March 6, 2018 Show with Carl Trueman on “The Church of Christ: A Treatise on the Nature, Powers, Ordinances, Discipline, and Government of the Christian Church by James Bannerman” PLUS Earl Blackburn on “Jesus Loves the Church & So Should You”

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

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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 Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this sixth day of March 2018, our second broadcast with our new network,

First Love Radio, and we are so excited about this new partnership for the sake of the gospel and the cause of Christ and the furtherance of his kingdom.

Today we are delighted to have two guests on the program. The first guest is

Dr. Carl Truman who is returning as a guest here and I always love to interview

Dr. Carl Truman and I always love to be there present when he is preaching or lecturing somewhere.

Dr. Truman holds the Paul Woolley Chair of Church History and is a professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania.

He's the author of more than a dozen books. He's a regular contributor to firstthings .com.

He's an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination and a pastor of the

Cornerstone Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania. Today we are having the long awaited interview that we were hoping to have for quite a while now, the interview on the book

The Church of Christ by James Bannerman which is published by the Banner of Truth and which

Dr. Truman wrote the foreword for and it's our honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio, Dr.

Carl Truman. It's great to be here Chris, thanks for having me on. Oh it's my pleasure and I'm going to right away give our email address for our listeners if they would like to join us on the air with a question of your own.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if you're asking about a personal and private matter.

Let's suppose you disagree with your pastor on a matter or you're a pastor and you disagree with your own denomination or something.

We can understand that you would want to remain anonymous and we will grant you that request but otherwise please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Well first of all, Dr. Truman, why is it that you wanted to contribute to this book by James Bannerman, the 19th century

Scotsman and a minister in the Free Church of Scotland? Why did you want to lend your foreword to this book?

What sets this book apart as a book about how one is to conduct themselves in the

Church of Christ? Well, a number of reasons, Chris. First, there was the general interest

I have in Scottish Presbyterianism in the 19th century. Americans are very familiar with the old

Princetonians, the Hodges, the Alexanders, B .B. Warfield. Well, Scotland too produced a number of very significant

Presbyterian thinkers and theologians in the 19th century, clustered around New College in Edinburgh, which was then the training college for the

Free Church of Scotland. And Bannerman was one of the first generations of professors at that college, and was an extremely important theological thinker in his day.

Second is the subject matter. The doctrine of the Church, I think, is an extremely important area of Christian thinking.

When you think about the New Testament, often we who've been steeped in a more evangelical kind of context tend to go to the

New Testament for statements of personal salvation, if I could put it that way. But when you look at the

New Testament, the New Testament talks a lot about the Church, talks a lot about the corporate nature of Christianity.

And one of the things that Bannerman brings to the table, I think, for us today is a thoroughgoing

Protestant reflection on the nature of the Church as an institution.

And I think that's going to become more and more important as time goes on, because as the wider culture becomes more and more distanced from traditional

Christianity, and indeed not simply indifferent to it, but also in many cases hostile to it, the understanding of who we are as Christians and who we are as the

Church, and what the role of the Church is, is going to become very important. Clear thinking,

I think, on that issue will really help us navigate some of the culturally and politically stormy waters that lie ahead.

Well, I want to read a portion of your foreword to this book.

The great thing about Bannerman's The Church of Christ is that it will stimulate the reader to reflect on the nature of the

Church in a profoundly biblical and historically sensitive way. At a point in history when the

Church in the West is finding herself for the first time in 1 ,500 years to be marginal and often unwelcome, clear thinking on the nature and purpose of the

Church is vital. I do not think there is a better way to sharpen one's thinking on these matters than thoughtful and deep reflection upon this work of James Bannerman.

Well, the book is primarily, and this is a thousand and nine pages of information in this book, a massive hardcover by James Bannerman.

The purpose of the book is to be a treatise on the nature, powers, ordinances, discipline, and government of the

Christian Church. And, well, why don't you start off with a summary of what

Bannerman is teaching us that the Bible has to say about the nature of the

Church itself? Well, that's a huge topic

I could go on for a thousand and nine pages. I think what

Bannerman does is, first of all, he starts with the biblical material. What is the Church in Scripture?

And I think in order to understand the New Testament Church, we have to see it against the background of ancient

Israel. And we see the Church is really the term we use to talk about the people of God when we think of them corporately.

Bannerman also focuses on, well, what does the Church then look like in the post -New Testament era and the

Apostles of God? What is it that defines the Church? What should we look for? If I were to say to the average

Christian, what is the Church? What kind of answer would they give? Some of them might come up by pointing to a building.

Some of them would talk about a gathering together on a Sunday or something like that. But Bannerman wants to probe to the very foundations of what is it that makes that gathering of people, say, in that building the

Church and not just a gathering of people in a building. So what he then does is focus on the marks of the

Church, those things that distinguish the Church from any other organization on the face of the earth.

And when he does that, he draws very, very deeply on the Reformation Protestant tradition.

So the most fundamental mark of the Church gathered, for example, is the proclamation of the

Word. When Christians get together for a barbecue, is it the Church? There's a sense in which yes, it is.

The Church is wherever Christians are gathered together. But is it the Church formally operating as the

Church? No, because it's only when the Word is proclaimed that we can say the

Church is there acting as the Church. And that provides the foundation for Bannerman then to go on and discuss how the

Church should relate to wider society. One of my favorite quotations in the book actually comes on page 266.

And Bannerman says this, as a witness, the Church declares the truth of God to the world. As a protest, it frames and exhibits a confession of its faith in opposition to the errors and unbelief of the world.

But beyond that, it does not go. And that points to the primary purpose of the

Church, which is the proclamation of the Lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ, the proclamation of the

Gospel. And if you start to put all of these pieces together, it sharpens in your own mind exactly what the

Church is and what the Church is meant to be doing. Now the modern man, even the professed

Christian, I don't know if it is entirely rooted in the fact that one of the things that the

Reformation did, I'm assuming you would agree, that although it didn't strip the

Church of all its power, it stripped the Church of any superstitious or unbiblical power that the

Church of Rome deemed it to have. In fact, salvation is absolutely only possible because of the

Church and through the Church and by the ministers and ordinances of the Church, according to Rome.

Now, do you think that because of the fact that the Reformers did rightly diminish the powers of the

Church in their teaching, according to the Scriptures, that that, unfortunately, whenever you have true things and freedoms in the hands of sinful men, that people took that and ran with it way too far and we have come to the place where there are

Christians who claim to be Bible -believing Christians, who claim to be born again, who find no need at all for the

Church. They think that they are just fine by themselves. In fact, they may have even had some very horrible experiences in the

Church, so they don't want to look for any Church. They don't want to be attached to any Church. Do you think that that has its roots where I assumed they might be found, or do you think that there's another reason for this?

Well, it's a very deep and rich question, a very good question. I think my first part of my response would be to say,

I'm uncomfortable with the language of stripping the Church of power in the Reformation. I think what happens is the

Reformers redefine Church power, that instead of Church power being primarily priestly or sacerdotal or intrinsic, you might say, to the institution itself,

Church power comes to be understood ministerially, and what that effectively does is it places the

Church very self -consciously under the authority of the Word. As a minister in a

Presbyterian Church, my power is absolutely restricted by the Word of God.

So I'd use an example, I can't stand up in my pulpit on a Sunday and tell people they can't wear canary yellow suits to Church.

That's a lot off my mind, I don't have to put mine in the trash tomorrow.

I would say it's a fashion crime, but it's not sinful. The Word of God gives me no power to dictate on that kind of thing.

Just because I'm a minister doesn't mean I can lord it over people on that issue. But the

Word of God does mean that as a minister I can point to my congregation and say, you should not commit adultery. And as a minister of the

Word, I'm required to tell you that, because that's plainly taught in the Word of God. And if you commit adultery, then as a minister in the

Church, under the Great Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, who's required to constitute and govern the

Church in accordance with His Word, I have certain powers of disciplining you at that point.

