June 23, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Pastor Marc Grimaldi on “The Loving Act of Church Discipline”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and everybody else living on the planet earth listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 23rd day of June 2015, and we almost didn't get on the air today because there is a violent thunder and lightning storm here in Cumberland County.

You can possibly even hear the rain pounding on my window, and the power went out here, and thankfully the power returned not long ago and we were able to get my guest on the air today.

This is a very important program, and I'm praising God that he did give us the ability to continue with the broadcast, and I hope that he, in his good grace and mercies, allows us to continue for the entire hour or what's left of an hour with my guest,

Pastor Mark Grimaldi of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Merrick, Long Island.

Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, which is located in Merrick, New York, was the church where I was a member for all of my

Christian life, which began 30 years ago. Actually, the church started out as Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville, Long Island, New York, and then after a merger with First Baptist Church of Merrick, became

Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, and that's where I remained until I moved to here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where the new home of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is.

But the reason why this is a very unique program, I'm not even sure if anybody's done this before,

Pastor Mark, but I am interviewing the pastor that put me under church discipline.

And this is a subject that is disagreed over amongst professing believers, and I believe it is sadly an element of church obedience that is grossly lacking if it even exists in most churches, even within evangelicalism today.

And I thank God for the discipline that I was placed under by the brethren at Grace Reformed Baptist Church due to my lapsing back into dangerously deadly alcohol abuse after 18 years of sobriety, and I might not be sitting here in front of a microphone today talking to you if it wasn't for my dear brethren who cared enough about me to put me under church discipline.

But let me welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron, my former pastor and dear friend,

Pastor Mark Romaldi. Yes, thanks Chris. It's a pleasure to be on here, brethren, and I really appreciate what you're doing and all that God is doing with you through the radio program again.

So it's a pleasure to be on here. Yes, and I'd like to have you open up by actually defining what church discipline is.

It has an ominous sound to it. People don't like to talk about it, and as I said, many churches don't even practice it.

But if you could go into some definition for our listeners, what exactly is that?

Yes, church discipline is a means that Christ uses to purify his church, and so when there's, specifically when there's unrepentant sin or significant sin in the church, there are various forms of discipline that can be enacted to maintain the purity of the church, to make sure that God's glory is sustained there.

We ought to be a people who are holy, even as God is holy, and also to protect the sanctity of the church, to keep it from being leavened with sin and etc.

So it's a means that God uses different kinds of ways to keep the church pure and to aid in the sanctification of the church.

Now, I've titled this program, The Loving Act of Church Discipline.

People may hear that and say, that is really oxymoronic. That doesn't even make sense, the loving act of church discipline.

But in addition to the purity of the church, isn't this even a genuine and profound act of love being administered to an individual or individuals who are involved in unrepentant sin?

Yeah, absolutely, Chris. In fact, in Leviticus 19, verses 17 to 18, right there, even in the

Old Testament, it says, you shall not hate your brother in your heart, you shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord. One of the ways that we exercise love towards a sinning brother or sister in Christ is by rebuking them or correcting them for their sin.

And also, if they don't repent of it in some sense, to exercise church discipline with the hope that they will be preserved, their own soul will be preserved, and that they too will be sanctified.

So we need to correct one another. It's absolutely a loving act for the individual being disciplined.

So yes, it's the purity of the church, the glory of God, and also for the restoration of those who are involved with some kind of sin for their own benefit.

It's an unloving thing. It's a breaking of God's commands to not correct someone, to not discipline someone who is caught up in sin.

And we live in a day and age where Christians who rightly are viewing the fact or rightly proclaiming the fact that all sin, if it is not covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, all sin will take men to hell.

And that's the true part of the scenario. But don't you think that in the day and age in which we live, this is being really grossly abused, this fact, and it has taken many to the place where they say, well, since everybody in the church that I'm a member of is a sinner, my pastors are sinners, who are they to enact discipline upon me just because I'm another sinner?

This equating of all sin to be, sin is sin is sin, as the common statement is repeated, that is really a gross abuse of the fact that all sin will lead to hell without Christ, isn't it?

Yeah, Chris, I think that and sadly, there are some, even among, you know, amongst

Reformed churches that we would respect, that seem to take a lean in that kind of direction.

