God's Renewing Grace

As we seek guidance from God's Word about how those committed to Jesus engage in "life together," we come to a topic too rarely talked about in the 21st-century church, i.e., discipline that leads to restoration. When we trust Jesus, we discover that God declares that we are right with him. And, we also discover the jaw-dropping promise that we who have "fallen short of the glory of God" will someday be "conformed to the image of Christ" (Rom. 3:23; 8:29). So, we're now in the midst of a process of becoming what God has promised we will be (Phil. 1:6; 2:12–13). How is this growth in becoming like Christ to happen? Many things might be said, but one of the most-important parts of our growth is being a part of a church community in which we confront sin in one another's lives and set up ways of experiencing God's renewing grace until the one who has sinned is restored to full fellowship and service in the church family.

The Bible simply takes it for granted that any healthy church family will carry one another's burdens in this way over and over until each one of us is complete in Christ (Col. 1:28–29). This is what the Apostle Paul declares in Galatians 6:1–2:

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

John Calvin recognized that this practice of restorative discipline is so important that it is one of the surest identifying characteristics of a church's health. He wrote: "As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the church, so does discipline serve as its sinews, through which the members of the body hold together, each in its own place. Therefore, all who desire to remove discipline or to hinder its restoration—whether they do this deliberately or out of ignorance—are surely contributing to the ultimate dissolution of the church." (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, Chapter 12:1–13)

Calvin was a man sometimes accused of being severe or harsh. But, when it came to discussing restorative discipline of sin, his teaching was filled with amazing sensitivity. He enjoins being courageous when a sin must be addressed and (at the same time) being humble, gentle, and merciful toward the one being disciplined. Calvin's goals were clear: the full restoration of the one who had fallen, the mutual growth of a community of rescued sinners on the path toward full redemption, and peace in the church.

Those goals are also my own here at LAC.

To His glory,

Dr. Greg Waybright
Senior Pastor