But it's not because I'm a minister, it's because I'm here to administer the Word of God that holds the power.

So the first point really would be to say that there is a shift in how the Church understands power that takes place in the

Reformation. You're really raising the question of a kind of individualism.

Certainly that connects somewhat to the Reformation, because one of the things the Reformation makes possible in Europe, which has really flown out of control in the last 100, 150 years with the arrival particularly of the internal combustion engine, the motor car, one of the things the

Reformation does do is create the possibility of choice in religion and Church commitment.

That did not exist in the Middle Ages, it was just the one Church in Western Europe. It's only really in the post -Reformation era that we find a proliferation of denominations that generates choice, and that allows

Christians to wander from one Church to another if they wish, to treat the

Church as a consumer commodity for them to buy if they wish, or to leave on the shelf if they wish.

So that's a kind of indirect consequence of the Reformation, if I could put it that way.

And thirdly, I think there is a strong emphasis in contemporary culture on, I can be whoever

I want to be, and nobody else has the right to tell me how to live my life.

And I think when you throw that together with the proliferation of choice that we now have in the

Church, and the ability to travel cheaply and economically and efficiently in motor cars, what you get really is a massive erosion of any kind of Church commitment or Church authority.

So there is a connection between the Reformation and the chaos we see around us, but it's not a straightforward one.

Having said that, one of the things that Bannerman makes clear very, very early on in the text is, this is putting it in somewhat modern parlance, but he essentially says, the

Bible knows nothing of a lone range of Christians. For somebody in the Bible to say they're a

Christian means that they're part of a congregation and part of a Church. If you come across people who don't go to any

Church at all, and maybe because they've had a terribly bad experience and they may have reasons that have pushed them in the way they're going,

I think that the bottom line, what one has to say to that person is, you know, at best your

Christian life is dramatically impoverished and highly irregular compared to what

Scripture teaches, and really you should find yourself a congregation and commit to it, because you grow as a

Christian by sitting under the preaching of the Word, by taking the Lord's Supper, and by fellowshipping in love with other

Christians. That's how the Bible presents Christian growth, it's how Bannerman articulates it.

And if you're sitting at home on Sunday, even if you're watching, you know, John Piper online or something like that, you're not in Church in the way that you should be.

You're not part of a corporate body in the way that you should be. Do you think that Christ is supernaturally present amongst the gathered people on that special day of worship in a way that he is not when they are just in a diner having coffee?

Yes, so we'd want to there parse the language of presence. Christ is always present everywhere, but we know that he's specially, savingly present, for example, in the hearts of Christians by his

Spirit. And I think there are promises in Scripture where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them,

I think there are promises that connect the Spirit to the public reading and proclamation of the

Word that indicate where Christians are gathered for hearing the Word read, hearing the

Word proclaimed, sharing in the Lord's Supper, that yes, Christ is there in a special way.

That's not to say he's absent from the diner, but there are times and places and contexts in which he is specially, savingly, powerfully present.

Well, the ordinances are another important aspect of the Church, and I'm assuming that Bannerman, although he would have obviously some disagreements with Baptists like me, since he was a member and a minister in the

Free Church of Scotland, I'm assuming he would believe there were only two ordinances, the

Lord's Supper and Baptism. Yes, yep, those are the two. And again, one of the marks of the

Church would be the administration of the sacraments. So Baptism would be for Bannerman, as it would be for Baptists, of course we would understand it differently, but would be the public, visible entry into the

Church, into the visible body of Christ, and the Lord's Supper would be a means of feeding, nourishing, sustaining faith in the visible community of the

Church. We have some listeners who are already waiting anxiously to have their questions asked and answered by you, and I have to enlarge the first because the font is microscopic in the email that he sent.

Okay, let's see, we have Pastor William Hill in Newport, Tennessee.

Do you know of a study guide for this book? Do you think it is something that is needed? Who may be the best to write it?

I don't know of a study guide for it, but that's not to say that there aren't study guides out there, because ministers and churches these days produce all kinds of materials, so there may well be material on the web connected to Bannerman.

Who would be the best person to write it? I just don't know. It's such a huge work.

What I would say is, if you haven't got time to read a thousand pages of Bannerman, there is a very good book,

How Jesus Runs the Church, by Guy Prentice Waters, published by Presbyterian Reformed.

That's about 200 pages, 250 pages. It's a little different to Bannerman because Guy is talking very much about American Presbyterianism, rather than that there are certain differences among Presbyterianisms, but that is an excellent introduction to the doctrine of the

Church, and also specifically to Presbyterianism, though it would also have much,

I think, that Baptists would appreciate. So if you don't have time to read Bannerman, and not many people do have time to plow through a thousand -page book,

Guy Prentice Waters, How Jesus Runs the Church, would be a good one. Maybe Guy is the man to write the study guide,

I don't know. Great. Well, let's see, William has one more question, and once again

I have to enlarge his font. In fact, time for a checkup with your eye specialist.

There, yes, because I'm also wearing reading glasses now, and I still have to enlarge this font. This book is huge.

I ask about the study guide for precisely that reason. We live in a social media world, and I wonder if the average churchgoer will spend the time reading it without significant guidance.

Almost certainly the average churchgoer will not read it, and that's where I think it becomes, if I put it this way, this is where ministers and elders need to,

I think the American phrase is, step up to the plate. One of the reasons we have ministers and elders is the church is to have people who do spend more time studying so that they can diffuse their learning down to the congregation.

So I would say you're probably right, not many congregants will have the time, the sheer time, even if they have the desire to read a book of this length.

That's why ministers need to be especially diligent in making sure that they read good books and use their time of reading wisely so that they can distill the wisdom from these books and use it in their own ministry and apply it to their congregations.

Well, thank you, Pastor Hill. Keep listening to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and keep spreading the word about it there in Tennessee.

We have Joe in Slovenia. Wow. Dear brothers Chris and Carl, thank you so very much for your faithful service to our

Lord and His church. What are the steps we need to take to remove those aspects found in most evangelical churches that are extra -church, non -church additions that prohibit or limit her proclamation of Jesus Christ and His gospel?

Thank you for yet another great conversation. Wow, that's a difficult question to answer, because every church is different, and I would say that if you're a pastor of a church, you've just arrived at a church and there are things going on at the church that are problematic.

You need to make a critical decision on whether are these things heretical, are they really, really, really damaging the church's witness at this present moment, or are they things that, yeah, they'd be good to get rid of in the long run, but, you know, to do so now would be greatly counterproductive.

I always use Martin Luther as the example when I talk to students about this kind of thing.

Martin Luther's calling for a vernacular liturgy in 1520. He doesn't implement one until 1525, and there are a number of reasons for that, but one of them is this, that he doesn't want to upset or disturb the people too much, and he felt that what he needed to do was work gently and carefully and persuasively with the people to bring them to the point where he could introduce a vernacular liturgy and do minimum damage to the ordinary people, well -meaning people who fill the pews in his church.

So I would say whatever you do, build the personal capital and goodwill with the congregation, if possible, that allows you to do these things gradually and slowly over time in a way that preserves peace and unity in the congregation.

You know, if the church is doing something that's denying the resurrection, obviously you've got to deal with that straight away.

If the church has a choir and you personally find choirs unbiblical or problematic, don't scrap it next

Sunday. Work slowly and carefully over time to see if you can bring the church to the position it should be on these issues in a way that is gentle and does minimum harm to congregants.

