The Five Lies of the Five Solas: Sola Scriptura
Originally published October 6, 2014
Once again, as in this post, and this post, we find that people assume much about the clarion call of the Protestant Reformation: the five solas. One assumes that scripture alone means that Christianity draws all of its truth for life and godliness from an exegetical study of the Scriptures. Not so.
Scripture, according to the Reformers, cannot aid the “believer” in wisdom for living life. In fact, living life is not really the business of the believer for that would be works salvation—the Christian life must be EXPERIENCED only through the death and life of Christ.
This is the Reformed doctrine of mortification and vivification. The Christian mustn’t seek to learn the Scriptures and apply the principles to their lives; they must rather use the Scriptures to “gaze” upon the “saving works of Christ in all of the Bible.” This “gazing” upon the salvific works of Christ in all the Scriptures then results in a subjective “reflection” of Christ’s glory. Stars are really just huge chunks of rock floating around in space that reflect the sun’s light; in the same way, we are chunks of dead stones that merely reflect Christ’s light (glory) when we fix our sight on Him alone.
Therefore, according to the Reformed camp, the Bible is merely a tool for gospel contemplationism. Its sole purpose is not to learn more of God’s truth and better ways to love God and others, but rather a gospel narrative that enables us to see our own wretchedness more and more as set against the holiness of God. This results in more and more gratitude for the cross which results in Christ’s glory being REFLECTED from our dead, worthless selves.
This is the crux of the Reformed Redemptive Historical hermeneutic. It calls for seeing and interpreting all reality through the suffering of the cross, or the works of Christ seen in the Scriptures. Biblical imperatives are not anything that we are to do, but rather show us what Christ has already done for us.
Scripture alone for seeing Christ alone, so we can live by faith alone.
paul
Calvinist Husbands Need to Shape Up or Be Shipped Out
Written by PPT/TANC Publishing ghostwriter one.
1Corinthians 7:10 – To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.
12 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. 16 For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Susan and I, for some time, have been presented with opportunities to counsel women married to Calvinists. Not confused Calvinists who are often confused enough to be good guys, but Calvinists that really understand what a Calvinist is and act like one. Nor are we writing about women who are Calvinist queens and couldn’t be happier. Happiness is a good thing; we are called to it. Look, if some gal is happy being married to an ISIS guy, more power to her—life is about choices. Don’t misunderstand me, that is only an analogy; I am not sure, but I don’t think I have ever compared Calvinism to ISIS.
Rather, we are referring to women in marriages where Calvinism is the crux of the issue. In some of these situations, the wife has been brought up on church discipline and declared an unbeliever. That is totally unacceptable, and grounds for immediate biblical divorce. Let me explain.
The thing that I like most about my life is that I am constantly learning, and would like to think that learning is leading to change. Something strange also happens when you are in a learning mode; you are completely comfortable not knowing stuff. If you are in the process of learning, you know what you don’t understand will come into focus eventually. So, we are about to look at 1Corithians 7:10-16, and some of it I understand, and some of it I don’t. This is about what I do understand.
What I do understand came together through these counseling experiences, my recent gig as an HHA, and the word of God. My recent experience as an HHA caused me to take a closer look at 1Corinthians 7:13 in context with the rest of the chapter. In recent history, “’deinstitutionalization,’ the policy of closing state mental institutions,” has led to mental patients being dumped into the realm of HHA care. Hence, HHAs are often saddled unawares, perhaps because of medical disclosure laws, with individuals who would have been institutionalized in the past.
My first two clients where Bipolar ODD/PAPD individuals. That’s Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder. Basically, every minute of the day, anything that involves conversation is a debate. These people suck the peace and civility out of every environment that they enter into. When these people were institutionalized, psych aids could deal with them because they were labeled and everyone understood why they (patient and aid) were in the situation and what needed to be done. The aid could simply ignore their verbal abuse and was not obligated to please them in any way, shape, or form because the institutionalized individual’s rights were taken away.
In context of HHA care, the aid is obligated to please a serial abuser, and their job will probably depend on it. I have already heard the horror stories of young single women suffering the verbal abuse day after day in order to support their children. In my own experience, these people have wreaked havoc on my own personal wellbeing. When you are with these clients, you walk on eggshells the whole day, and any conversation =’s conflict. You don’t sneeze, you don’t yawn, you don’t use their bathroom, you don’t chuckle because of something they are watching on TV, you don’t say that you like their dog, or their cat, everything you say or do is an issue or the rewriting of the Declaration of Independence.
