Excommunication
That excommunication could be part of the cost that a would-be disciple must count on paying, will seem odd only to persons who are not acquainted with ‘all the counsel of God’ (Acts 20.27) and the fulfillment of prophecy in history. The apostle Paul, in that passage, testifies that he has ‘not shunned’ to preach any facet of God’s truth. Excommunication is one such facet. When the Church of God was in its infancy, and to no small extent made up of Jews who recognized and received Jesus as the Messiah, the synagogues were frequented by Jewish saints for worship and debate. Saul (afterwards named Paul) ‘preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God’ (Acts 9.20.) Jesus had prophesied that the Jewish leaders, for the most part, would not receive the message that the Messiah had come. “They shall put you out of the synagogues” (John 16.2.) Some disciples would be scourged there (Matthew 23.34.) And it would become a common thing for Jewish leaders to kill those who preached the Gospel of Christ.
If the Jews had received their Messiah en masse, the synagogues would have become meeting places for disciples. Due to persecution, disciples met in homes, often in secret; eventually they met in buildings constructed for the purpose of that special kind of worship called ‘Christian.’ People who go to church today do not expect to be rejected or put out. There is no need to count on being excommunicated these days, is there? In fact, there is; if a disciple is faithful, he may be driven out; he should count on it happening. Though certain persons ought to be put out of God’s churches, like grossly immoral persons and heretics, they often enter in and remain. The apostle Paul warned about ‘grievous wolves’ who would ‘enter in among you’ after his departure (Acts 20.29.) Wolves not only enter in, they work themselves into the core in order to govern churches built for sheep to worship God in. If they are not ministers, they often hold sway over the ministers. An excommunication for the purpose of punishing an offender (1 Corinthians 5; 2 Thessalonians 3) and protecting a congregation from his noxious influence is so rare today that I have never heard of it being done even once in twenty-five years in my city of more than two dozen churches. This is astonishing in a city as sinful as this one is. Our city is crawling with sin, and there is no indication that sin will soon begin to vanish through preaching. A cockroach does not scurry away unless the lights are turned on. The light that we need is gospel light, and we don’t have it. Fornication and perversity are celebrated here, and pastors dare not disallow impenitent persons from proudly parading up and down their aisles and participating in church as redeemed sinners. Regrettably, when excommunications are executed, they are usually done against sheep, not wolves. But Jesus said that we should count on that happening. An excommunication of this sort may be done without the congregation’s knowledge or consent. The act may be informally done; that is, not in so many words, for the ministers, or executioners, know that they are in the wrong. They pay a visit to the orthodox threat, speak like politicians about how the member is free to worship elsewhere and how that would be best, given the controversial nature of stirring up the issue in question; and, before the member even realizes what the visit is for, he is ‘put out of the synagogue.’ If you have no knowledge of your church excommunicating a member for a sin like idolatry, fornication, railing, drunkenness, or extortion (1 Corinthians 5.10, 11), then it is almost certain that wolves are in charge of your church and that obedient sheep are the ones who have cause to fear. A Protestant Christian may not be happy worshipping beside couples living in sin, begetters of bastard children, flamboyant dromedaries, and arch heretics that Creeds are for singling out. But if he takes the matter up with his pastor, he will, almost certainly, be told to never mind; if he persists, he will be asked to leave, and he will be unceremoniously excommunicated. Excommunication is another cost to be counted among would-be disciples.
When a church—one might nearly say any church—is steered toward a more biblical course, the man leading the way will be confronted; possibly he will be stopped and excommunicated. This happened even to the good and great Jonathan Edwards when he tried to reform a practice that his grandfather had corrupted. For his attempt to regulate the admission to Communion in order to bar those who were sincere but not saved, he was forced out of his own church. If one of the leading agents of the Great Awakening was turned out of his living; that is, after revivals had blown through the land through his instrumentality, any man might be excommunicated, and we should not be surprised when it happens. Sometimes a man, because of his orthodoxy and zeal, does not even get a chance to preach in the very branch of God’s Church that he was ordained by. Both George Whitefield and John Wesley, the leading evangelicals abroad during the Great Awakening, were ordained by the Church of England. Neither one, however, was allowed a pulpit in that Church. This means that they were effectively, though not officially, excommunicated. One of the benefits of knowing the history of the Church, not just the general sweep of it, but in the specific, is the strength that may be garnered from it through solidarity. It is easier to bear excommunication, whether formally by a word, or not in so many words informally, when some of God’s greatest men have borne it before us.
After John Hus was excommunicated for preaching against the vices of the Roman clergy, and for refusing to recant his opposition to dogmas such as Transubstantiation and Papal Infallibility, he looked to the future for strength and uplift: “I am more afraid of the greatest of all excommunications, viz. that by which the Sovereign Pontiff, in presence of angels and men, will eternally excommunicate the wicked from all participation in eternal beatitude…whoever shall excommunicate a man from temporal interest or pride, or in order to revenge himself of some injury, and against his conscience, excommunicates himself” (John Huss, Letters, p. 211.) The Sovereign Pontiff spoken of in this passage is the Lord Jesus Christ, not the pope. The Only Infallible High Priest will decide whether or not we have deserved excommunication. Heavenly orders are on their way to repeal many excommunications; the LORD’s veto will not brook an objection; illegitimate excommunicators will be overawed by a Superior Executor.
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