Well, thank you Joe in Slovenia, I keep listening to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio and spreading the word in Slovenia and beyond.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York, who asks,

I know that this would probably be one of those case -by -case situations because I'm sure that there is a wide variety of house churches that differ on theology and many other areas of importance within the church, but I was wondering what your thoughts were in general about the house church movement, while they seem to have a very biblical point as to their existence, they also seem to be running into some serious heretical problems here and there among them.

Yeah, I'm not over -familiar with the house church movement, certainly of the last 20 years, and certainly not in the

United States. I have very limited experience of American Christianity outside of the

Presbyterian world, really. But assuming there are analogies with what

I witnessed in the UK in the 1980s, I think house churches often suffer from precisely that which

Bannerman is concerned to rectify, and that is a lack of proper understanding of church government.

I mean, key to Bannerman's text is an understanding of the role of the minister and the elders in church government, of the connection between churches, and part of the reason for that is that it prevents local church demagoguery, it prevents individual powerful personalities, or at least dramatically hinders individual powerful personalities from taking over churches, from introducing their own personal distinctives or bees in their bonnets to their congregations as doctrinal imperatives.

So my guess is that if you were to present me with a typical house church, probably one of my thoughts or criticisms would be, you guys really need to think about the nature of eldership, the nature of creeds and confessions, how to connect yourself to historic

Christianity, and how to develop a form of polity, a form of church government where the structure is written down and clearly accessible to everyone as a kind of constitution that will allow you to prevent crazy people from taking over your church, or those of strange and odd doctrinal views coming to dominate.

So many church problems do come down to the fact that church government is either not understood properly or not applied as it should be.

Well, thank you so much R .J. in White Plains, New York, and by the way, I want to let all three of our listeners who wrote in questions, the first three anyway,

I want to let you all know that you have won a free copy of this very large and very expensive book,

The Church of Christ by James Bannerman. As I said, this is a thousand and nine pages and it retails for $50, and even on sale through the

Banner of Truth it's $45, and the Banner of Truth has been kind enough to give us these three copies to give away.

So you three folks have each won a copy. If you already have it and you want to be merciful to another listener so that they can win it, that's up to you, because you could obviously give it as a gift to someone.

But please give me your full mailing address, all three of you, so that we can have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, ship those copies out to you free of charge, free of charge to you and I.

It's going to cost an arm and a leg for them to ship these things out because they weigh about 50 pounds each. That's an exaggeration, but it's a big book.

Yeah. Anyway, well thank you so much, and we are going to our break right now, and Carl Truman will be back to answer more of your questions after this station break.

And if anybody would like to join those who are already waiting to have their questions asked and answered, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And as always, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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I'll have to have you back. He's been a dear friend of mine since the mid -1980s. He's a great man. Yes, he is.

And by the way, I have to ask your opinion about the voice of Charles Spurgeon during the commercial for Solid Ground Christian Books.

I had a friend of mine in the studio who I was interviewing. He's originally from South Carolina.

He heard that ad, and he started laughing, and he said, that is the phoniest English accent

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So I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the English accent, even though it's so authentic. Why would he come to that conclusion?

I have no idea. I heard it as an English accent, so I have no idea.

He didn't jar with me at all. Let's see here. We have another listener.

Let's see here. We have Cameron in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

And Cameron asks, let's see here. Got to enlarge

Cameron's email, too. In fact, while I'm doing that, anybody else want to join us on the air? Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, city and state and country of residence.

And Cameron asks, what do you think are the most notable contributing factors to the decline of the classical and confessional doctrine of God among Reformed churches of our time?

And are there any prominent theologians from the 19th and 20th centuries that have facilitated this decline?

Well, it's a huge question. I think the most obvious, I think the reason for its decline, there are a number of reasons for its decline.

One and most basically is that the classical doctrine of God is kind of complicated.

The doctrine of God's simplicity is very important, but to try to explain to people why it's important takes time, and it takes thought, and it takes some effort.

So I think the fact that, as is often the case in church history, theoretical and heterodox positions are easier to grasp than orthodox positions.

Puts the orthodox at a disadvantage, and that's particularly the case, I think, in the doctrine of God.

Secondly, I think there's a general... The metaphysics...

We live in a very anti -metaphysical age, and the doctrine of God, the doctrine of divine simplicity, the doctrine of the

Trinity, depends upon a metaphysical mindset that is not typically cultivated in theological seminaries today.

So I think that's an issue. Thirdly, I think there's a tendency in a lot of circles to tend towards a kind of biblicism.

This is one of the things that people miss about the Reformation. For all of our emphasis on the word alone, the

Reformers weren't biblicists. They were Christians drawing on the great traditions of the

Church as they sought to understand Scripture. The biblicists of the to the

Bible and grab proof text in order to demonstrate their positions. They tended to be the rather dubious characters like the

Sassinians and later the Unitarians. Now, when it comes to 19th and 20th century theologians, unfortunately, the doctrine of God has not been well represented among such writers.

Many of the theologians that I admire on a whole heap of other points

I find somewhat lacking on the doctrine of God. For example,

J .I. Packer, who's in many ways a huge hero of mine on a whole heap of doctrinal and practical

Christian points, is not very strong on the doctrine of God. I think if I were, if you were to ask me, well, can you recommend some 19th and 20th century theologians who've written well on this?

Hermann Barvinck, I would say, the Dutch theologian, is pretty solid on the doctrine of God.

Ironically, I'd probably point you towards a number of Roman Catholic theologians, because I think

Roman Catholicism has actually done a better job on the whole of preserving the doctrine of God than the

Reformed and Evangelical churches have. Oh, that's an interesting statement. Could you explain that a little deeper?

Yeah, well, I think that the Roman Catholic Church has always had, has always trained its people better, its thinkers better in patristic and medieval theology, where the doctrine of God was hammered out.

And it's a failure of Protestants to really understand the patristic and the medieval era has led to problems in our doctrine of God, I think.

And it's ironic, of course, because the Reformers were steeped in patristics and medieval theology, and that's why they didn't make the mistakes that so many later

Protestant theologians have made. And I would also recommend the work of my good friend

James Dalzell, D -O -L -E -Z or, as you would say,

Z -A -L, Dalzell. He's recently published a book with Joel Behe's Press, Reformation Heritage Books.

I think it's entitled All That Is in God, which is a very, very good articulation of the classical doctrine of God.

So I've been encouraged over recent years to see guys like James and also Michael Allen and Scott Swain down at Reform Theological Seminary in Orlando.

They've been working on the doctrine of God as well. There are some really good younger Reform theologians coming through on this issue.

Sadly, you know, for the last 100, 150 years, Protestantism has generally not produced great doctrine of God people, with the possible exception, as I said, of Hermann Bavink, who is, you know, generally very reliable on almost any aspect of Christian theology that you care to look at.

And by the way, if anybody listening cares to listen later on to my interview with James Dalzell, I interviewed him on August 28, 2017.

So all you need to do is go to ironsharpensirenradio .com and you go into the past programs podcast archive and type in his name,

D as in David, O -L -E -Z as in zebra, A -L. And that will obviously be the only thing that comes up because there's never interviewed anybody else by that name.

So in fact, I've never met or heard of anybody else by that name. So I hope that you enjoy that interview later.

We have John in West Peoria, Illinois. How would you counsel a church member who asks questions about the church of his or her elders?

And the answer frequently seems to be to hand that church member a large book he or she might not feel they have time to read.

Wow. Yeah, that's an interesting problem. Again, it's difficult to give a general answer because there's always, you know, specific local variations and contexts that shape things.

But I think push back a bit gently, respectfully.

These are elders that you're dealing with, and you should treat them with respect as those who hold office in the church.

But I think it's not unreasonable for a congregant to say, you know, I asked you to explain

New Testament eldership to me, and you gave me James Bannerman's church. Can you at a minimum recommend which chapter

I should read? Is it possible for us to sit and talk about the issue over a cup of coffee?