And I believe it's dangerous to the life of the church. Because it's true, we all sin, we all struggle with sin, right, on a daily basis.

But we're talking about here, sin that generally that is, is exceptional in nature, it's grievous sin, and it's also sin that's not being repented of.

So the individual, if you correct them, right, that's a form of rebuke, which we all should do to each other, that's fine.

And that's what we tell, we deal with the sin that we deal with each day in our lives, whatever it might be, anger or whatever it might be.

But if somebody doesn't repent of that sin, now you're dealing with a whole nother level of correction.

And that's where the discipline comes into play, because they're unwilling to acknowledge, to confess, and to repent.

So there's a big difference between that and the person who says, look, I struggle with sin, different kinds of sin daily in my heart,

I struggle with pride or envy or whatever it might be. And somebody who is, let's say, is involved with adultery, and is still committed to it and not putting the sin away from them.

And of course, the fact that we who are theologically reformed, and many who even outside of our camp of theology, believe that a genuine

Christian cannot ever lose his or her salvation.

But having said that, isn't it true that when a person is living in the act of disobedience, when he is living an ongoing life of rebellion, that we are not even to regard that person's prior testimony as genuine?

Now, obviously, we don't know for a fact if this person is a reprobate, or if this person was genuinely regenerate at a previous time and has just backslidden into sin.

But we are not to treat him as a fellow believer until he has repented. I'm reminded of Matthew 18, 15 through 17, you have, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private.

If he listens to you, you have won your brother, but if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a

Gentile and a tax collector. Now that last line, isn't that what I was just referring to, that we cannot view these people as fellow believers and Christians until they repent?

Yeah, in fact, what you're saying is very much true, that's exactly the meaning of that text. When someone refuses, again, we're talking about someone who's refusing to repent.

If someone repents, you seek to help to restore them, you're not going to excommunicate them, right?

But when somebody refuses to repent, you've gone to them as an individual, you've gone to them with another brother or sister, and then it's been brought to the church, the church has tried to reach out to the brother and they continue on in that sin, where they are to be then excommunicated, they're put out of the church, and when it says treated as a tax collector and a brother,

I've actually heard, as a tax collector and a sinner, I've actually heard one brother once say that that means to just treat them in the loving way you would treat an unbeliever, like when you're trying to win them to the gospel, but that is not what it's saying.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians 5, if you look at verses 1 to 13 on your own time, those are in the audience, you find that Paul says that we're not to keep company with those people, those who continue on in sin, we're not, and he repeats it a few times, and he says not even to eat with such a person, and he uses the idea of putting out the leaven, which took place when, you remember, when the

Jews, when they celebrated the Passover, before they celebrated the Passover, they were to get rid of all the leaven in their house, they had to get rid of it, it had to be gone, and that was the idea there, you put it out, you don't have fellowship with that person, it's not just treating them as an unbeliever in the sense of trying to win them with the gospel, there is actually a type of shunning involved here for the sake of that person and delivering them over to Satan, and for the purity of the church, with the hope that they'll be brought back to repentance.

There's a difference between dealing with an unbeliever who has no profession of faith and does not identify with Christ, and Paul makes this point in the same text, and the believer who identifies with Christ who has a profession of faith and is marring that profession by refusing to repent.

So when you treat them as the tax collector and the sinner in this case, the idea is putting them away out of the midst in the way the

Israelites would have treated those people in that day. Now I think that there is a very important element in these words recorded for us in Matthew 18 that I think is one of the most grossly and repeated sins in the body of Christ, and that's the sin of gossip.

And we have here in the opening words of that segment that I read from 15 through 17 of Matthew 18, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private.

And I think, and I don't know if you would agree with me or not, especially you might know more than I do at being a pastor, but I really am convinced that the sin of gossip and slander is the most frequently committed sin amongst

Christians, even regenerate born -again believers, and people don't seem to recognize that as being all that serious.

They even think it's some kind of a duty of theirs to tell others about the sins of their brethren or professing brethren before even seeing them themselves and confronting them as the scriptures command.

