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Program Host
We have no higher calling than to know who God is. Join Ligonier ministries for our 2027 national conference in Orlando. Together with Christians from around the world, we'll gather to hear biblical teaching on the glorious attributes of God, equipping us to serve him faithfully and pursue his glory in every sphere of life. Save 35% on your registration with the early bird rate@ligonier.org
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R.C. Sproul
Most people leave churches or split churches not over major, major serious matters of the faith, but over what color you paint the church basement or you're alienated because somebody said something that offended you and that fails to see the sacred nature of the church itself.
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Program Host
That's one of the most difficult decisions for a Christian to make, isn't when do we leave a local church? I'm glad you're with us for this Thursday edition of Renewing youg Mind. And that is the question R.C. sproul addresses today. So to conclude our time in his series the Bride of Christ, here's Dr. Sproul.
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R.C. Sproul
We've been looking at the nature of the church. We saw, first of all, that the church is described historically as that institution that is one holy, catholic and apostolic. We've looked at the meaning of the term church as those people who are owned and possessed by Christ. We've seen that the church is a confessing body, that it has a content of faith that it shares and it proclaims to the world. But the question I want to look at today in this session is when is a church not a church? I have to say, I get letters all the time from people who pour out their souls, and they say, I'm very unhappy in the church I attend or in which I belong. I'm not happy with what's preached or with what's taught or the activities that are going on in the church. Or people will cry out and say, my soul is being starved, I want to be fed, and I can't find a church that is alive and that is deeply rooted in the things of God. Or the people say I'm alienated from my church. Can I leave and look for another church? And that's a very, very serious question. And this question was paramount in the 16th century, at the time of the Reformation, where we saw the greatest fragmentation of the visible church that ever took place. And after the break with Rome of the Protestant reformers, all kinds of divergent groups sprung up with different creeds and different confessions and different forms of government, different liturgies, all claiming to be Christian churches. And many of them claiming to be the only true church. And so the people of that day were asking, well, how can we tell? I mean, how do we know a true church from a false church? What are the marks of an authentic church? And so the Reformers of that time wrestled seriously with that question, because Rome, of course, did not recognize the Protestant churches as authentic churches. And Rome had said in the past that the church can be defined this way. Where the bishop is, there is the church, and if there is no authorization of the Roman bishop, then whatever little societies spring up are not valid churches. Well, the Protestant Reformers took a different view of the matter. And, and they sought to isolate and delineate the marks of a valid or a true church. And they basically settled on three such distinctive characteristics. And those three characteristics are these. First of all, they said, for a church to be a true church, the Gospel must be preached faithfully. Now, I'll come back and elaborate on that in a moment. The second mark of the Church was an institution where the sacraments are duly administered. And the third mark of a church is where there is authentic discipline. And the corollary of that is ecclesiastical government, which exists for the nurture and the discipline of the people. So of all the different elements that make up a church, the three non negotiables that the Reformers pinpointed as essential marks of a true church are these three. And let's look at the first one, the gospel, where the gospel is proclaimed. Now, what they meant by this was not just simply the announcement of the good news of Jesus, death and the atonement, but rather where the essential truths of Christianity are faithfully taught and proclaimed. And if a church, for example, in its official decrees or confessional standards, denied an essential of Christian faith, faith, then that means, according to the Reformers, that that institution would no longer be considered a church. For example, historic Protestantism would not recognize Mormonism as an authentic Christian church, because the Mormon faith historically has fundamentally denied the deity of Christ. And so whatever else it affirmed about historic Christianity, the denial of the deity of Christ was seen as a denial of something essential to biblical Christianity. And therefore any organization that denied the deity of Christ would not be considered by the Reformers to be a valid, bona fide church. The issue with rome in the 16th century on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, which was so volatile at that time, was volatile because the Reformers believed that the doctrine of justification by faith alone was an essential of the gospel. And even though the Roman Catholic Church steadfastly embraced many elements of historic orthodoxy, such as the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the Atonement, and that sort of thing. Their condemnation of justification by faith alone inclined the Reformers to come to the conclusion that Rome was no longer a valid church. They believed that Rome had become apostate in the 16th century when Rome issued its anathema and condemnation upon sola fidelity, whereby the Reformers heard in that condemnation a condemnation of the Gospel itself. And so they wouldn't recognize Rome as a legitimate church and vice versa. Rome did not believe in the Reformed view of the Gospel, and they wouldn't recognize the Protestant churches as legitimate churches. The second aspect has to do with the sacraments. And there are quasi Christian bodies in the world who not only reduce the sacraments from the seven that the Roman Catholic Church hold to the two that most Protestants hold, but some have denied sacraments altogether. And the Reformers would say, if there are no sacraments, the Lord's Supper and baptism, whatever else you have in