Dr Paul Allen

Stained glass window of the sacred Heart of Jesus Christ in the former Mosque (Cathedral) of Cordoba, Spain (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I have sinned against you. I have apologized. But how do you know if I mean it? How do you know when someone is repentant ? In his helpful little book  Church Discipline , Jonathan Leeman offers some guidance: A few verses before Jesus’ instruction in Matthew 18  about church discipline, he provides us with help for determining whether an individual is characteristically repentant: would the person be willing to cut off a hand or tear out an eye rather than repeat the sin ( Matt. 18:8-9 )? That is to say, is he or she willing to do whatever it takes to fight against the sin? Repenting people, typically, are zealous about casting off their sin. That’s what God’s Spirit does inside of them. When this happens, one can expect to see a willingness to accept outside counsel. A willingness to inconvenience their schedules. A willingness to ...

Matthew 18:15–17 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (v. 15). James M. Boice’s comments on Matthew 18:13 remind sinners that “everything God  has done is for your salvation, and no one in all the universe will be happier at your repentance than God” (The Gospel of Matthew: An Expositional Commentary, vol. 2, p. 388). If the Father rejoices to see errant sinners return, we must also desire transgressors to be restored, no matter their offenses. This principle under girds thisw passage, the classic text on  church discipline . Discipline necessarily means confrontation and is established in Christ ’s call for us to care for the spiritual growth of one another (Matt. 18:10–14). We are required to intervene when Christian friends and family go astray, otherwise sin might destroy that person. In a real sense, we are our brother’s keeper. Verse 15 addresses offenses...

Icon depicting the First Council of Nicaea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) 1 Corinthians 11:17–34 “In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me’” ( v. 25 ). There are many different bodies that call themselves churches, whether or not they are true manifestations of the church of Jesus Christ . How then can we tell when a church in name is also a church in reality? Faced with this same problem, the Reformers and Roman Catholics answered this question very differently. Rome has said that the bishop is the mark of the church, that is, the true church is present when you have a duly consecrated bishop who is part of a line of succession going back to the apostles. Ultimately, a bishop is a true bishop only if he submits to the pope; thus, in Roman Catholicism only Roman Catholic parishes constitute the true church. Protestants recognize the biblical failings of this view an...

Oil painting of a young John Calvin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Matthew 18:18–20 “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” ( v. 18 ). In our day, respect for church authority has all but vanished. Many professing Christians think their “private lives” are no business of the church. Excommunication from a local body is hardly ever taken seriously since it rarely prevents someone from joining the church next door with no questions asked. Several phenomena explain this sad reality. The church’s fragmentation makes it easy to move from one denomination to another. Many church leaders exalt numerical growth and will not ask hard questions of the people in the pews for fear of learning a fact that would bar someone from membership. Furthermore, individualism and the way our culture falsely divides our private and personal lives makes it hard to honor the authority of Christ ’s church. Yet our “p...