Yeah, a little bit of pushback. Well actually, if you could tell me about the church that is giving away free copies of The Church of Christ by Bannerman, I'm going to run over there and switch membership.

Yeah, you might want to say thank you first. I mean,

I certainly understand sometimes as an elder or a pastor, you get asked a question, and you can give the 30 -second answer, but it's hard after church on a

Sunday or something to give somebody the deep answer that they require. So there is a sense in which sometimes it's good to recommend a book to somebody.

For example, if somebody asked me about predestination, I'd probably recommend a book by R .C. Sproul to them and then say, you know, read it, come back to me with questions.

I think congregants shouldn't expect their ministers and elders to do all their thinking and reading for them.

But on the other hand, I think it's also reasonable for congregants to expect elders and ministers to help them with their reading, to guide them in the reading, and to talk to them about it.

And of course, all of the major confessions are very brief in length. There's not a major confession that's near the size of Bannerman's work on The Church of Christ.

No, no, I mean, that's the case. And of course, if the elder is an astute and good elder,

I hope that he would be making a judgment call on what book to give the person, because obviously there are some people, they ask a question and they don't want a 600 -page tome.

They want, they'll be happy with a little pamphlet that just explains basic biblical teaching to them. So hopefully your elder is also using his discernment as to what needs to be recommended to what particular person.

Well, here's a part of a very important aspect of the Church that is the least popular amongst anything

I can even think of that the Church is responsible for, and that's discipline. And in fact, there are many churches that are confessionally conservative, reformed, and biblically orthodox that do not really practice church discipline at all.

And in fact, there are many theologically sound churches. It really saddens me that they will accept without question into their membership people who leave other churches who escape discipline or excommunication.

And it's just a sad situation. What can you say about discipline, and what did Bannerman have to say about it? Well, discipline is important.

It is a mark of the Church. Now, it's not to say that if discipline is lacking, it doesn't mean it's a false church.

There are churches where the Gospel is faithfully preached, the sacraments are administered, and discipline never takes place, and it doesn't mean that it's not a

Christian church. But I think for the Church to be properly ordered and functioning, discipline needs to take place.

Now, typically the reformed position, Bannerman's position on discipline, is that it fulfills a number of functions.

Most important, it's to vindicate the name of Christ in public. I'll come back to that one in a second.

Secondly, it's to protect the innocent within the Church. And thirdly, it's to try to bring the seriousness of the offense home to the offender such that the offender will repent and be reclaimed.

There are also degrees of discipline. Some discipline, for example, in the

Presbyterian Church from a small offense might be done privately by the session.

I could see a situation, for example, where a young man came and confessed that he'd been, you know, regularly viewing pornography but had, you know, was repentant for it and was really trying to turn his life around.

I could see that the session would not go public with that one. We would talk to the person privately, maybe rebuke them privately, but it would just be kept between the elders and the individual.

We'd make a judgment call on how to do it. But to return to those three purposes of discipline,

I think the third one, reclaiming the offender, while that's an ideal for which we should always strive, it's one that rarely occurs these days for the reasons you mentioned,

Chris, that it's so easy to jump in your car and drive to another church that will accept you. I think it's important as well to realize that, as far as I'm concerned, that's the least important reason for doing discipline.

And I say that because you've already said that the primary person of discipline is the reclaiming of the offender.

On the grounds that the offender is rarely reclaimed these days, you'd never get around to doing it.

It would be an excuse not to do it. The second reason, I think, is more important, protecting the innocent.

I mean, let's say that a man is beating his wife, or let's say that a man has committed adultery, betrayed his wife in that way.

It is important for that woman to know that the sessions stand with her, that the church stands with her in finding her husband's behavior unacceptable, and is willing to act in a way that challenges him directly and head on.

Whether he repents or not is on one level, neither here nor there. The church has an obligation to protect the person who is subject to the sinful behavior of another.

And then there is the vindication of the name of Christ in the public realm. And this, I think, is extremely important.

You know, let's take a contemporary political situation in order to bring this out.

You know, the church has, a lot of churches have rightly raised all kinds of questions about the legitimacy of gay marriage.

And we want to be taken seriously on that issue. But how can we be taken seriously on that issue if we don't take marriage seriously within the church?

When was marriage redefined in the United States? It was redefined when

Ronald Reagan, as governor of California, allowed for no -fault divorce. And that was when marriage ceased to be a lifelong bond between a man and a woman for the procreation of children, for companionship, and for sexual union to last until one of them died unless broken by adultery or abandonment.

That was when marriage was redefined. The church has quite happily accepted no -fault divorce among its members.

There are churches where, I know of a church local to here, where a man betrayed his wife in adultery.

They got divorced, and both he and the wife he betrayed are both members of the same congregation.

So adultery has been tolerated there. The name of Christ has been besmirched at that point.

Christ is presented as tolerating adultery, tolerating adulterous marriages. So I think that the need to vindicate the name of Christ, it's even greater than the need to protect the innocent.

If the church isn't disciplining people, and I'm not calling for a crazy cult -like, you know, you criticize a pastor, you get excommunicated kind of discipline, but you commit a very egregious sin like adultery, you should be hearing from your elders.

You should be being disciplined over that because that is the only way that the church can demonstrate that she believes in practice what she claims to believe on paper.

So discipline is very important. Sadly, it rarely works these days to reclaim the offender because people just hop on the bus or hop in their cars and leave.

They abandon the church. But it doesn't mean it shouldn't be done because there are other reasons for discipline as well.

Protecting the innocent, and above all, vindicating the name of Christ in public by demonstrating that the church is prepared to take hard stands within its own ranks relative to the things that it continually tells the world it believes.

Amen. In fact, I owe my life to church discipline. Wow. I was disciplined a number of years ago.

After 18 years of sobriety, like a dog returning to its own vomit,

I tragically returned to the abuse, this very serious abuse of alcohol. And if it wasn't for the discipline of the congregation where I was a member,

I might not be sitting here conducting this talk show right now. I might not be alive.

Great story, Chris. Yeah. In fact, that goes to the heart of the fact that discipline is also a loving thing.

That's not to say that there aren't wicked ministers who've used it to get at people. Certainly there are.

But discipline, when practiced along biblical lines, is really done for the benefit of the body as a whole and for the offender, and is to be driven by that.

Amen. It's not loving to let the adulterer carry on in adultery without calling them on it.

That's right. They're on the highway to hell at that point. Right. It's like letting your little tiny child play in the street.

Yeah. Yeah. That's not loving. Right. And by the way, if anybody wants to hear my interview with my former pastor on Long Island, New York, we discussed the issue of discipline, and he was the very man who was among the other elders disciplining me before, of course, the interview.

And I think it might be a helpful interview if you Google, or not Google, but if you type in his name in our search engine at ironsharpensironradio .com,

G -R -I -M as in Michael, A -L -D as in David, I. Grimaldi. His name is Pastor Mark Grimaldi.

He conducted an interview with me a number of years ago on the fact that not only did he discipline me, along with the other elders in the church, but on the subject in general of church discipline.

And I hope you are blessed by that. Well, I would like you now to, well, let me take one more question.

We have an anonymous listener who says, what sins in your opinion need to be brought public to the rest of the church?

I'm assuming those sins might be more quickly brought to the attention of the congregation if it was someone in authority, but if you could tell us what sins should certainly remain private until the person repents, or what sins should be made public no matter whether or not the person repents?

Yeah, that's a very hard question, because, you know, to take adultery, which would be at the extreme end of a sadly not uncommon sin,

I could see myself being involved in a situation where a couple would come to me and say, one confessed that they'd committed adultery, but then expressed deep repentance for it, and their partner forgave them, the spouse forgave them in front of the session.