They clearly are violating something very serious, and sometimes wouldn't you say that this sin of gossiping, and it may not be slander in the sense that they're telling a falsehood, but they may be slandering unconsciously because they haven't had the facts determined, and whatever the motivation is that they're still violating a clear command here to go to the person in private first, and don't you think that very often these people who are violating that are committing a sin that can be just as evil or worse than the sin they're telling others about?

Yeah, Chris, I'll tell you, not only does gossip completely destroy this whole process, which is a wonderful process of restoration, because as you said, many times people will go out and tell everyone but that person what's going on, and then that person may hear it through the back door from someone else, and then it might even be it was a mistake or something, and it spreads all around.

Not only is that the case, but I believe that gossip is one of the destructive sins in the life of the church.

In fact, the next time I come on your program, if you'd like, I'd love to be interviewed on this issue.

I actually wrote a book called Gossip the Church Killer because of the damage that it's done in our own church and what

I see it doing in the churches in the world, and how it's looked at as almost like such a minor sin.

It's not given the weight that it really deserves. It is very serious on many fronts, and in part with what it does to destroy this process of restoring someone.

This is one of the reasons why this process is laid aside, or it's contaminated in some sense, because it's not handled the correct way from the beginning, where the individual goes directly to that person.

So I would agree with you 100 % on that. And I had actually forgotten momentarily about the book that you had written on that, because I do remember now that you wrote that, so this was completely providential that I brought that up, but I certainly will have you back to discuss exclusively that issue.

Do all sins need to be brought to the attention of the entire church by the church leaders, even if the guilty party is cooperating and willing to go through the necessary means to demonstrate genuine repentance?

No, no. I would say that there might be particular sins, depending upon whether it was a sin that was committed publicly, or a public sin of some sort.

For example, if a pastor sins, that would have to be brought before the congregation, if it's immoral, you know, a significant sin.

I'm not talking about a pastor, you know, got angry on some occasion and hit the wall. But I think that because of his office, he needs to be rebuked or dealt with publicly, depending upon the nature of the sin.

But in general, I would say that when somebody in the congregation, when they sin, if they repent, and I know there's people who may disagree with me on this, but I think that unless in some way it's already a public knowledge, or it's already been infected the congregation in some way,

I think it can be dealt with on a private level, again, depending upon the nature of the sin. If somebody is a murderer or has molested a child or something like that,

I mean, there's other things that have to be taken into consideration legally and so on. But I think by and large, a lot of sin, if it's repented of, if somebody, for example, is confessing to pornography, that they've been struggling with pornography, or whatever it might be, or even some drug use, if there's some repentance, they're working things out with the pastors of that church,

I don't see a need to expose that to the congregation. I'm going to give our listeners my email address so you can email us a question for Pastor Mark Rimaldi regarding the issue of the loving act of church discipline.

The email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

We ask of you, unless the matter is involving a personal and private matter, please give us your first name, city and state, and if you're from another country, give us the country where you reside.

And obviously, do not mention anybody by name and be guilty of the very slander that we're speaking of if you're addressing somebody else's sin, et cetera.

We don't want anything like that to be conducted on our program today. That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

And we do have a listener, we have Johnny in Queens, New York, who says, there are some

Christian communities that exercise shunning towards the member that is excommunicated.

Is that an appropriate biblical practice as a means to deliver them to Satan?

Yes, yeah. As I said before, I think what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, and again,

I think how that's conducted is there's wisdom involved. Sometimes somebody is, you know, maybe there's some evidence that they're trying to pursue repentance or they're willing to at least be challenged.

So there's a play, I'm not saying, you know, you just completely walk past somebody every time and don't say hello to them. But I think there is a place very clearly, according to 1

Corinthians 5, that when someone is in sin and there's no evidence of repentance in that person, and they're continuing on in that sin,

Paul repeats, he says here, in fact, I'll read it. He says, I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people, yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world or with the covetous or extortionists or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.

But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person.

Therefore, he goes on to say, put away from yourself the evil person. So I think there is very much a place to disassociate with someone, certainly to bar them from fellowship events.

I wouldn't say don't let them in the doors of the church, because it's through the word more than likely that they may find conviction.

So they should be allowed to come into the congregation and hear the word, but they should not be treated as if they're a brother or sister in Christ.

