“Recovery of the practice of church discipline in our congregations is absolutely essential if the church today is to end the scandal of cheap grace and gross disobedience.” (109)
John Calvin on Church Discipline: “As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the church, so discipline forms the ligaments which connect the members together, and keep each in its proper place. Whoever, therefore, desire either the abolition of all discipline, or obstruct its restoration, whether they act from design for inadvertency, they certainly promote the entire dissolution of the church.” (114)
Haddon Robinson on Church Discipline: “Too often now when people join a church, they do so as consumers. If they like the product, they stay. If they do not, they leave. They can no more imagine a church disciplining them than they could a store that sells goods disciplining them. It is not the place of the seller to discipline the consumer. In our churches we have a consumer mentality.” (115) [Quoted in Marlin Jeschke, Disciplining in the Church: Recovering a Ministry of the Gospel (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1988), 143.]
[All three quotes found in Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 109, 114, 115, respectively.]
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