Church discipline

Man has always treated sin as a misfortune, not a crime; as disease, not guilt; as a case for the physician, not for the judge. Herein lies the essential faultiness of all mere human religions or theologies. They fail to acknowledge the judicial aspect of the question, as that on which the real answer must hinge; and to recognize the guilt or criminality of the evildoer as that which must first be dealt with before any real answer, or approximation to an answer, can be given. elr It seems strange, after all, that man should be…easily misled, and that, among thousands who profess to seek for truth, so few should reach it. But man’s bias is on the side of error, just as it is on the side of sin; for all error is sin. Darkness is loved rather than light, and the bondage of the evil one preferred to the liberty of God. Hence, it is so easy to seduce men from the path of truth. God and truth are so closely linked together that they cannot have the latter without the former. A false religion without God they may have, but a true religion without Him they cannot have. And thus, they who have no relish for Divine companionship here and an eternity in the presence of God hereafter will be certain to turn away from a religion whose essence is communion with God; nay, will only the more deeply hate it because it is heavenly and Divine.  There is nothing almost of which man is so tenacious, 51 as his right of thinking for himself (as he calls it) in matters of religion. In so far as this means merely that his fellow men have no right to think for him or to prescribe a religion for him, he is right. But in so far as he is claiming for himself a right of forming opinions independent of God, he is wrong—awfully wrong. Man has no right to think for himself apart from God or independent of the revelation of God. God’s declarations are to be received in unquestioning simplicity. What we are to believe, what we are to do, how we are to worship are not matters of opinion or speculation: they are truths—truths not reasoned out or demonstrated by man, but dictated by God and coming to us, therefore, with a certainty which man cannot add to or improve, and which no strength of mathematical demonstration can surpass. This thinking for one’s self independently of God and His revelation is not merely an evil, but a sin. Nay, it is a sin of more than common darkness—it is so audacious,52 so contemptuous towards God. It places man on a level with God or at least sets Divine truth and human opinion on the same footing. It strips the former of all innate authority, while it gives to the latter an authority to which it has no claim!…There can be no authority save that which is infallible and Divine, that is, God speaking to us directly in His Word.