In that situation, I think going public might well, you know, might well bring shame on the innocent partner.

You'd have to make a judgment call on that. Always in that situation, one would want to ask, well, how many people know about this sin?

If it's really just a very small number, and if going public would not only, would serve no good purpose in bringing the offender to repentance, because they've already repented, and would simply add to the embarrassment, the shame, the distress felt by the innocent person, then one wouldn't want to go public.

I think if the sin was not repented of, then clearly you'd be heading down the line towards excommunication.

And in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of my church, our book of church order actually says that if a sin requires indefinite suspension from the

Lord's Supper, we're not excommunicating somebody, we're saying you've sinned so much, and your repentance seems, you don't seem to be repentant, and to emphasize the seriousness of it, we're going to suspend you from the

Lord's Supper until such time as you do express full repentance. That has to be made public before the congregation, as does excommunication.

Again, one would, I would think, one would want to be careful, one would think very carefully about how much detail one gave, because again, there are often innocent parties involved in these things that you don't want to bring unnecessary distress and suffering to, even while getting to the main issue of declaring this person to be a public sinner.

So I'm not sure that I could categorize what sins need to be declared publicly, but certainly, you know, lack of repentance for serious sins would leave that.

And I would also add another qualification. Clearly if the sin involves criminal activity of some kind,

I think at that point one would perhaps want to make, need to make a public statement.

If somebody was arrested and convicted of child abuse, for example, there are legal reporting requirements there.

You can't simply deal with something like that internally. You must not just deal with it internally.

You will find yourself in contravention of laws at that point. So I think if if the sin was already an egregious and public sin, and most criminal offenses would be so, one would want to address that publicly in the context of the congregation as well.

Now one final comment or question, I should say, and comment from you. The government of the

Christian Church, I have had, I'm a Reformed Baptist, as you know, and I've had conversations with my

Presbyterian brethren, and I'm assuming that the Free Church of Scotland had a very similar polity to most

Presbyterian churches, and the Presbyterian friends have on occasion said, well, our structure of government is a better preventative of a church collapsing into heresy, and I have responded, well,

I don't see that historically, because if a Reformed Baptist church is is confessional, they're not going to collapse until they give up that confession, and of course we have the

PCUSA that collapsed and became one of the most liberal denominations that is on the face of the earth.

So if you could respond to what I just said. Well, I would say all polities work well in theory. The problem is, of course, they're staffed by sinful human beings.

I think, yes, historically you're absolutely right. I think not to push back, but to sort of to relativize

Presbyterian woes a little, Chris, when individual churches, congregations apostatize in Baptist circles, it doesn't make national headlines.

When a Presbyterian denomination goes off the rails, wow, it goes off the rails big time, and everybody knows about it.

I think in theory Presbyterianism should provide us with more mechanisms, not just for that, but also with courts of appeal for people who feel they've been abused by the local eldership.

In theory it should do that. In practice, sadly, it often doesn't do that because, as I said, sinful human beings.

The form of government is ultimately only as good as the men who occupy its offices, sadly.

Now, are the presbyteries viewed as a replacement for the apostolic office?

Because obviously we don't have a clear example, to my knowledge, in the Bible for a presbytery.

We did have, I should say, the church had apostles that are no longer existing.

So why the presbytery? We would see, we get an awful lot out of the Jerusalem Council in Acts, if I could put it that way.

Okay. But also the presbytery, because we see in the New Testament, it appears that the church is connectional in a way that pure congregationalism doesn't reflect.

That, I think, would be the basic case we would want to make. Obviously, Bannerman makes the case much more thoroughly than I can in a 30 -second answer at the end, but it's the connectionalism of the church that seems to be the position in the

New Testament. But, you know, you're a Baptist and there are many Baptist scholars that I respect who take a different position on that.

I certainly don't regard polity as an issue that lies at the very heart of the existence of the church, if I could put it that way.

Right. I don't deny that Baptist churches can be Christian churches. It is not necessary for a church to be

Presbyterian for it to be a Christian church. Well, I want to thank you so much,

Dr. Truman, for being my guest again. I look forward to your return soon and frequently, as many times as the

Lord will provide the opportunity, and I want our listeners to know that if you want more information on the

Church of Christ book by Bannerman, James Bannerman, you can go to banneroftruth .org,

banneroftruth .org. I know that the seminary website where you are on the faculty is wts .edu,

wts .edu. Do you have any other contact information that you care to provide?

I know that you also have a podcast and so on, if you could let our listeners know about that.

Yep, I do a podcast and blog at mortificationofspin .org,

that's mortificationofspin .org, and I write a column roughly every two weeks at firstthings .com.

Usually they're on some issue of political or cultural concern to religious conservatives, not simply

Christians, in fact. There are other Jewish people who write on that blog as well, so it's a kind of religious freedom, cultural concern kind of blog, firstthings .com.

And of course the Cornerstone Orthodox Presbyterian Church, if any of our listeners are either visiting or they actually already live in Pennsylvania, in the

Ambler, Pennsylvania area, that website is cornerstoneopc .com,

cornerstoneopc, standing for Orthodox Presbyterian Church, dot com. Thank you so much

Dr. Truman, we look forward to your return. Thanks for having me on Chris. All right, God bless you brother. Bye.

Bye -bye. Now don't go away folks, because we do have Earl Blackburn who is joining us on a similar theme today.

Earl is going to be discussing Jesus Loves the Church and So Should You, so please don't go away.

We'll be right back after this 12 -minute break because of the requirements of Grace Life Radio 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, who requires a 12 -minute break between our hours. We'll be right back,

God willing, with Earl Blackburn after these messages from our sponsors. Tired of box store

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. If you just tuned us in the first hour, we featured

Dr. Carl Truman as our guest. We were discussing the book The Church of Christ by James Bannerman, the 19th century minister in the

Free Church of Scotland. The second hour, we are going to be joined by Earl Blackburn, chairman of the

Administrative Council of the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America for eight years, and currently the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana.

We're going to be discussing his book, Jesus Loves the Church and So Should You. Before we are joined by Pastor Blackburn, I just have a couple of brief announcements.

The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is once again conducting the

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And the theme is The Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit. The speakers include Daniel Aiken, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, one of the most powerful preachers alive on the planet

Earth in my opinion, Conrad M. Bayway of Kabwatha Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and Richard Phillips and Jonathan Master and David Murray and Scott Oliphant.

If you'd like to register, go to AllianceNet .org, and click on the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology, The Spirit of the Age and the Age of the Spirit. Lastly, I just have to do that most uncomfortable thing that I do every day on the show.

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Support, and mail us a check or as many checks as you can for as much as you can made payable to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to the address that you will see when you click

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That's also the email address where you can send a question to our guest Earl Blackburn, and that email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

As I said earlier, Earl Blackburn is chairman of the administrative council of the

Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, commonly known as ARPCA, for eight years.

Currently he's the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana, and he's the author of a number of books, including

Jesus Loves the Church and So Should You, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you to the as a guest for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Earl Blackburn.

Thank you, Chris. It's an honor and joy to be with you. Especially, I'm humbled in being allowed to follow

Dr. Carl Truman. What a great servant of Christ he is. You know, I have known you for many years, and I'm wondering, did

I ever interview you on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio before? Not that I can think of.

I think we had a couple of interviews scheduled, but I had health problems.

And then, well, I must confess, brother, one time my age is sneaking up on me.

I forgot. Yeah, I remember that. Well, then welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Earl Blackburn.

And in fact, for any of my Long Island listeners, I thought this was fascinating.

If you live on Long Island, especially if you live in Suffolk County, and especially if you live in my hometown of Amityville, I found out after already knowing

Pastor Blackburn for a number of years that he, as a child, spent,

I don't know if it was summers or winters or what time of year it was, but you spent time at the home, the vacation home of the

Amato family who owned the now defunct, now a matter of history alone.