your organization, it's not a church. Now that becomes significant today when we have parachurch groups and ministries like Young Life and Campus Crusade and intervarsity and a host of other type organizations that are engaged in a daily basis on various elements of Christian outreach and ministry. They have specified tasks to work alongside the church. Ligonier Ministries may be called a para ministry. We're an educational institution. We're not a church. Ligonier Ministries doesn't administer the sacraments. We don't have church membership whereby we impart discipline to people who are on the constituency of Ligonier. That's not our function. We're called to assist the church educationally, but we have a very narrow focus at that point. And don't pretend to be a church. Nobody's a member of Ligonier in that sense. We don't baptize, baptize people and have them enter the Ligonier Church. The using of the sacraments and the serving of the sacraments is a task for the church. And every true church is engaged in the sacraments. The third element is the element of discipline or government. And we've seen through church history that the whole business of church discipline has been something that is somewhat fluctuating. There have been times in the past where church discipline has manifested itself in terms that were characteristically considered to be harsh. During, again the 16th century, there was fierce persecution not only from the Roman Catholic Church against Protestants, but also Protestants against Catholics. And we know that people were subjected to the rack, to torture and all kinds of manner of punishments as a matter of church Discipline. I know it's a black eye in the history of the Church, but if you would read, for example, the theories of the bishops of the Roman Catholic church in the 16th century, when they were considering the use of torture in the Inquisition and so on, and even execution, burning heretics at the stake and that so of thing on the surface, from our vantage point in the 20th century, this stuff seems to be cruel, unusual, barbaric punishment and elements of discipline. And perhaps it is, but I want us to understand this, that the leaders of the church in the 16th century, ladies and gentlemen, really believed in hell. And they really believed that there was no faith that could be worse to befall a human being than to be cast into hell. And that there is nothing to be feared ultimately more than the perpetual punishment and discipline of God. And the Church really believed that it was justifiable to use just about any means necessary to rebuke and discipline one of its members to keep them out of the jaws of hell. If it took a torture chamber, if it took the rack, even if it took the threat of being burned at the stake to rescue a person from the jaws of hell, it was conceived to be legitimate. Now, again, I'm not defending that, but I am trying to get us to understand the mindset of people in the 16th century who really took hell seriously. Part of our attitude today towards church discipline is we don't need to be disciplining people at all, because it doesn't matter, because we don't really believe in the threat of divine judgment in our day. Well, the pendulum tends to swing to extremes in church history when it comes to discipline. Sometimes the church gets involved in this harsh and severe forms of discipline that I've already mentioned. At other times, the church is marked by an extraordinary form of what we call latitudinarianism, where virtually no discipline is imposed upon the people. One of the mainline denominations in America a few years ago had quite a controversy brewing in the church when a group of pastors and scholars put together a paper and a report and a formal report that they recommended to the church with respect to a sex ethic that authorized homosexual liaisons and to some degree, premarital sex and extramarital sex in certain specified contexts as being all right. And when this report was introduced as legislation, as it were, to the church for the church's study and possible approval, there was a hue and cry among the rank and file and among many clergy who rose to oppose this new approach to sexuality. And a showdown came at the annual meeting of this denomination. And when the vote was taken, the proposal was defeated, which caused the conservatives in that church to rejoice, and rightly so, that that particular proposal was defeated. But the strange thing that came out of this, in my judgment, was though the church did not adopt this particular position on sexual behavior, it also did not censure or discipline in any way the clergy who advocated the position. So basically what the church was saying is, this is not our official position, but if you want to be a minister in our church and hold these things and teach these things, we're not going to do anything about it. So there was a default of discipline at that point. And we've seen this again and again and again, where people can be involved in outrageous conduct and outrageous behavior and the church doesn't say a word. Now that raises a question. If a church fails in a significant way to be disciplining its members with respect to gross and heinous and egregious sins, is that institution still a church? Again, the question is, when does a church become apostate? That is not an easy question to answer, because it's very rare in church history that an institution will come up and say, we don't believe in the atonement of Christ or we don't believe in the deity of Christ. It's not always that clear cut. Sometimes it is, but for the most part it's just that the church will play loosely with essential truths of the Christian faith. And we make a distinction between de facto apostasy and de jura apostasy, between formal and material apostasy. Formal apostasy is when the church clearly, unequivocally anathematizes an essential truth or denies an essential truth of the Christian faith. De facto apostasy is apostasy at a practical level, where the creeds are still intact, but the church doesn't believe the creeds anymore, or that the church begins to undermine the very creeds that they say that they believe. And again, because that's kind of a sliding scale of seriousness and practice, who can discern when the church is no longer a church? It's not an easy matter. So that brings me to this practical application. When people are asking me, should I leave my church and go to another, first thing I want to say to anyone who raises that question is, however you decide that, you better