And there is a place to shun in the sense, a respectable way of doing that from the fellowship and from any kind of encouragement that you might give to a fellow

Christian. And Johnny from Bridgewood, Queens, New York, follows up with another excellent question that makes the issue even more of a dilemma.

What if this person who is being quote -quote shunned has a wife and children who are members of the church and who are not in sin?

What do you do there in regard to that? Then you move out of the house. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I guess in some cases you would have to have or would request that that happen, depending on the sin.

Actually, that's a very good question. What I would say on that, and that's not a question too, by the way, that's not a circumstance that's not unheard of.

That's something that has happened and can happen. What I would say is that there are two different relationships involved in that situation.

You have a familial relationship, an earthy familial relationship with a son or a daughter or a father that you live with, or a spouse.

Let's say you have a spouse who is being excommunicated and the other spouse is not. They can't divorce them, they're just going to live with them and so on.

You don't shun them. You can't ignore them at the home and just treat everything like a revolving door in that sense.

But I think there's a way in which you can disfellowship that person in a spiritual sense.

You're not going to encourage them spiritually with spiritual things other than to call them to repent. But I think there's a way that you can relate to them in a familial sense and treat them kindly and still love them and have a familial relationship with that person, barring out things that are related spiritually to that person.

So there's a way of doing that. It's not easy. I'm glad that I'm not in that situation, but I think you'd have to handle those two different relationships at the same time.

One is, how do I treat my wife as a wife and how do I treat her as sister in Christ?

So there's a way that you can treat her in one sense as a wife and at the same time not treat her as a

Christian. I think that's how I would do it. Yeah, and last but not least,

Johnny has a third part to his questions. Johnny from Ridgewood, Queens. He basically is saying that the common specific ways that people that he is aware of that are being placed under discipline is that they are barred from the

Lord's table and they are barred from voting privileges as a member of the church.

What would be the required signs of genuine repentance needed before somebody is restored?

And of course that would obviously differ from case to case depending on what the sin is, correct?

Yeah, I think one of the important things when exercising church discipline, and believe me when

I say this, let me just preface this by saying I'm by no means perfect in this or the quintessential church that knows how to do this in the most perfect sense.

Many times there are church discipline issues, just to say this outright, that are just not black and white.

They're very difficult, very time consuming. You can't just run into a discipline situation quickly.

You can't take too long. There's a lot of counsel involved at times. So let me just preface that answer with those words and say this, that I think when you actually, if you excommunicate someone, which

I believe that's what Johnny's talking about there, when you give them a letter or whatever you give them that would inform them of the excommunication, you have to be very specific as to why they're being excommunicated.

What are the specific sins? Not generalities, not just, okay, well, you know, you're proud or you have problems with anger, but very specific ways in which they are sinning.

And then a very specific call to repentance, things that they have to do. So if somebody is involved with sexual morality, obviously one thing they have to do is stop having sexual relations with someone who's not their spouse.

If somebody is involved with alcohol, right, with a situation that you have gone through, they would have to stop, very clearly stop drinking, get the necessary help that's prescribed to ensure that they are able to overcome the addiction or whatever it might be.

And if they fulfill those things and they show by their life, by the way they're living, by what they're doing, that there's a sense of change, a sense of repentance there in their actions, at least, because we can't see the heart,

I think there's a place to begin to restore them, not necessarily to rush it, but to begin to restore them to a position of good standing.

In fact, Chris, in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul there, when he speaks to the

Corinthians, he actually addresses a situation. Some say it's the person in 1 Corinthians who is involved sexually with his stepmother, but I don't know for sure if that's the case.

But he actually tells them, look, he says, I urge you to reaffirm your love to that person.

Apparently they were, that person was repenting in some sense, and they still were not allowing him into the fellowship, they still were cutting him off.

And Paul says basically there, that if, you know, lest that one be swallowed up in too much sorrow, you ought to forgive them and comfort them.

And so we ought to be looking to restore people when we see those signs of specific repentance that are taking place, and even to welcome them back to the table.

We know that the Lord's Supper is a place for sinners in need of grace, and so we don't want to keep them away from that if we see them having those signs of repentance.

And obviously that is the goal, or one of the main goals. You're not doing this out of spite or vengeance or to humiliate people.

The main goal is to protect the church and to restore the erring brother.