And here now, finally, is my point in context: one such client is a faithful church attender and professing Christian husband married to another professing Christian. I never met her as she works a lot of hours; go figure. Apparently, she found a job as a live-in nanny somewhere. Well, I would imagine. As a professing Christian, is she biblically obligated to remain married to this man? I don’t think she is for four biblical reasons:
- She may treat him as an unbeliever because of his fruit that obviously comes from a bad tree.
- He is only pleased to live with her for unbiblical reasons.
- She is called to peace.
- She does not know for certain that she will ever be able to lead him to the Lord, and is not obligated to sacrifice her call to peace accordingly.
Please don’t misunderstand me; I don’t think I have ever compared a Calvinist to someone Bipolar or ODD/PAPD. However, on the flip side, the idea that a spouse who has been brought up on church discipline not having any rights as a spouse does sound familiar.
The windcock of this conversation is verse 13. “If” in this context is a conditional noun used with “and” stating two conditions: an unbelieving spouse that is “pleased”(KJV) to live with a believing spouse. It’s a conditional clause—if the opposite is true, so is the condition, and the imperative. However, in this case, “not enslaved” (v.15) denotes liberty, and not an opposite imperative. Even though the believing spouse is not obligated to remain married to the unbeliever if he/she is not “pleased,” “willing” or “happy” (NET) to live with the believer, divorce is a matter of liberty and not a command. However, if the unbeliever is pleased to live with the believer, he/she “should not divorce.”
“Divorce” is the decision at hand. But, in regard to a decision to stay with the displeased unbeliever, one of the benefits is NOT “the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.” While I do not know exactly what this benefit means, I do know that in context it does NOT apply to a displeased unbelieving spouse, but only to a pleased unbelieving spouse. In other words, this benefit will not be reaped by the believing spouse sacrificing the following: “God has called you to peace.” This benefit only takes place in a peaceful situation.
We now hone in on the word, “consent” (ESV). Uh, this kind of puts forth the idea that the unbeliever may agree to live with the believer for a myriad of different reasons and the believer is thereby enslaved to the marriage. In regard to the idea put forth by the word “consent” in context, and in regard to how I have counseled women in the past, I now say, “nope.” This is another thing about learning mode, admitting you were wrong isn’t as hard. Let’s look at the actual word:
4909 syneudokéō (from 4862 /sýn, “identity with” and 2106 /eudokéō, “seems good”) – properly, to consent in a “hearty” (personal) way, in keeping with the close identification involved (note the syn);enthusiastically agree to cooperate with a partner to reach solutions, i.e. to achieve the things both have committed to do together.
This is why the word is often translated “pleased” or “happy” in many English translations. It’s the idea of being in agreement with each other. It has the idea of being happily on the same page regarding life in general. This does not include any sordid reason under the sun that an unbeliever might “consent” to living with a believer.
But, isn’t this qualified by the unbeliever deciding to divorce? “But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases, the brother or sister is not enslaved.” I believe that “But” marks a contrast and comparison between a qualified situation and the likely mentality of a believer: “If I endeavor to stay with this person no matter what, God can use me to save them.” Paul’s answer to that is, “For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” yes, it could happen, as it did with my grandmother 36 years later, but it’s not guaranteed.
Furthermore, it is very questionable as to whether or not “But” is the actual first word of verse 15 which seems to qualify the deciding factors for verses 12 and 13. In most interlinears, verse 15 abruptly begins with another “If” denoting another situation altogether. This is a situation where the unbeliever is obviously displeased about living with the believer, and decides to divorce or separate. A few English translations note this and leave out “But” in exchange for “Yet” (ERV) and “If” (WNT). The YLT even adds more delineation by adding “And” before “if” in the beginning of the verse. This puts forth the idea of an additional situation altogether rather than further qualifying the previous situations. I believe the YLT has it right.
Now let’s apply this to a situation where a married couple are at doctrinal odds, and the doctrine, in this case, Calvinism has created un-oneness in the marriage. The spouse, in most cases the wife, refuses to submit to the authority of orthodoxy. False doctrine promoted by any group is defined in the Bible as “heresy” or sectarianism; meaning a person or group that divides with false doctrine.
First, the wife is in fact married to an unbeliever because the husband believes a false gospel. Like in all cases, this doesn’t mean she knows his heart for certain, but because he professes a false gospel, she can treat him “like” an unbeliever. In only one of many qualifying examples, authentic Calvinism is almost always part and parcel with the doctrine of double imputation which is a blatant gospel aberration.