not do it willy nilly, because it's a very serious, serious matter. When we join a church, whatever church we join in almost every case, we do it with a solemn vow before God and to leave that institution. To remove oneself from a group before whom I've made a sacred vow requires serious reasons to justify that. And our church vows are just almost meaningless today. People just flit from one church to another like they were going down the street for a loaf of bread. And we promise, in my church, at least in our membership vows, to make diligent use of the means of grace. We promise, when we're there, to submit ourselves to the authority of the church. And yet most people quit churches or leave churches or split churches, not over major, major serious matters of the faith, but over what color you paint the church basement, or you're alienated because somebody in the Women's association said something that offended you. And so we storm out in protest. And that fails to see the sacred nature of the church itself again. There are three different stages. There are times when we simply may not leave the church. And that's simple. We may not leave the church when there's no just reason to leave the church. We ought to honor our commitment to a church to the best of our ability as long as we possibly can, unless the other two principles apply. The second point we can be at is where you may leave the church. I say that it's possible at times for people to leave a church when that church is so seriously corrupt that you don't even know whether it's apostate or not apostate, but that in reality, you are not able to be nurtured and nourished as a Christian, and your family cannot receive the benefit of nurture either. I think that when churches become that corrupt, you're allowed to leave them and to seek a church where you will be nurtured and fed spiritually and cared for in your souls. The third category is when you must leave the church. And that, of course, is when the church is apostate. You may say, I'm going to stay within the church and try to work for its change and recovery and so on. But if the church is in fact apostate, you're simply not allowed to be there. Be like the prophets of BAAL who had the confrontation with Elijah on Mount Carmel. And the prophets of BAAL were claiming that God was on their side, and Elijah said, no, they have the confrontation and the fire comes from heaven. And it's very clear where God is in this and that the house of BAAL is a pagan institution. Can you imagine somebody there saying, well, I see now that Yahweh is God, but I'm going to stay here in the house of Baal as salt and light, and try to work for its reform and try to recover it for the things of God. We're not allowed to do that. If the institution we are in commits apostasy, it is our duty to leave it. So those are the three options you have. I mean, the three possibilities. It may be in a situation where you must leave. It may be in a situation where you may leave. You may be in a situation where you may not leave. And to leave would be sinning. And so I only mention those for your consideration that when you make that decision, you look carefully at the marks of the church. Is the gospel preached? Are the sacraments duly administered? Is there a biblical form of church government and discipline? If those three things are present, you ought not to leave. You ought to work to help be an edifying part of that section of the body of Christ. Leaving a church is a painful thing, and as I said, it ought not to be done in a cavalier or casual way, not without great, great care to make sure that it's not just an act of pride or an act of immaturity on our own part, but yet at the same time, dear friends, to be a part of an authentic church is vitally important to your soul and to the souls of your family. And I think you need to look carefully at that and not select churches just on the basis of the social benefits that may flow out of them or the convenience of location or anything else, but that you should be a part of a visible church that makes a clear confession of faith in the gospel, where the gospel is preached faithfully, hopefully the whole counsel of God is being proclaimed, and where you can be nurtured by the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and of baptism, and where you can expect a godly rule over your own life and the discipline that you need and I need within the life of the church. And when we find a church, we'll never find one that's perfect. And so we have to understand that these are matters of degree. But it's important that in their essence, these three principles are present for you to be engaged in that institution.
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Program Host
That was R.C. sproul concluding our time in his series the Bride of Christ. I know that I've been helped this week here on Renewing youg Mind, and I hope you have as well. But this series is 10 messages, so I would encourage you to request access to all 10 when you give a donation in support of Renewing youg mind@renewingyourmind.org or when you call us our number is 800-435-4343. In addition to access to the series and the study guide, we'll send you a copy of Derek Thomas book. Let us worship God, but respond today as this offer ends at midnight. Well, tomorrow we'll be joined by Dr. Ian Hamilton for a message from his series Calvinism and the Christian Life. Here's a preview.
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Dr. Ian Hamilton
Christ is always the mediator in whom and by whom and through whom we come unto God. And so writes Owen, the soul being thus by faith through Christ and by him brought into the the bosom of God into a comfortable persuasion and spiritual perception and sense of his love, there reposes and rests itself. The biblical Calvinist rests his life and her life on the amazing love of the Father. It was his love that sent his only begotten Son into the world. That whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. But there is Morris's own. God loves that he may be loved. And so we are to make returns of love to the Father. We find that in human relationships, don't we? The one thing a wife longs for from her husband is to know that he loves her. She's happy to receive his gifts if gifts he brings. But what she wants to know is his heart going out to her in love.
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Program Host
I hope you'll join us here on Renewing youg Mind,
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R.C. Sproul
Sam.