cannot hold me to discipline. Why? Because your local body has no authority over me.

You may do what Paul did relating to the adulterer in Corinth. he wrote to that local church and instructed them to discipline their adulterous brother. Why did he not gather the church at Ephesus and deal with the brother and then tell the Corinthians what he and the Ephesian Christians had done as a disciplinary action toward a brother living in Corinth? After all the brother in Corinth was part of the Bride of Christ (Church Universal) was he not?

Yet, Paul did not do that. Why? Because the adulterous brother was a member of the church of God in Corinth. The church of God in Corinth was a local church. The adulterous brother was accountable to that local body under Christ. It was their responsibility to discipline the adulterous brother. Why? Because they were the earthly authority under Christ to do so.

cb

I believe that all authority is in Christ. So the way that plays out in the church where Christ is the authority, (of which our gathering of sinners that are in Christ are one portion of the several gatherings in the Hermitage area of Nashville), is that we certainly have the obligation (duty, responsibility) and command (authority, rule) to live with you in peace as well as restore. That is how we are called to love.

So, if you come to our town and come to us (our local gathering of believers) confessing Jesus Christ is the Son of God and a desire to unite with us,…then say in six months to a year, for whatever reason, you become the thorn of all thorns (demon gone wild) and begin to offend your brother or sister that you have united with ….they have no greater love than to call you to repentance to Christ’s commands as soon as possible so that your relationship with God is restored. If you refuse to follow Christ’s commands and repent, the brother or sister may even get another brother or sister involved as soon as possible to show you in scripture the error of your ways so that your relationship with God can be restored. If you still are persistent to act like a Alabamian getting thumped by a War Eagle and spit once again into the face of your brother, sister and others….then your sin is exposed to the entire congregation, so that it (your sin) is clearly known in order for the church to have greater understanding (fear) of the sin and continue to pray for you and share the gospel with you, since you have persisted in removing yourself from the fellowship. We (the gathered) then treat you as a tax collector or pagan, which actually means we love you as our neighbor and share the great love of Christ with you, sharing the gospel with you at every opportunity.

This has happened in our fellowship. We did that very thing. God was honored because we submitted to the authority of Christ in His church.

And as Billy Mays would have said…. “that’s not all”….I will also expose this to other leaders and believers, that may be gathering together as another congregation down the street,… concerning how our congregation handled your sin and how it effected the body. It is up to their local gathering and leadership to handle the matter should you be able to join with them and decide to “do the demon”. cb, as you know, this type of activity was common in the early churches, …we even have the names of those engaged in tearing down the local congregations.

Understanding that all authority is in Christ…makes all the difference in the world as restoration is pursued throughout various gatherings in the community and the gospel is shared. It takes the “us” versus “them” away from the now popular equation, where you can raise hell in one place and then simply go down the street….and instead it properly exposes it as “you” against “Christ” lived out through the love of the called out ones (the church).

Blessings,
Chris

Do you believe the local church has any authority whatsoever? Who enacts church discipline? If I come to your town and live like a demon gone wild before your family and church community and your unchurched friends and neighbors who would have the authority to discipline me?

cb

When it comes to church discipline, I see the teaching of Christ that the congregation is authorized to discipline the sinning church member [Matt. 18].

However, when it comes to practical nuts and bolts stuff [as expressed in church constitutions] as to how a church is going to do this or that, then I look at that as possibly “pragmatically” beneficial.

However, is the difference between my thinking and that of those who make up SBC Today this:

What I call possibly pragmatic is what you guys call the “binding and loosing” of Matthew 16 & 18 [according to Bart Barber's interpretation]?

“OBEDIENCE TO CHRIST’S COMMANDS would be a high priority for them, thus IN ACCOUNTABILITY TO EACH OTHER they would be baptized, as believers, and thus carry on with our Lord’s commands.” (caps mine)

Would you mind unpacking these two phrases in how they link together?

Would you also say that can occur with as few as two people under the authority of God’s Word?

Blessings,
Chris