Second, especially in cases where the husband has had the wife brought up on church discipline, which isn’t in the Bible to begin with, it is apparent that he is not pleased to live with her. And additionally, in considering the texts used to support a phrase found nowhere in the Bible, “church discipline,” these verses demand a separation of fellowship. Uh, really? While you are still like, married? Does this mean that Matthew 18 is probably not meant to be applied to marriage? Ya think?
Nevertheless, the Calvinist, ie, unbeliever, has in fact left the wife via church discipline because the verses used in the orthodoxy of it, in fact, call for separation and disfellowship. Hence, the Calvinist, ie, unbeliever, is consenting to live with the believing wife who has rejected his false gospel for unwarranted and unbiblical reasons. She is free to divorce him immediately unless he repents posthaste. And additionally, she should take him to the cleaners financially. Well, that might be a little harsh.
However, all in all, the Christian spouse, whether husband or wife, should never violate their conscience if it is not yet at peace with this exegesis. If a spouse then says, “I have been in turmoil and walking on eggshells for _______ years and I am totally at peace with this exegesis,” alrighty then. The Calvinist needs to shape up or be shipped out. You are called to peace, not a false gospel.
Marriage is about oneness, peace, and love—not law.
Ministering to a Lawless Church and Society
Originally posted October 15, 2014
“The Under Grace bus going to heaven does not have Under Law as a passenger.”
“A single dimension law is a false gospel. It produces works that are anti-law. It replaces love with the traditions of men in Jesus’ name.”
I could write a dozen posts about what has transpired in my life and those close to me in the past couple of weeks, but I think I can stay on-topic and write about the primary subject from which all of these events flow.
Have you ever noticed that Jesus didn’t participate in a large field of theological issues? If you examine Christ’s primary concerns, His positive message was the gospel of the kingdom, and His primary negative concerns were two and two only: the traditions of men and lawlessness.
The present-day church is completely indoctrinated and saturated with lawlessness which results from the traditions of men. The stage is set for the exact same play that was taking place when Jesus was ministering—only the props are different because of technology. The institutional church of that day is the exact same institutional church of today—only the names are different.
Yes, in fact, there is a heretic behind every bush. Yes, in fact, the sheep are without valid shepherds. Yes, in fact, the VAST majority of what comes out of the mouths of Christians is mindless dribble leading to death. We are confused, ignorant, failures in life building, without answers, but yet…
… “Christianity” has never been bigger. Christian movies abound in the secular market; Christian musicians abound in the secular top 40; and dynamic Christian teachers are hanging on trees everywhere in a seemingly utopic evangelical Garden of Eden. “Revival” is in the air. Holy hands are lifted up to GeeeeJussss everywhere. When you ask any Christian anything, they look at you with those glazed-over eyes and psychotic grin while saying, “GeeeJussss.”
And so it was when Jesus was ministering. The religious culture was awash in orthodoxy. What is more obvious than the fact that when Jesus showed up, He completely ignored the institutional leaders of that day and went to the common people? His Sermon on the Mount was a shocking indictment of the orthodoxy prevalent in that day: “You have heard it said…but I say….” The orthodoxy of our day is the same lawless orthodoxy of that day, and Christ deconstructed it point by point. The religious leaders of that day had redefined every word used to convey the thoughts of God.
And so it is today: Christians have a fundamental misunderstanding of every word used to convey spiritual truth. We are so mentally handicapped in our thinking that discussion over “What is the gospel?” is just another discussion. We are not completely undone in sackcloth and ashes that we are still asking that question 2000 years later, but we should be. Think about it: though an astute preserving of the law was a Jewish tradition, when Jesus showed up, the people understood little of it. Why? Orthodoxy, that’s why. Please think about what Jesus said to the who’s who of religious leaders in that day: “You do error concerning the Scriptures and the power thereof.” People observed in awe as the deliberately informally educated Jesus publically rebuked the spiritual brain trust of that day.
Hence, Pastor Jesus brought true revival, and true revival in our day will not happen to the glory of God until we stop listening to men and start listening to Jesus. One man, one Bible. It starts there…because the most innocent of those who lead in this day are simply regurgitating the raw sewage flowing from the broken cisterns of orthodoxy.