Yeah, exactly. And we're going to go to a question from Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama after we return from this break.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, please write chrisarnson at gmail .com.

This is a live program, so you only have about 25 minutes left to send us an email or less.

chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S - A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Welcome back, this is Chris Sorensen of Iron Sharpens Iron. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today is

Pastor Mark Rimaldi of Grace Reform Baptist Church in Merrick, Long Island, New York.

We are discussing the loving act of church discipline and we have a question from Ted in Tuscaloosa, Alabama who writes,

Church discipline has come under fire in the wake of revelations of abusive and controlling pastors.

For example, there's the situation of a pastor who sued several of his congregants back in 2012.

The term spiritual abuse has been thrown around rather liberally in some quarters, though in others it seems to be taken as an offense to suggest that such a thing even exists.

If you have any comments on that, and obviously, and we have to be honest here,

Pastor Mark, we are Reform Baptists and the abuse of church discipline by pastors and elders is not foreign to our company, is it?

No, no, no, that's correct. And I think that's one, just to say offhand, one of the good reasons, scriptural reasons, for having a plurality in an eldership, if possible.

I recognize that there are small churches out there, or even churches that just, they don't have qualified men or not able to sustain more than one elder for whatever reason, but I think that one of the reasons for a plurality of eldership is to help, to minimize that.

Of course, you could have two elders that are abusive, or three, right? So that very much can be a problem.

I think that there is a place, certainly, to deal with men who are in authority in the church, if they're committing some type of sin.

Now, granted, a lot of times, there are times when pastors are accused of things, you know, by an individual congregant that aren't, that's not true, so obviously it has to be brought into question.

It talks about the Scripture not taking the account of one witness, and so on, don't take a charge against an accusation against an elder from one person.

But if a pastor is committing some form of sin, and he's unrepentant of it, I would say that he needs to be challenged,

I would say, privately first, but also that from there, it ought to be the case that the church has a means in their

Constitution, even a means of dealing with that person, so that they don't have an unbridled authority, so that they can be in check, in a sense.

There is a system of checks and balances. We've added even to our Constitution several years ago, over this concern, just because of that kind of a tendency amongst

Reformed Baptists, we can easily emphasize the authority of eldership and neglect to see that we, too, are capable of falling, and we've added some things in our

Constitution so that the church members can call a group meeting and are able to work toward in the direction of removing a person who is involved with, either who is overly authoritative or unrepentant.

So there should be some measures in place to be able to deal with men in that type of a position who are abusing authority.

We have another listener, Brian in Toronto, Canada, asks, is it appropriate to excommunicate someone who was not causing problems but was avoiding the church's

Lord's Supper for theological reasons because he was trying to work things through himself, for himself?

If you could respond to that. Wow, that's a good question. I would say I would not excommunicate that person.

First of all, I would want to know what are the theological problems that the person has with the Lord's Supper. If they're significant, if they're challenging the whole idea of taking the

Supper, whatever it is, then they might not, they might not, probably shouldn't be members of the church already.

I wouldn't necessarily excommunicate the person. I might have them removed, you know, just have them removed from the roles in some way until they're able to work through that.

And I would work with them. I would definitely spend time with them because if they're sincerely convicted about whatever their position is on the

Lord's Supper, you want to try to work with someone and wrestle with them through it. But if they're sustaining that position for a long period of time and it's something, again, that challenges the doctrine of the

Lord's Supper and the meaning of it, maybe it has to do with transubstantiation or, you know, I don't even know what, again, what the issue is with transubstantiation, you know, whether or not the body of blood are literally there, transubstantiation of Christ, etc.,

they would need, they would want to work through that. I don't know that excommunication would be appropriate, but if the man or woman, let's say, they're teaching something that's contrary to the doctrine of the church and it is a damaging doctrine, such as what the

Catholic Church holds in transubstantiation, they might have to be excommunicated for, not just for their view of the doctrine, but for how they're spreading the false, you know, spreading the error throughout the church.

Spreading doctrinal error is a means to warrant excommunication if it's serious doctrinal error and they're spreading it against what the church holds.

Right, and even if they are, if it's not extremely seriously heretical or an error, even if the person is undermining the authority of the local church by, you know, constantly beating a drum in the ears of other members that the pastors are wrong or liars or what have you, or heretics, that's obviously a totally different story.

