Church Discipline (10)
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the following are specific areas addressed in Scripture that require Church discipline: personal sin committed by one member against another member of the church; egregious/public moral failure; heretical teaching; divisiveness; idleness; confirmed sin among the church's leaders.Sojourners and Strangers, 199
It has been remarked, that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with itA Treatise on Church Order
church discipline is a proleptic (or anticipatory) and declarative sign of the divine eschatological judgement, meted out by Jesus Christ through the church against its sinful members and sinful situations.Sojourners and Strangers, 184
I think it is my duty to choose rather to join with those who refuse to admit into the Communion with them such as are openly vicious and profane than with those who, being under an unhappy obligation to administer the Lord's Supper to all in office and to transfer the trial of all suspensions to the bishop's court, cannot possibly use so strict a discipline. Not that I think I am ever the worse for bad people's joining with me in the Lord's Supper, but perhaps they are the worse for my joining with them; and I would not be accessory to the hardening of them in their impieties. I do not expect to meet with any society of Christians perfectly pure on this side heaven. There are spots, I know, in our feasts of charity; but I must prefer those who appear to me either to be more pure from the mixture of corrupt members, or at least more solicitous and desirous to be so and capable of being so by their own constitution.
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The accusations of none, not even the best in the church, should be taken without proof. A minister should never make himself a party before he has sufficient evidence of the case. It is better to let many vicious persons go unpunished and without censure when we want full evidence against them than to censure one unjustly, which we may easily do if we go upon bold presumptions alone. And that will bring upon a pastor the scandal of partiality and unrighteous dealing, which will make all his reproofs and censures become contemptible.
The neglect of discipline has a strong tendency to the deluding of souls by making men think that they are Christians when they are not because they are not separated from such as are, and by making scandalous sinners think their sin tolerable because it is so tolerated by the pastors of the church. We hereby corrupt Christianity itself in the eyes of the world and do our part to make them believe that to be a Christian is only to be of such or such an opinion, and that the Christian religion requires holiness no more than the false religions of the world. Reformed Pastor
Against all that I have said in behalf of discipline you will plead, "Our people are not ready for it; they will not yet bear it." But is not the meaning of this that you will not bear the trouble and hatred which it will occasion? I beseech you, in order that you may make a comfortable account to the Chief Shepherd and that you may not be found unfaithful in the house of God, that you do not shrink from duty because of the trouble that may attend it. Reformed Pastor
Admonition is a lion which few dare come near, for fear it will tear them in pieces.
The church is distinguished and contained by the right administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper. It should also be noted that this latter mark presumes and implies the practice of church discipline.The Church: The Gospel Made Visible (Kindle Locations 745-746). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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2. Charles Spurgeon (135)
3. J.C. Ryle (117)
4. John Calvin (107)
5. J.I. Packer (93)
6. John Piper (87)
7. Thomas Brooks (82)
8. George Swinnock (80)
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10. A.W. Pink (68)
11. John Owen (68)
12. Louis Berkhof (63)
13. Thomas Manton (60)
14. C.S. Lewis (59)
15. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (58)
16. B.B. Warfield (58)
17. R.C. Sproul (55)
18. William Gurnall (55)
19. Heinrich Bullinger (53)
20. Matthew Henry (51)
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