I suppose now I can keep my sanity by hating the orthodoxy, but loving the lawless sinner. After all, I am guilty myself of propagating its satanic filth as a former Reformed pastor. I myself helped to create the monsters I despise. I myself quoted the heroes of orthodoxy to make myself look smart as the hordes of hell applauded.
As you read all of this, you might think I have had a rough couple of weeks. You might think it has caused me to ponder. And it has. But I am a very busy man, and it behooves me to discuss the least common denominator here. In my stricken soul what are the words that I want to cry out to the world? What do I want to scream out in love to some and defiant rage towards others? Here it is…
Law is love.
Law is not far from us that we must have the arrogant ascend to heaven in a rocket ship built by their own visions of grandeur to bring it down to us. Law is very close to us, it is in our mouths, and we are able to do it. It is life to us, and its justice even holds all of our sin in escrow. The record is cancelled by the cross, and now, closeness is measured by distance: God’s love for us can only be measured by the distance from the east to the west. The departure of our sins are as infinite as the closeness of God’s love. There is no condemnation from the law of justice—only love. In the huge void that was once our guilt we cry out it in desperation: How can we love such a merciful God! Is there now nothing we can do with the burden removed? Please tell us! Is it wrong to try to please you with our whole being? And then the clamorous storm is calmed with these simple words,
“If you love me, keep my commandments.”
Christ is no longer a Lord of justice to us, He is a Lord that wants His subjects to fulfil His kingdom law of love without condemnation.
Sometime in the cradle of society, the redefining of law by religious minions was hell’s finest hour. They redefined law as having a single dimension, that of justice only. Orthodoxy has but one theme; death. Mankind is enslaved to the condemnation of the law’s perfect standard. The law, for the unbeliever, presently condemns while promising life.
“The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.”
Orthodoxy only tells the story of the law’s death, and conceals its herald of wisdom and life:
“I set before you this day life and death, choose life!”
Law is justice and death to the unbelieving, but life, blessings, and love to those who rightly believe the gospel. Justice is death to the unbeliever, but to the believer—it is an act of love. One thing we mustn’t forget is that Arminianism is part of the Reformation’s orthodoxy. Therefore, it shares the same Calvinistic belief that “Christians” are still under the possible condemnation of the law. Love becomes tricky. But love isn’t tricky—it’s apart from any possible condemnation whatsoever. The loving Christian now experiences the life that the law promises. If you doubt that, read Psalm 119.
So, how do we minister to a lawless church and society? We start by incessantly defining law to God’s people. That’s where it starts. We must say, “You have heard it said, ‘the law can only condemn,’ but we say, ‘the law is the way of love and gives life.’” We must cry out to professing Christians to remove themselves from being under the law and its condemnation. We must also expose the traditions of men and their orthodoxy that sells a false road to heaven while under law. “Under grace” is not salvation while being under law, the two are mutually exclusive. The Under Grace bus going to heaven does not have Under Law as a passenger. The Under Law passenger trying to get on the Under Grace bus with an orthodoxy ticket is like the man who showed up at Christ’s feast without a wedding coat. Such will be rejected.
A single dimension law is a false gospel. It produces works that are anti-law. It replaces love with the traditions of men in Jesus’ name. The traditions of men, whether religious or secular is the only thing that can fill the void where there is no love. ANY thought that replaces an accurate assessment of God’s law is “anomia” a word often translated “lawlessness” in the Bible.
“BECAUSE of anomia, the love of many will wax cold.”
Though a single dimension law speaks of love and “many wonderful works in Jesus’ name,” they are works proffered by lawless orthodoxy defined by the traditions of men. And on one wise, no more slaughter of men has taken place by any other name than orthodoxy’s use of Jesus’ name, and the full measure of wrath slumbereth not accordingly. Be certain that you do not stand in such a camp actively or passively.
In orthodoxy, condemnation remains with the law. It is not enough to proclaim the law good, we must profess that without it we cannot love God and others. We must embrace it as the sum and substance of our own lives. When our precious Lord of love returns, we must offer Him the Holy sacrifices of our members offered up in love, not the body that cancelled the law of sin and death. Why would we offer back His own body and deny Him the sacrifices that we were purchased to perform? Try to dig His body up from the grave as an offering if you will, but it is not there, HE has risen! And if you have not died with Him and left the law of sin and death behind, and embraced the law of the Spirit of life that is your love…your works, or lack of them, will condemn you. Your love does not save you, and your lack of it does not condemn you, it merely shows that you believe that you are still under the condemnation of the law of sin and death—that’s a false gospel that is defined by a one dimensional view of the law.
