UNKNOWN

UNKNOWN

... So far as I understand the case referred to, the judgment arrived at was as to certain conduct. The assembly as seen in Matthew 18 binds or looses with reference to conduct, previous private efforts to bring about repentance having ^[p. 362] proved unavailing. Though the binding has a certain judicial aspect it is not inconsistent with the reign of grace, because one object of it is to help the offender to view his conduct as the assembly views it. When he does so he is in harmony with the assembly and with the mind of heaven. Grace has reached its end with him, and loosing can take place righteously. The offender proves himself to be “a little child” by hearing the assembly, and judging his conduct as the assembly judges it. He is “converted” by coming into line with the assembly. Now if the conduct which is brought before the assembly is such that it calls for binding, the offender can only clear himself of it by repentance, and on the assembly discerning his repentance it clears him administratively by loosing him. In the case before us I understand that there has been conduct which the local brethren felt should be brought before the assembly. I have not heard that any one questions that the conduct was wrong. The offender himself has admitted this. Now if he is really on this ground before God he has only to follow out his exercises a little further to be near enough to his brethren morally to make it possible for them to touch him in a restorative way. Delaying his acknowledgment, as it were, to the last minute robbed it of the moral value which would have attached to it if it had been made earlier. Would it not be well for him to own the Lord’s governmental hand upon him in the whole matter, and to take a low place as owning the rightness of the judgment passed upon his conduct? I think if he becomes “a little child” there will not be much difficulty, but nothing short of a miracle will bring any of us to that point! I trust the brethren, on their part, may be quick to discern even the beginning of that gracious work which they had in mind to promote by their action. It needs, perhaps, more grace to move restoratively than to move in the judgment of what is manifestly wrong. The latter is sometimes a painful necessity, but there is more glory in the former.