Yeah, that person is causing division, so there's other sin involved there.

Again, that's why you would need the specifics in that situation, but I would say if it's somebody who genuinely wants to understand something or is confused about something and they are willing to discuss it,

I would say that there's room to be gracious there and to work with them. We don't want to rush to excommunicate, but if they're causing division or if it's a serious matter that they're holding on to for a long time, they should either be removed and possibly excommunicated, again, depending upon the nature of what their disagreement is.

Now, obviously, the private search and battle for understanding and clarity over theological issues, even if it results in one who is a humble brother but who winds up still insistent that he disagrees on some issues that are important but not salvific, the person being removed from the membership role would not be really equivalent to excommunication in that case, correct?

No, no, yeah, it would not be equivalent to excommunication. And there are also, too, keep in mind what we're not saying is that in order to be a member of the local church, they have to hold to every single doctrine that the church holds to.

For example, we hold to the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, as you know, Chris, and we have members in our congregation who don't necessarily agree with every doctrine in the

Confession but would agree with the important tenets of the Confession, certainly things related to salvation, and they would have to agree before becoming members, they would have to agree to not contradict what the church holds, not to teach against it or influence others.

And we have good and faithful members in our church who are very supportive, wonderful people who have some differences in those areas but who do not contradict anything, who are members in great standing, and so there's a place to have people in the congregation who don't agree with every doctrine that the church holds to.

But again, it's their attitude toward that, and also, of course, it's the severity of the doctrine. If it has to do with the

Trinity, you know, whether or not Jesus is God or something like that, well, we're talking about a serious matter then. Or the gospel itself, salvation being by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Exactly. All right, we're going to be going to our final break, so email us your questions now if you have any at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please include your first name, city and state, or country if outside the

U .S. Unless it's a personal and private matter, you may remain anonymous. We'll be right back. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you've been listening, or if you've just tuned us in, our guest is

Pastor Mark Rimaldi. And he is the pastor of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, which is located in Merrick, New York.

And we are discussing the loving act of church discipline. Just in case I forget, when we run out of time, what is the website for Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Pastor Mark?

Oh, yes. It's www .gracereformedbaptistchurch .com.

www .gracereformedbaptistchurch .com. Your sermons are on there, aren't they?

In fact, if you go to that link, or you can go directly to Sermon Audio, there's a link at our website that takes you to Sermon Audio.

My sermons are up there. My co -pastor's sermons are up there, and also our deacon who preaches. So all about sermons,

Sunday School, they're all at Sermon Audio. You can get through the website, take a link there, or you can go to Sermon Audio and search us by last name or by church, etc.

We have an anonymous listener who wants to know, if a person is excommunicated, does that mean they are even barred from attending worship services at your local church?

Now, I'm assuming your answer is also going to be that depends on the sin involved, correct? Yes, that depends on the sin involved, obviously, the nature of the sin.

I would say that in a general sense I would allow people, even people who are excommunicated, to be among the congregation in the sense that they're sitting, hearing the

Word of God. I would say that beyond that, when the fellowship takes place downstairs, and our church is downstairs,

I guess I'm assuming that for everyone, but wherever your fellowship is or any fellowship events that you have, or the

Lord's Supper, all those things, they should be barred from. But if they want to sit in the congregational gathering to hear the

Word, just unbelievers would come and sit in. Personally, I think that would be a good thing and a healthy thing.

Hopefully they might be convicted by the sin. Again, if there's a situation where there's some type of an adulterous affair with the other individual who's there as well, whatever, and their spouse, there's other factors that can come into play where they may need to not even come to that particular church.

But maybe they can sit in at another congregation and there can be communication amongst elders or something like that. I do think that they should be under the ministry of the

Word if possible, in some sense. And obviously, those who are under discipline but have not reached the extreme point of being excommunicated, being in the church for the worship service is what

I'm assuming would be a requirement to demonstrate repentance. Yeah, yeah. In fact,

Chris, just to clarify this, even for your sake too, it's good for the audience to know that when we had gone through your situation with you in the past, you were not actually excommunicated.

You had cooperated with us. We had a form of church discipline that you were under, but you were not excommunicated.