“We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
Love is defined one way, and one way only: a grammatical plain sense interpretation of the law and its life application.
We are all guilty, and thereby suffer the torment by those we have helped to create. We have listened to men and offered a confused gospel that will not produce blessed lives. We are heinous cowards who do not really believe that such a man as Noah really existed. We offer fellowship offerings to the god of orthodox majority—his human credentials intimidate us, and thereby show that we spend little time with Jesus. Our cowardly offerings recognize their use of facts in the commission of treason for fear others will think ill of us.
This is where true ministry to a lawless church and society must begin, with one man and one Bible resulting in one love—the love Christ has called you to fulfil.
Will you be that man or not?
paul
The Christocentric Redemptive Historical Hermeneutic and “Touchdown Jesus”
Originally posted February 19, 2013
When you are Reformed, you have to get to heaven by faith alone. It’s easy being saved by faith alone, but how do you live the Christian life by faith alone? It would seem that there is stuff in the Bible that God tells us to do. But if we obey, that’s works salvation. What to do?
So the Reformers came up with a way to get to heaven by faith alone via being continually/perpetually saved by faith alone. Hence, we must “preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” Self-serve perpetual salvation. So, that necessitated making the whole Bible about salvation. Instead of reading the Bible for instruction on kingdom living, the Bible became a way to live by the same gospel that saves us until the end.
How do we pull that off? Well, we make every verse in the Bible about Jesus’ “personhood.” Hence, “He’s not a precept, He’s a person.” “It’s His-story.” “It’s not about what we do—it’s about what Jesus has done” etc. So, how do we make every verse in the Bible about Jesus? Just “look to Jesus.” There is no better example of how this works than the infamous “Touchdown Jesus.” I explain in another article:
The Bible is full of symbolism and rich imagery—more so than most literature. And that presents a grave danger. We don’t have the liberty to go into the Bible with the bull of our imagination in a china shop. Imagery and ambiguous verbiage can become idols that are a god of our own making because variances of interpretations are myriad. You merely pick the one of your own imagination and preference, or the same from the musings of others. So here is the point: we can make passages like Exodus 25-27 a tool for creating truth of our own making. In fact, whole denominations are formed based on interpretations of the imagery in these chapters.
What better example than the infamous “Touchdown Jesus” that was an icon of a church in Monroe, Ohio. The statue of Jesus was 60ft. high and was merely a couple of hundred ft. from I-75. That is, until it was struck by lightning. The flames could be seen for miles in the night and the pictures thereof can be best described as apocalyptic. The next day, it was the talk of the nation. But telling was the hundreds of testimonies recorded on the news and in newspapers; i.e., “what the image meant to me.” Yikes! The hundreds of different interpretations were staggering, and the statue never spoke one word! Most interesting was a comment by an unbeliever who worked in the Monroe area: “Obviously, God did it.” Often, there is a disconnect between the secular mindset and the Christian mindset which involves the disintegration of common sense that is a natural endowment; mysticism often abandons the matter and faith becomes a license for mindlessness.
The appeal of idols is the supposed objective prism that leads to subjective “truth.” That’s the appeal; we can make idols speak the truth of our own preference. When a verse of Scripture has to be about Jesus, whatever our imagination comes up with is correct because it’s about Jesus, and if it’s about Jesus, a Jesus outcome must be correct.
It’s a Touchdown Jesus approach, and is the taking away and adding to the word of God on steroids. Good luck to those who propagate it.
paul
Calvinism and the Cultural Spoon Feeding of Control and Tyranny
Originally posted January 22, 2015
I inadvertently stumbled upon the fact that Mark Dever’s 9Marks blog has pulled down their post on John Calvin’s power of the keys. The article* was an accurate rendition of the Reformed doctrine, but apparently not nuanced enough. One of the classic marks of cultism is truth on the installment plan or a bite at a time. You don’t actually show the pie in all its glory, you feed the pie to folks in truism-size bites until they become the pie without realizing it. It matters little to Calvinists if you understand how you are controlled, just so you are controlled.
Said another way, you never see the bottle of Christocentric potion, you only open wide and let Mark Dever et al spoon-feed it to you. So, as a service to inquiring minds that want to know, I dug up an article that I wrote about the overly overt Calvinist article. Enjoy.
