An essential characteristic of being a church is that it address sin. Overlarge churches easily lose authority and relational structures that are important for a church to be a church, a community considering itself a 'body' in close fellowship and concerned with health and holiness. Where a church or a group in a church does address sin or perceived sin, however, it might become structurally impaired and reduced to 'groupthink'. These matters can be addressed with regard to the process that Jesus lays out in Matthew 18.15-20 to address sin in the church. The passage in the ESV reads as follows: ‘If another member of the church * sins against you, * go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. * 16 But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If the mem...
When we speak of Jesus as the ‘Lord’, we do more than honour Him. [1] To call Jesus ‘Lord’ is also to acknowledge that He exercises divine roles and authority. One of these is that the Lord is the Creator. Another is that the Lord is exclusively the Lord Jesus Christ. Also, the Almighty is the Lord mighty to save us. We therefore acknowledge that Jesus is God, participating in divine identity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. I would like to show how the first Christians related certain Old Testament passages to their confession that Jesus is Lord and then show how this interpretation came from Jesus Himself. In the use of the Old Testament, we can find implications about Jesus’ Lordship that the title alone does not reveal. Think about the full meaning of saying, ‘Jesus is Lord’. This seems to have been a succinct way confession in the early Church that indicated someone was a Christian. In 1 Corinthians 12.3, P...