They no longer are open, but the great Amato's restaurant in Amityville, I know that you were a close childhood friend of the owners of that restaurant.

Yes, they married Aunt Dot, as she was known, married, she was the sister of my aunt on my father's side.

And so somehow we were in -laws. And what dear people and what great food that was served at Amato.

Oh yeah, that was the best Italian restaurant on Long Island at one time. And in fact, going back to the 50s and 60s,

I believe the mafia even ate there. Oh yeah, you ought to have heard

Uncle Frank's stories about the mafioso and the dons that came in there and the capo regimes and so forth.

And he served them, he was the maitre d' and he had them $450, $500 bottles of wine and they took good care of it.

And there were celebrities that would go there because the food was so phenomenal.

I mean, it was truly extraordinary. And now I guess it was, was it

North Carolina where they had a summer home or something where you used to spend time? Well, they would come down to North Carolina to Elkin, my hometown and Thurman area where my family lived.

And they would come down and spend the summer, good portions of the summer. And we, my cousins and I would play around and they laughed.

They used to laugh. Of course, they being from New York and from the Italian background, they laughed at the way

I spoke. They thought I had a funny accent, especially, I'll never forget when

I asked them one time, I asked my cousin Linda, I said, who's Yalza's cook? She said, what?

Who's Yalza's cook? I didn't even know Yalza's was a word. Well, Paul the

Apostle used it, I thought everyone else did. And they, unlike the vast majority of Italians, were

Jehovah's Witnesses, right? Yes, but you know, the Lord did a work and there were four of them and the

Lord did a work and two of them, one died as a Jehovah's Witness, two have left.

I believe one has really come to Christ. Oh, praise God. Yeah. So, just praying for the others.

Yep. Well, that place will always have a very special place in my heart forever because that's not where I proposed to my wife.

I proposed to my wife in Manhattan at B. Smith's restaurant before we went to see Phantom of the

Opera on Broadway, but I gave my late wife her engagement ring at Amato's.

And I had my first date with my wife during a blizzard at Amato's and we were one of only a couple of other couples at that restaurant.

But we're not here to talk about Amato's today, we're here to talk about the Church of Jesus Christ and you have written a book,

Jesus Loves the Church and So Should You. What were the compelling factors that drove you to write this book?

Well, there were a number. Over the years, Chris, I have been concerned.

I was raised in what was, well, the Bible Belt is loosely defined, but I was raised in it.

I grew up in churches and never really understood what church was all about.

I became a Christian when I was 18 years old and all of a sudden there was a radical change in my thinking, at least toward Christ and so forth.

But I began to search the scriptures and that's a dangerous thing when you go into the

Word of God. And I began to understand things, see things, and it made me question the church at Corinth, the church at Rome, the churches in Galatia, the church at Ephesus, the church at Philippi, Colossae, so on.

Revelation chapters 1, 2, and 3, letters to the seven churches.

And so that began a process of thinking that has still impacted me.

But perhaps the greatest emphasis to this book, I'm pastoring here in Shreveport and I was listening to Christian radio and sometimes that can be dangerous too.

Some of the nonsense that you get. And I was listening to this guy and he was just talking about knowing

Jesus. He said, listen, don't worry. People are worried about the church. He said, the church is not significant.

All that matters is that you're a Christian. You don't have to be a part of a church. You don't have to be a part of a denomination.

And he just went on railing and criticizing the church.

And he said, all you need is to know Jesus. And I became just more and more irritated as I listened to him.

And I thought, what's wrong with you fella? You say love Jesus, but you don't have to love the church or be concerned about the church.

I thought, if you love Christ, if you love Jesus, you will love the thing that he loves the most.

Ephesians 5 .25. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it.

How can you say that you love Jesus and not love the thing that he loved the most?

And so that put my mental wheels spinning.

And then I was contacted by Solid Ground Christian Books, and they said, hey, would you be willing to write a book for us?

And I said, I don't know. I've never written. And they said, well, you've written some magazine articles.

We've read them. You know who I'm talking about. And he said, I think you can write a book.

And so I sat down and prayed about it. And this is what came about after probably 15 months of intense writing and rewriting.

By the way, brother, whatever you... That is still my passion, Chris. I ask the question, how can you love

Christ and not love the thing that he loves the most? Amen. And by the way, whatever you did whatever you did to change your position, and I'm speaking about how you're sitting or what have you, it radically improved the sound of your voice.

Your voice is much clearer and louder now, so I'm very happy. Don't change what you're doing, in other words. Okay. Hey, I've improved it.

Yes. And well, you know, when you speak like that, the thing that immediately popped into my head was

Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. And we have that very famous scene in Acts chapter 9 where Saul falls to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, meaning

Jesus Christ, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

And it's interesting that Christ had already been crucified, risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven at this point before this incident.

And yet Christ is saying to Saul, why are you persecuting me? He didn't say why are you persecuting my followers, my disciples.

He equated the persecution of the church with him being persecuted.

Exactly. And that's one of the things that I argue in the book, that the

New Testament is a church book. The New Testament knows nothing of a churchless

Christianity. Now, there are many people who are confused in their thinking as to the nature, purpose, mission, etc.

of the church. But nevertheless, when you turn to the New Testament scriptures, it is a church book.

And you cannot, we're not Roman Catholic, where if you're not a member of the church, you can't go to heaven.

But we do believe, because the scriptures teach it so, and this example that you're bringing up is the perfect example,

Christ has so identified himself with the church. And I'm not talking about the universal body of believers scattered all over the world.

I'm talking about visible churches. And we can discuss that later on. But he has so identified himself with the church, that as Paul was going to Damascus to persecute the

Christians there, the church in churches, actually, in Damascus at that time,

Jesus associated Paul's persecution of them with persecution of him.

And there is an inseparable connection between Christ and his church.

And I tell people, I tell our people on Sundays when we gather, I'll say, we welcome all of our visitors here, but we need to realize there is an unseen visitor here in our worship today.

And this unseen visitor is more important than anyone else. Because Christ said, where two or three are gathered in my name, there will

I be in the midst. And when you look at the context of that, in Matthew 18, he's not talking about a

Bible study group, or a fellowship of Christians out somewhere doing something, fishing, hunting, having tea together, or things of that nature.

He's talking about the collective gathering of the people of God who call themselves

Christians. He has promised to be in their midst. We have an anonymous question.

The anonymous listener says, if a member undergoes discipline, or should

I say, if a member who is undergoing discipline or underdiscipline hops the bus and tries to join with a church, not necessarily the same denomination, what should the original pastor do?

Well, that's a good question. I don't know where you are headed in this interview, all that you want to cover.

I heard some of Dr. Truman's discussion earlier about church discipline.

I think, first of all, what needs to be established is that according to 1

Corinthians 5 and several other passages, that one of the things that is neglected in today's evangelical churches,

Bible -believing churches, regardless of whatever their denomination is, I am Baptist, but there are other evangelical churches out there, one of the things that's been neglected is church discipline.

And you have to understand what that entails. And, man, it is so neglected.

I mean, we have pastors who are committing adultery on their wives, and they're just simply quietly fired, given a severance.

The churches are not even known, or do not know what's going on, and so forth. And so I think it needs to be firmly established that church discipline is one of the most loving things that a church can practice.

And yet, most evangelical churches are totally unaware of it, or if they're unaware of it,

I've had many pastors tell me personally, I would never practice church discipline in our church, because if we do, our numbers would radically decrease.

And, for instance, a church in our regional association had a situation where two different men—one was a deacon—two different men were having affairs on their wives.

One of the deacons was having an affair with another woman in the church. It was a larger church. And one of the men was having an affair with a woman outside that particular congregation.