Leeman’s article supplies the Cliff Notes to his book and explains something that I have seen among New Calvinist groups for a long time: they believe elders have the authority to determine/declare the salvation of a person. Whether they are right or wrong is irrelevant, God will honor it. I have seen firsthand how this teaching enables New Calvinist leaders to control parishioners. You see, I only write articles like “New Calvinism and Hotel California” to keep my sanity, but there is more truth to it than I like to admit. Unless you want to lose your salvation, you’re not leaving a New Calvinist church unless they say you can. And contending against their doctrine, well, that’s not for the faint of heart.
Leeman states the following in the article:
If the sinner still does not repent, round 4 ensues, which involves removing the individual from the covenant community—treating him like an outsider. Sometimes this is called “church discipline” or “excommunication.”
Jesus then invokes the keys of the kingdom again: whatever the church binds on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever the church looses on earth will be loosed in heaven. And Jesus is not addressing the apostles or the universal church here. He’s envisioning a local church. The local church, it appears, has been given the apostolic keys of the kingdom. As a result…
The local church has heaven’s authority for declaring who on earth is a kingdom citizen and therefore represents heaven.
And….
Jesus has authorized the local church to stand in front of a confessor, to consider the confessor’s confession, to consider his or her life, and to announce an official judgment on heaven’s behalf. Is that the right confession? Is this a true confessor? It’s just like Jesus did with Peter.
And, when do new Calvinists have the authority to do this? According to Leeman:
Matthew 18, which is filled with even more earth and heaven talk than Matthew 16, presents a crystal clear picture of this authority in the context of church discipline. But the ability to remove someone from membership presupposes an overarching authority to assess a person’s gospel words and deeds and to render a judgment. This authority begins the moment a person shows up in the church building doors claiming, like Peter did, that Jesus is the Christ.
In case you missed it: “This authority begins the moment a person shows up in the church building doors claiming, like Peter did, that Jesus is the Christ.” Told ya. In a New Calvinist church, they think they have authority over you whether you’re a member or not.
And what if they are wrong about their declaration? According to Leeman:
Will the local church exercise the keys perfectly? No. It will make mistakes just like every other authority established by Jesus makes mistakes. As such, the local church will be an imperfect representation of Christ’s end-time gathering. But the fact that it makes mistakes, just like presidents and parents do, does not mean it’s without an authoritative mandate.
Oh well, stuff happens, right?
Leeman ends the piece, like all New Calvinists do with a back door of escape in case somebody who matters calls them out on such outrageous teachings:
Does all this mean that what a local church does on earth actually changes a person’s status in heaven? No, the church’s job is like an ambassador’s or an embassy’s. Remember what I said about visiting the U.S. Embassy in Brussels when my passport expired. The embassy didn’t make me a citizen, it formally affirmed it in a way I could not myself. So with a local church.
This statement completely contradicts everything he said prior. If Christ binds it in heaven, WHY WOULD IT NOT CHANGE THE STATUS OF THE BELIEVER? Is it bound or not?
Of course, the message he wants parishioners to get is the authority part and the supposed fact that an elder declaration concerning a person’s salvation carries some hefty weight. But his contradiction makes my point. In Matthew 18, there is no such authority even being discussed, that’s why Leeman necessarily contradicts himself. By the time you get to the fourth step, several people are involved in what’s usually a messy situation. Several different scenarios could be in the mix here. Why did Jesus go from telling it to the whole church to discussing two or three people? I believe that Jesus is saying that heaven will honor the ones in the situation that are conducting themselves truthfully—even if it is only two people. I don’t think Jesus is assuming that church discipline always goes well.
Regardless of how weak you think that argument is, clearly, the salvific status of the person is not in view here. Only fellowship status is in view; they are to be treated “like” an unbeliever, NOT DECALRED AN UNBELIEVER. How do we know this? Because in the situation at Corinth regarding the guy that committed a sexual sin of the baser sort, Paul assumes that he is a believer, even in the midst of his excommunication:
1 Corinthians 5:5
Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
If one examines the Scriptures carefully, there is really no such thing as “church discipline” to begin with. There is self-discipline and the Lord’s discipline. We change a believer’s fellowship status so that the Lord will discipline them, but the church does not do the discipline. This point is much more than mere semantics and keeps so-called “church discipline” in proper perspective. There is much woe in the church because many elders think they do the discipline and not the Lord.
paul
*As it turns out, we found it uploaded to pdf format. Thanks to whomever did that! ~~Pearl
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