There is obviously a serious misunderstanding about what \u201cchurch\u201d is. When people say
\ncome or go to, or have \u201cchurch\u201d they mean \u201cchurch meeting.\u201d The local church meeting is an ecclesia, a called out assembly. The universal Church, Body of Christ, is the Ecclesia, the people that were called out of darkness into His marvelous light.<\/p>\n
My point is that clearly the local church meeting, just as the Body of Christ, is an assembly of Believers, not sinners. There is no privilege granted sinners to join such an assembly and remain as they are, or to dictate its biblically mandated decorum.<\/p>\n
Paul wrote, \u201cif\u201d uninformed or unbelievers come into the assembly, indicating that they are not prohibited, but are guests rather than members (1 Corinthians 14:23). He made it clear earlier in the epistle (1 Corinthians 5) that sin should be openly challenged in the ecclesia.<\/p>\n
Thus, sinners are welcome to attend a Christian assembly in search for truth. They have no basis for insisting that it should accommodate or pander to their sinful condition. Furthermore, they should understand that it will not become less Christian to avoid offending them.<\/p>\n
Pastors that will not speak truth to avoid offending a homosexual couple deprives them and other sinners from the only way they can be set free. To call speaking truth in love \u201chateful\u201d is agreeing with Satan that people should be happy on their way to eternal hell.<\/p>\n
By the way, the ecclesia is not the method or means the Scriptures presents for soul winning. So it is improper to invite sinners to the ecclesia for the purpose of \u201cgetting them saved.\u201d Not to win them where you found them and where God sent you to reach them is an abdication of Christian duty.<\/p>\n
Shifting that duty onto the ecclesia has made innumerable Christians as barren and unfruitful as the fig tree Christ cursed. The bottom line is that 90 plus percent of professing Christians never win one soul in their entire life. That makes the modern ecclesia more of a ritual than a means to an end. Now, PCs are afraid of offending in an ecclesia the ones they fail to personally witness to. Can anyone say, \u201cshameful!\u201d without their own cheeks blushing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is obviously a serious misunderstanding about what \u201cchurch\u201d is. When people say come or go to, or have \u201cchurch\u201d they mean \u201cchurch meeting.\u201d The local church meeting is an ecclesia, a called out assembly. The universal Church, Body of Christ, is the Ecclesia, the people that were called out of darkness into His marvelous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paIm2N-sk","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1763,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions\/1763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.truthkeepers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}