But everybody knew about it. And everybody in the community—it's in a community just to the east of us, about 15 miles, and the church is a rather large church, about 1 ,100, 1 ,200 people—and everyone in the community knew about it.

Everyone in the church knew about it, and yet nothing was done. And people were laughing.

The unbelievers in the community were laughing about it. Hey, if they can do that,

I can do that, and nothing is done, then nothing will be done to me. To go back to the original question, if someone is underdisciplined and they hop off the bus,

I think is the term they use, I think it's the pastor, pastors, whomever, should—if they know that this person has gone to another church, whether it's of the same or a different denomination,

I think they need to call them and tell that church what's going on.

For example, when I was pastoring in Los Angeles, we had a man to show up.

This has been my practice, standard practice, for almost 40 years.

When we have visitors, we have a little visitor's card, are you a member of a church, where, so on and so forth.

And we had this man show up, and he clicked, checked the box that said he was a member of such and such church.

And I was familiar with that church, and so I didn't get to talk with him much.

He quickly left, but he did leave the visitor's card, so I was given all the visitor's cards.

The next day, I called that church and spoke with the pastor, and I said, John Doe visited yesterday, is there anything wrong there, any problems?

And he said, well, yes, there are. And I said, what? He said, the man is under church discipline.

And I said, for what? And he said, well, he's been arrested for spousal abuse.

He's beaten his wife on several occasions, and finally she got tired of it and could take no more, and she called the police and was arrested.

And he began to make excuses, well, she deserved it, she did this, and she did that, and we tried to talk with him, we tried to reason with him, we pled with him, he wouldn't listen to us, and we had no other recourse but to place him under church discipline.

And so what he's doing, he's running, and he's coming over to your church. Well, I said, okay, thank you very much.

Could you send me just a little note or a letter confirming this? And he did. The next

Sunday, that man showed up, and especially after the benediction,

I especially ran out so I could catch him, and I said, could I speak with you a minute? And he said, yes.

And so I took him back to my study, and I had one of our associates with me, and I'm glad I did, because this guy was a second -degree black belt judo.

And I said to this man, I said, I understand you're a member of such -and -such church over on the other side of the valley.

And he said, yes, I am. And I said, I understand that you're under church discipline over there, is that true?

And he said, yes, I am. And I said, are you under discipline for beating your wife?

He said, really, that's none of your business. And I said, I beg to differ with you.

I said, the moment you came on this church property and came into our worship service, it became my business.

And I said, you know, I'm not here to condemn you. I'm not here to lay anything on you.

I just want to know. You've already admitted you're under church discipline. Is it true that you're under discipline and you have a police record being arrested for beating your wife?

And he grew angry. He clenched his fist, and he started toward me.

Well, my associate stood up and got in between me, and he said,

I wouldn't recommend it, fella. Let's calmly talk through this.

And he said, okay. And he admitted it, and I said, listen, you are not welcome to this church until you go back over there to the other church and settle this issue.

And until you do, you will not be welcomed to attend here, to worship here, or do anything.

And he said a few nasty things and accused me of being unloving.

And as he's walking out the door, well, he never came back. About 15 months later, all of a sudden,

I look out in the vast congregation, and I see him sitting there, and I'm thinking, what in the world is he doing here now?

And so, after the service, he came up, and he said, Pastor, may I speak with you? And I said, yes. And so,

I took some men with me, and we went back to the study, and he said, I want to thank you for not letting me run away.

He said, I was so mad at you, I was ready to just beat the daylights out of you when you confronted me, he said, about 15 months ago.

And that's why I used the length of time. He said, but it forced me to go back to that church, and it forced me to go back and be reconciled to my wife, to repent of my anger and my abuse of her, and to work with the pastors and elders and deacons of that church, and get my heart right with Christ, get my heart right with my wife and my children.

Wow. And today, I've never had a more happy and loving marriage, and I wanted to come.

I asked a pastor if I could come over today and worship with y 'all, just so I could personally tell you and these other men, thank you for not letting me run away and escape.

Wow. And so, that's maybe a long answer, but that is what

I would say. I would try to, you know, church discipline is not primarily punitive.

The whole purpose of church discipline is redemptive. You want to recover and restore back to fellowship with Christ and with the body of Christ, and even with the unbelieving world, because when the unbelievers see a candle of things going on in the lives of Christians who are members of churches, it doesn't beautify the gospel.

It doesn't make the gospel attractive. They laugh at it. And I'm thankful that this man came and told us.

I called his pastor the next day, and I said, you know, John Doe came, and he said, yes, he'd ask us if we could do that, and we gave him permission, and he came, and I said, he said, thank you as well.

He said he was stubborn and hard for several months, but we slowly saw the

Word of God and the Spirit of God taking the Word of God and applying it to his heart and softening him.

And he has made full repentance to his wife and children and to the church, and it's just a blessed thing to see.

Amen. Hallelujah for that. We are going to our final break. If anybody would like to join those who are already waiting to have their questions asked and answered, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages with more of Pastor Earl Blackburn, and Jesus Loves the

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Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. And now we are back to the final 20 minutes or so of our conversation with Pastor Earl Blackburn.

We are discussing his book, Jesus Loves the Church, and so should you. And I want to get to as many of our listener questions as possible.

Let's see here. We have Catherine in Asante, Minnesota.

And Catherine says, What should church members do when there is unpunished sin in the church, when the church leaders allow things to go unpunished?

Is it appropriate to just remain a member at such a church or should you leave that church?

That's a very good question. I address that in the book. I'm sure that many of the questions that come in are to one degree or another addressed in the book.

But we have that all the time. I listened to Dr. Carl Truman.

He was talking about that matter in the OPC church. And what should church members do?

Now, I think, first of all, you have to determine that it really is a sin.

If somebody wears a hat and somebody doesn't, that's a sin.

You know, there are certain Christians that believe that women should have their head covered.

And I think that's a matter of Christian liberty. But if you determine from the scriptures that it is a sin, a flagrant sin, something such as adultery or something such as embezzlement or something that has caused the person to be arrested by the law of the land, and the church leaders are not doing anything about it,

I think that the individual Christian should go to the church leaders, whatever the denomination, whomever they may be, and graciously, kindly, humbly, not angrily or forcefully say, have you considered that this might be grieving the

Spirit of God in our church? Have you considered how flagrant this is? I mean, that's the situation in 1

Corinthians chapter 5. Here is a man having immoral sexual relations with his stepmother, and not only the leaders of the church, but the entire church was condoning it.

And Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5, these kind of practices are not even known among the heathen, the unbelievers.

The world wouldn't even allow this. And you need to go to your church leaders.

Lay out your case, biblically. Don't think, don't say, well,

I feel this might be wrong. You know, our feelings ultimately have nothing to do with objective truth of the scriptures.

Either it's a flagrant, either it is a public flagrant sin that needs to be dealt with, or it's not.

And if it is, entreat your church leaders. And if they will not hear you, then

I think you have to determine. You have to look around. You have to see the effects or effects that it is having upon the church.

How about your own children? And make a determination.

And one of the chapters that I dealt with, as a matter of fact, I was speaking with someone today who had been a member of one church, and they left that church and went to another church.

And he said, your chapter in this book, How to Leave a Church, helped me so much.

And there are unlawful or illegitimate reasons why people leave churches.

But then there are legitimate reasons, lawful reasons, why someone should leave a church.

And I'll deal with those. What are some wrong reasons for leaving a church? What are some right reasons for leaving a church?

And if you have the right reasons for leaving a church, then there's a certain way that you leave a church.

And you do it graciously and kindly. And you leave it in such a way that people will not sneer at you and think ill of you.

