LOCAL RESPONSIBILITY NO. 2

LOCAL RESPONSIBILITY NO. 2

Local responsibility refers to the assembly to which you are attached. There were the churches or assemblies of Galatia. For the assembly to which you are attached you have a responsibility which you have not for the assembly to which you are not locally attached. No doubt you have a responsibility with regard to the whole church, but this is quite different from your responsibility to the assembly to which you are attached. You are responsible for the holiness of the assembly with which you are locally connected. I do not sanction or overlook unholiness anywhere, but I am personally responsible for the holiness of God’s house where I am dwelling. In that sense, in a special way ‘Charity begins at home’. I have to build the wall opposite my own house. See Nehemiah. I am responsible for the purity of the assembly with which I am connected, and therefore I should not receive from an assembly where there was unjudged leaven until that assembly had cleared itself. I am not involved in it unless I sanction it or receive from the assembly where it is. My responsibility is to be faithful in condemning the leaven, in order that the assembly where the leaven exists should be as clear of it as the assembly to which I am attached. What is good and proper for one assembly is good and proper for every assembly.