We would have wanted you to come to the church. Obviously, you wound up going to the Hebron Colony, by the way, which it would be good to plug the

Hebron Colony on here. Yeah, excellent place. In fact, I don't know if you were aware, but I interviewed

Don Holder, the director of Hebron Colony about a week ago, and their website is hebroncolony .org,

H -E -B -R -O -N, colony .org. Wonderful place, and it is a real

Christ -centered place. It's not based on modern pop psychology or anything like that, so I highly, highly recommend it.

It's also free of charge, with the exception of a refundable $300 deposit, and that is only held if you require medication of some kind or a doctor's appointment.

Just to say something real quick, Chris, too, that we have another brother who has come back from the

Hebron Colony, who we sent there, who is suffering from a drug addiction, in his case, drug addiction and alcohol addiction.

He has gone there and come back to us, and he is on fire. He has been consistently faithful, more faithful than he ever has been before, doing so well, and we are in the process of restoring him to our membership.

So, not to throw all the credit to Hebron, we know it's the Lord's work, but I would like to say, when it comes to that particular type of sin, addiction, whether it's alcohol or drugs, they have been nothing but spectacular for us, and we appreciate them.

Amen. And you know, I could sing their praises all day long, every day. We keep using the word excommunication, and you did basically define it earlier when you were talking about the steps that are taken when a person is removed from membership.

But some people who are in evangelical churches might be thinking, that sounds Roman Catholic. What on earth are they talking about?

I mean, are we going to be physically tortured somewhere if we're excommunicated? But if you could give a brief definition of what that actually means.

Yeah, excommunication, I think, and I know James White will probably correct me on this, but the word, if he's listening,

I'm in trouble. The word ex is like out of, I think the idea is you're putting someone, you're out of communication with the church, out of fellowship with the church, and you're, in fact, very clearly in Matthew 18, it talks about that if the person does not listen to, one individual goes to them, refuses to listen to two individuals, two or three who come to them, and then refuses to listen to the church, when the church is informed, the

Lord talks about that the next step beyond that is to put them out of the church, and he says he even relates that to what happens in heaven.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So it's very serious that they're being separated from the fellowship of the church.

In Corinthians, Paul says they're being delivered over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that their spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord Jesus. So the idea there is by separating them from the means of grace and from the fellowship of the church, your hope, the hope is that in God's good grace, he will utilize

Satan. God will even use Satan as a means of disciplining that someone, that person in some physical sense, perhaps, so that it'll drive them back to repentance and back to the church so that they'll be restored.

So yeah, you can't do anything in any physical sense. We don't harm them. We're doing anything like that. It's just that they're separated from the people of God.

They're put out of the body, in that sense, cut off from the fellowship of the church. Now, when somebody is restored to membership after they've given more than ample evidence of believable repentance, are they, and of course this is another case -by -case scenario,

I know, but are they rightfully able to be restored to any act of duty that they were involved in in the church prior to their being under discipline?

Yeah, I think you're right when you say that depends on the nature of the duty that they were involved with.

I would say when you restore someone into the fellowship of the church, I would be slow to put them in any kind of a position of authority.

I think that that's something that needs to be wrestled through. I mean, if they were teaching Sunday school or something like that, eventually maybe that could be the case, but there needs to be some time put in between their restoration and when you restore them to do something like that.

However, I think that immediately they could serve in other capacities. There are other positions of service in the church.

Certainly they can encourage others. They can be involved with hands -on services and so on, and maybe eventually be restored to some type of a position of teaching, if that's what they were doing.

I think when you're dealing with issues like diaconate or pastorate, there's debatable issues.

Obviously people debate over that, but I think I would really hesitate to bring someone back into one of those positions without at least a long, long period of time, consideration and prayer and counsel and so on, because there are people who will say when somebody sins, depending upon the nature of the sin, if it's immorality, whatever it might be, they should never be a pastor again.

Then there are others who would say, well, it's not necessarily the case that they can't at some point be restored.

I realize that that's debatable, and I'm not going to take that on at the moment, but I will say that that's not something you would by any means rush to bring someone back into even close to rushing to bring them back into an office, whether it's diaconate or eldership.

