Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. (Gal 6:1-3 NLT)
This excludes apostasy. Why? Because apostasy is a knowledgeable turning and rejecting of God once you have met other qualifications. This is talking about being overcome by a sin. The person has grown weak, and somehow fell into sin.
While you are pondering if there is a sin that cannot be restored, ask yourself where you want these people who are in need of restoration. Do you want them excluded from the community? Ridiculed for their sins?
Paul says that he turned some away and out of the congregation not based on sin, but based on doctrinal errors which were disrupting the congregation. Here, he writes about someone needing to be restored.
For those of us who believe that lying is a sin, and we catch someone? Or for those of us who believe that cohabitation? Smoking? Drugs? Alcohol? Homosexuality? Arrogance?
T.C., a fine biblioblogger, defines repentance and righteousness within the New Perspectives on Paul framework, at least according to Bishop N.T. Wright:
This post in response to a comment on another post. It is directed towards me as anyone, but I hope someone can get something out of it.
I am convinced that only the sin of apostasy – when we abandon and rebel against Christ – can separate us from Christ.
But what if we become wayward in our walk with God – what if we stumble and fall and begin to drift away? What if we are abandoned by the ministry, by the congregation, by others?
More than a few years ago now, I had recently been unceremoniously dumped by my fiancee. It tore me apart. Deeply. Wounded. I became angry with God, distrustful, separated from the holiness in God – by my hand – and gave up trying to serve God. I sought someone who was opposite of anyone that I had dated before. So, I found her. Well, long story short, we found ourselves pregnant – before marriage. In love, no less.
What a powerful message – and one true across the theological bounds.
The Church that I know is one content with cover-ups, with hiding the Gospel, with changing only light bulbs. Where are the laborer’s in the fields? Where is the weeping for lost loved ones, friends, and the ill? What great impact have w had? If the community around you has nothing good to say about – not because of the Gospel, but because of you, it’s time to either quit or change direction.
It’s time to be about our Father’s business.
His point about Nehemiah is one which connects with me – as the Book of Nehemiah is a singular event in the Old Testament. Nehemiah didn’t just build a wall, but he stood for the people and the City fo God. He was a pastor with a heart to God and the things of God.
Not that the truth was being preached before, but now, because of the ’scandal,’ everything is simply okay. Preaching inclusion is easier than preaching repentance. Repentance requires confession, even from the preacher, that he or she too was at one time a sinner, and encouraging the troubled heart to reach out to the same God that had saved the preacher.
As a series of scandals stripped away everything Rev. D.E. Paulk had — his church, his financial resources, even his father — he found the courage to speak his truth.
“I don’t know how to say this, the scandal didn’t make me inclusive, it took away my fear,” Paulk says. “Before that I was saying that I’ll preach about gay inclusion and just sort of mention it here or there. When you lose everything, you have nothing to lose. I looked at my wife one day and said all I have left is me, and what God is speaking to me.”
Reading Tertullian’s On Modesty as been beneficial to me – as a mental and a spiritual exercise. I have come to see Tertullian – in this instance – as a man deeply troubled by the lack of morality and holiness inside the church that he dearly loved. His antagonistic words were meant to counter the steep slide into moral depravity which he saw overtaking the church. Perhaps he was offensive and brutish, his rigorism showing, but surely he did it out of love for the Church and out of a plea for holy living.
Continuing our reading of Tertullian’s work, On Modesty, we come to the ancient author’s piece on the dangers of transgression in interpretation. At several points, he make references to a strict form of biblical interpretation opposing, and predating, the methods employed by the Alexandrian school which insignificant things are used for great truths – such as the 100 sheep.
According to some sources this was one of the Tertullian’s last works, perhaps 222.
As we continue our reading of Tertullian, we find the ancient author again attempting to push his opponents into a corner so that their arguments are muted and eventually dismissed against his.