If they are offended, let it be offended at truth, not at your actions or behavior. And so I think that, not knowing the situation,

I don't know that I could speak any more definitively than that. But I think that they will have to come.

This Lady Catherine will have to come. She's married. She and her husband and family will have to come to some kind of decision as to whether this is too public, too scandalous, and what they're going to do and how they should biblically respond in a

Christlike manner. And of course, she could have been asking, hypothetically. We don't know that this is actually something going on in her church where she's married.

Right, right, right, right. Well, thank you, Catherine in Asante, Minnesota. And since you're a first -time listener, you have won a free copy of the

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. So please give us your full mailing address.

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Keep listening to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio and spreading the word in Asante, Minnesota and beyond about the program.

I assume, I don't know this for a fact, but I assume, actually, I think that the way that you answered that question, you would agree with me that as great a mind as the late

Dr. John Gerstner had and what a hero of the faith he was, he had a really strict view of church membership to the point where he didn't believe, unless providential circumstances compelled you to move outside the area where you were living, he did not believe a person should ever leave the church where they were a member unless the church entered into apostasy regarding the gospel.

He said that was the only legitimate reason and unless I'm misunderstanding him, if somebody who's a John Gerstner scholar wants to correct me on that, they can, but I was a bit surprised about that because he was extremely conservative, but he was basically saying you have to tolerate a lot even if it's the intrusion of liberalism as long as the gospel is preserved.

So I'm assuming you disagree with the late Dr. Gerstner on that. Well, not exactly.

I would sense a great kinship with that.

But there is a time where the gospel is betrayed by the sinful actions of those who confess the name of Christ.

And when there is public scandalous sin, I'm not talking about minor, some may not understand this word, picadilloes, small matters, that's different.

But where, such as in 1 Corinthians 5, here is sexual immorality that everyone is aware of in every part of the church and nothing was done about it.

This is one of the things that I love about the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689.

Chapter 26 is the largest chapter of the longest chapter in the confession, and it deals with some of these things.

And paragraph 13, I've used this so many times. People get mad at different ones.

People get mad at the deacons. Deacons will get mad at the people. People get mad at the pastor or pastors or whomever.

And rather than trying to biblically work through situations in a Christ -like manner, they just get mad and leave.

And I think that is so wrong. And you find church hoppers. They'll hop to this church and that church and the other church.

And they're so self -important in their own thinking. And they're right and no one else is right.

Everyone else is wrong. And little do they realize that they're carrying their baggage with them as they hop from church to church to church to church.

But here is where our Baptist forefathers, in my estimation, sparkled, shimmered, and shined.

Paragraph 13 of chapter 26 says this, No church members, upon any offense taken by them, having performed their duty required of them toward the persons they are offended at, ought to disturb any church order, or absent themselves from the assemblies of the church, or administration of any ordinances upon the account of such offenses at any of their fellow members.

And here is the key. They continue but to wait upon Christ in the further proceeding of the church.

And I think that we need to show the world. You know, the church is filled with sinners saved by grace.

We're justified and at the same time we're still sinners. None of us have arrived. And we need to demonstrate to the world, through the church, that we just don't get angry and in a huff, stomp off and go somewhere else.

We learn to biblically, righteously, lovingly, graciously, in a

Christ -like manner, work through problems. Two people can't be together without some time or another causing friction between them.

You can't move without creating friction. And the churches of Jesus Christ are filled with flawed, imperfect people who have been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

And we need to demonstrate to the world that the gospel works, not only in our salvation, but in our

Christian lives on a daily basis. And learn how to work through problems in churches, instead of getting mad and stomping away and going to another church, and it won't be long before you'll get mad at someone there and stomp off again and you'll go to another church and the cycle will keep repeating itself.

Now, I don't think that apostasy—I live, in my chapter, there are four main reasons, five biblical reasons,

I think, why a person should leave the church. None of them are small. You want to read all of them while we still have time?

I think I can. And then I'll give our email address one more time. If anybody wants to quickly send in an email with a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please always give us your first name, city and state and country of residence, unless you're asking about a personal and private matter.

Have you found that section, Earl? Yes, I have. Okay. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, still hear you great. Well, I asked, when is it right to leave a church and how should it be done?

And the reason I deal with it is because people, in reality, do leave church.

Secondly, some people leave churches in ways that are often disagreeable to the Word of God. And they hurt people and cause confusion.

They place stumbling blocks in the paths of believers and unbelievers and bring reproach upon Christ, the

Word of God, even God himself. They disrupt fellowship and good communion. And because the scriptures do address this issue.

Now, what are some legitimate and lawful reasons for leaving the church?

Well, I think, one, when the church departs from the gospel and the preaching of the

Word of God. And that's a very serious matter. When churches, when worship services become entertainment, and the pastors are better at telling jokes and funny stories and anecdotes than expounding the

Word of God, something's wrong. Secondly, when a church embraces and teaches heresy.

And I don't have time to develop that. That would take an entire program.

Thirdly, when a church tolerates open and scandalous sin in the church leadership or membership and refuses to deal with it via biblical church discipline or via biblical directives.

Fourth, when a church changes doctrinal positions not consistent with the church's original confession of faith or doctrine of practices.

For instance, you know, I believe that once someone comes to Christ that they are,

I don't want to get into all the theological issues that are out there, but if all of a sudden a pastor were to say, you know,

I used to believe that we believers are kept by the power of God through faith, and now

I believe that believers can fall from grace and lose their salvation.

And he preaches and teaches that, and the church imbibes that. Well, I think that that's not a damnable heresy, but it is a heresy.

I believe heresy is on two levels. And so, then, also, when a person changes his or her major doctrinal beliefs.

I mean, if someone is a

Paedo -Baptist, such as our dear brother Carl Truman, believes in infabaptism, if someone becomes convinced of believers' baptism—

And we could only hope and pray. Or vice versa.

I think that you can quietly and graciously leave that church and do so in a manner that honors

Christ. And, of course, when a member is providentially moved to another location far away from his or her present church, one of the things we face here, we are close to a big military base.

We have people coming in. They're with us 18 months to two years, and then they get deployed to another place.

And so, that's a lawful reason to leave one church and go to another. So, that's just a quick thumbnail sketch of those things.

Great, and we have time for one more question here. We have, once again, Joe in Slovenia.

The church means so much less in our day than when I was a youngster. Even back in the 1970s, the local church didn't have the significance in the lives of most

Christians that the New Testament teaches us she should. But today, our society and lives are so hurried and fractured.

How, in our day, do we recover the authenticity, intimacy, and accountability in the church that should be a part of normative

Christian life? Excellent question. Many churches today have—what's the word

I want to use? They have just slid into being social organizations.

And we need to come back to the—what is the purpose of the church?

Why did Christ die, love the church so much that he gave himself for it?

What is its purpose? What is its message? What is its mission? And we are living in such an individualistic society, in such a narcissistic society.

We forget the glory of God. We forget the praise of our triune

God. All we care about is how we feel, and what makes us feel good, and what makes us happy.

And what you have to do is, I think, from the Scriptures, come back to the centrality of the visible church and all the redemptive purposes of God.

And men, pastors, need to preach these things to their people.

I mean, being a Christian and being a part of a church, a visible church of Jesus Christ, in my estimation, is not optional.

In fact, we are out of time, brother, and we're going to have to have you back, obviously, very soon to discuss this further.

I know that your website for your church, Heritage Baptist Church of Shreveport, is hbcshreveport .com.

I know that the ARBCA website for the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America is arbca .com,

A -R -B -C -A dot com. And of course, Solid Ground Christian Books is solid -ground -books .com,

solid -ground -books .com. I look forward to your return, brother, if you could wait on the line after we go off the air, because I'd like to reschedule another interview with you.

Okay, will do. Thank you so much, everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions, and I want you all always to remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater