A Dog Named Jake

The Church is supposed to be a colony of the future, where the rebellion against God is history. Where His will is His people's delight. So to bring into that assembly of brothers and sisters of Christ, publicly unrepented sin of whatever sort is to try to drag the rebellion of Satan into the very assembly where it is all past and done with.

Obviously, St. Paul knows that the Church is comprised of nothing but sinners, as St. John said in his first letter, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." (1 John 1:8). But there is a world of difference between the sins into which the Christian people still stumble at times, even daily, and the attitude of the unrepented sinner who says, "I don't care what God says about this or that, I'm doing my own thing thank you very much." That is what cannot be allowed to breathe and grow in the Church.

Have I ever told you the story about Jake? Jake was a dog we ended up with, and he and I had our run-ins, but none as bad as the day he got himself a rabbit, and when I called him to come in, he wasn't about to let that little bloody carcass stay outside - no, no, no, he was going to bring it in the house. So we had quite an altercation when I would not let him bring it in, and I made him drop it. Jake, with his bloody bunny, is a perfect picture of the sinner who doesn't want to let go of the sin but intends to drag it with him into the Kingdom. Hey, you may be thinking, God loves me just the way I am. In a way, of course, you're right, and He also loves you way too much to leave you like that. So to enter the Church is to exit being of the world. Still in the world, but no longer a willing rebel; Instead, a forgiven one who joins the fight against the rebellion, even the rebellion that keeps popping up in our lives.

St. Paul throws in not even to eat with such a one, and that leads Theodoret of Cyrus, writing in the fourth century, to observe obvious if we are not to eat ordinary food with such people, we are not to admit them to the Lord's Table either.

- Pr. Will Weedon