I understand that I could do a week's worth of programs on that one issue. We have another anonymous listener who wants to know if there has been adultery amongst two members of the church or a member and an outsider, and the people have been excommunicated and they have been warned after a divorce that the church does not approve of a marriage between the two who are guilty of adultery, can these two, if they were against the will of the church, married, and then years later demonstrated that they were repentant even of doing that, but realize that they now should remain faithful as a married couple since they are married, can they be welcomed at any point back into the life of the church and membership in the future after such an act of rebellion and disregard of the church's design and wishes and plans and so on?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the blood of Christ pays for all sin, and the reality is, while I would never encourage that, if they come back at some point and they acknowledge that what they had done was wrong, that even their remarrying each other was sinful, and they confess that to the church,

I believe that the right thing would be to welcome them back in.

Again, the only caution I would have is if the original spouse of the person who was remarried is still a member of that church, it may be recommended that they join another church just for the sake of peace in that situation.

But in a normal situation, I would say that we can forgive, and that person is now bound to that new marriage.

There have been consequences, at least in a temporal sense, certainly that have come about from that. But in Christ, I mean, that's what restoration is all about.

He restores those kinds of situations. He restores people together, and we have no right to bar them out permanently if they're acknowledging their sin.

Again, like I said, there's practical things that may need to be considered if the other spouse is still here and etc., but yes,

I think they should be restored if they have repented and expressed repentance. I think we just have time for one more question from our audience.

It's another anonymous listener who wants to know, one of the hardest things for even the most seasoned and loving

Christian to do is to forgive someone for the sin of child molestation.

If a person guilty of that wickedness were to genuinely repent and demonstrate their believable repentance for a suitable period of time, how is one to forgive that sin and welcome that person back into the fold of the church, should not some restrictions be placed upon that person, even if their repentance is deemed genuine?

That's a great question. Yeah, I believe in that situation, again, while there can be restoration,

I think that even from a legal standpoint, in obedience to our government and the laws that we have over us,

I think we're responsible to, in a situation if somebody's involved with child molestation because of the nature of that sin and crime, that we would need to inform the congregation that this person has sinned in this way in the past, and that person should be humble enough to be willing to live with that information out, and hopefully the congregation should be willing to receive that person and still love them.

But I think because of the nature of this sin, that it would be wise to inform the congregation to fulfill all legal obligations with the government on that particular type of sin.

And again, if the child is a part of that church that the person was molesting, it may be wise, again, for that person to be restored in a sense to fellowship, but to be brought into another church membership somewhere else for the sake of that child.

We have to consider the safety of that child and even their own emotional and spiritual state.

How might they view that person? So I would say that's going to take some work to wrestle through how to do that, but yes, there are definitely other precautions and things,

I believe, that would need to take place, very practical precautions for that type of sin. And just in about a minute, if you could, just leave our listeners with a loving warning, especially to church leaders, that this program that you've conducted was not an attempt to give people or leaders a license to lord over the flock.

Yeah, I would definitely caution anyone out there that would see this whole issue of church discipline as something to be used in an abusive way for the flock.

Let me just say this, dealing with church discipline issues is never a fun thing.

It's never something that's enjoyable. It's never something to rush into. A lot of things are not black and white.

As I said, it's always difficult, even disciplining your child. We have to discipline our children. It's not a fun thing.

It's not an enjoyable thing, and it shouldn't be, but it is a necessary practice in the life of the church for the purity of the church, for the glory of God, and for the restoration of those who are in sin.

And so I would definitely caution anyone who would see this as an opportunity to just quickly put someone under discipline for anything and everything when somebody is in some way, maybe they disagree with something you said in a sermon or whatever it is.

You just don't like that person for some reason, not to use this as an abuse situation. It's to be used, but it's to be used with caution, much prayer, and much counsel as well.

Pastor Mark Romoldi, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to conduct this program with you today.

I want to extend to you and the saints at Grace Reformed Baptist Church, once again, my heartfelt sorrow for the sins that I committed that brought public reproach upon the church, and I thank you so much for welcoming me back.

Thank you, brother. Appreciate it, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on your program, and I can just say that I couldn't be more thrilled than to see what

God is doing in your life and how wonderful the church there in Carlisle is to have you there.