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What if We Don't Exercise Corrective Discipline?
The Effect of Neglect
We contribute to the confusion of the unbelieving community
about what it means to be a Christian.
- Since church membership is the local assembly's public affirmation
of a person's salvation, the lives of our members present to the community
an idea of how a Christian is supposed to be distinct from the world.
- If an unregenerate, unrepentant church member continues to sin
publicly without being disciplined by the church, the church begins to give
a contradictory witness to the community about what it means to be a Christian,
and about how Christians live.
- As a result of this self-contradictory witness, the unbelieving
community begins to wonder what it means, if anything at all, to be a Christian.
We contribute to the complication of the church's evangelistic
task.
- Tolerating serious, unrepentant sin causes the verbal witness
of the church to seem less credible to the unbelieving community because of
the increasing divergence between what we say and the kinds of behavior we
allow.
- As the verbal and practical witnesses of the church become more
and more divergent, they both become increasingly repugnant to the community
because of the rancid hypocrisy of this divergence. Disillusionment with
"Christian" hypocrisy and rejection of the gospel message are the
sad but understandable effects.
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