The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum To Associate or Not:(Split off Feminism thread)

You may call it the last word if you like, but it seems that you are lying down in shoes that are much larger than your own feet. It flys in the face of election--which I'm still ironing out so don't expect much fencing around this point. If a person's eternal destiny as you call it can be dertermined by a decision of a church body then we are all in trouble should we ever encounter a heresy we feel a need to stand up against. More to the point, if a church has that much authority then why not go on and accept the Catholic Pope and saints and the whole rest of the bag. (Not that I think thats a good idea.)

Matthew 18:17 And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican

Jesus continues: And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the foreigner and the tax-collector. Not as if Jesus despised or would have nothing to do with foreigners and tax-collectors. …. But just as foreigners and tax-collectors who are still unconverted must be considered as being as yet outside the kingdom of God, so also this impenitent person must now be viewed as being in the same class. Because of his own stubbornness he has lost his right to church membership, and it has now become the church’s painful duty to make this declaration—in order that even this severe measure of exclusion may, with God’s blessing, result in the man’s conversion (I Cor. 5:5; II Thess. 3:14, 15). Note: “even to the church,” indicating the honor the Lord bestowed upon the church (Matt. 16:18 “my church,” cf. Acts 20:28b; Eph. 1:23), and the grievous character of rejecting its admonition.

Lack of discipline is a curse to any church. There must be rules regarding faith and conduct. To be sure the church has no right to regiment the life of its members, so that freedom is thrown out of the window, Pharisaism revived, and the Colossian heresy (Col. 2:20, 21) repeated. But there are, after all, certain broad principles, clearly stated in Scripture, and epitomized in such well-known passages as Matt. 5:43–45; 10:32, 33; 11:28–30; 16:24, 25; 22:37–40; John 13:34; Rom. 10:9; 12:1, 2, 21; 13:14; I Cor. 14:1a, and many, many others; principles which, as it were, summarize the whole of God’s will for man’s life. It is the privilege and the duty of the church to set forth these principles and to demand that its members strive, with the help of God’s Spirit, to apply them to their everyday living and thinking. Gross and continued violations without subsequent repentance cannot be tolerated. It is the duty of the church as a whole and as represented by those who by the Lord have been appointed to rule over it to bind, that is, to forbid violation of these principles, and to loose, that is, to permit whatever is in harmony with them. The right of exclusion or excommunication from the church and, upon repentance, of readmission into the church is implied. It is for this reason that Jesus, speaking now in the plural and referring to the apostles as a group (these men in turn representing the church), repeats what he had previously (16:19) said in the singular, to Peter. He says: 18. I solemnly declare to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. The solemn introduction—see on 5:18—indicates that the Lord regarded and still regards discipline, as described in 18:15–18, to be a very important matter. Its neglect means the ultimate destruction of the church as a powerful means of spreading the light of the gospel among its members and among the unsaved. See Rev. 2:5.