Everyone Welcome! (For A While Anyway)

I’ve had people argue with me (maybe better said at me), that the church can’t exclude anyone. Now I not talking about checking IDs at the door before worship services, but rather that a person must remain in the fellowship no matter the actions that are involved in. Since we all are sinners, it would be the height of hypocrisy for us to suggest that someone in error could be kept away. It wouldn’t be loving! No real Christian would ever make a stand that might keep someone from being a part of the saints.

However the Bible is full or reason to exclude someone from the church, such as;

A person that lives disorderly and refuses to work to provide for themselves (2 Thessalonians 3:6-10)
One that causes division and hindrances (Romans16:17)
A person that refuses to repent of sin (Matthew 18:17)
A person engaged in obvious immoral behavior (1^st Corinthians 5:11-13)
Those that claim Christianity yet exhibits very non-Christian behavior (2^nd Timothy 3:1-5)
One that goes beyond the teaching of Christ (2^nd John 1:0-11)
A person that pushes pointless disputes and controversies and won’t stop even after they are told to lay off (Jude 3:9-11)

The point of these passages is that the church has a standard to uphold. Its mission is to call sinners to repentance, not sinners to comfort and acceptance. The gospel call is for all but those that hear its call must conform to the image of Jesus. A person in willful defiance of the principles of Jesus can’t be allowed to bring the rest of the church down with them.

True love isn’t letting people be comfortable in their sin, it helping them out of it. As Paul writes in 2^nd Thessalonians 3:14-15, “ If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.

Any group without a standard for the group membership can’t really exist. The church has to hold to the standards of its head and founder Jesus Christ. Any person is welcome to become a part but that doesn’t mean you just be any old person to remain.

We may enter “just as I am” but we can stay that way!

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