BetteTheRed ----your quote ----- Righteous judgment is God's prerogative, and ONLY God's prerogative.
unsafe says -----God is the Righteous Judge of All Unbelievers ----BetteTheRed ---so you are right in one sense with your statement ---
verse 12 from Scripture below ------
12
For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
13 God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.”
unsafe says -----
----Believers are called to Judge rightly other believers -----that is by Scripture -----God word is God's Judgment ----Jesus is the Word --So God Judges by His Word ------
This is Paul using Righteous Judgment against supposedly Spirit Filled Christians of the Church ------- God is the Judge here because God has set His Standard for Born Again Christians -----
1 Corinthians 5 (ESV)
Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church
5 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people 10 not at all meaning the sexually
immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.
11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.
12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.”
unsafe says ---A believer who keeps sinning and acting unbecoming to Christ's Behaviour reflects on all True Christians --so Believers are to tell a Brother or Sister who is behaving in a unbecoming Manner to the Character of Christ and try to get then back on the right road ----- Believers are called to rightly Judge a Brother or Sister in Christ
unsafe posting here -----read all for yourselves -----I am posting part of the article only -------
Lesson 16: Biblical Church Discipline (Matthew 18:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5:1-13)
The church must practice biblical church discipline toward professing Christians who persist in known sin.
Perhaps no verse is so taken out of context and misapplied as
Matthew 7:1, “Do not judge so that you will not be judged.” If you keep reading, in verse 6 Jesus says, “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine….” In verse 15 He adds, “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” To obey those verses, you must make some careful judgments! You must judge that a person is a dog or a swine or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Furthermore, in
1 Corinthians 5:12, Paul tells the church that they are responsible to judge those within the church. Practicing biblical church discipline does not violate Jesus’ command, “Judge not.”
We will consider the
purposes of church discipline, the
problems that require discipline, and the
procedure for church discipline.
The purposes for church discipline:
We may consider these purposes in four directions:
1. Toward God, church discipline vindicates publicly His honor and holiness.
God’s holiness is a dominant theme in the Bible. It means that He is totally apart from and opposed to all sin. In the Old Testament, God told His people (
Lev. 19:2), “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” The New Testament repeats that command (
1 Pet. 1:15-16). Peter refers to the church as a holy priesthood and a holy nation (
1 Pet. 2:5, 9).
This assumes that the church consists of people who have experienced the new birth by believing the gospel. It is only when we believe the Bible’s testimony that we are sinners and that Christ died for our sins and that He gives eternal life to all who believe in Him that we become a people distinct from the world. We still live
in the world, but we are no longer
of the world (
John 17:15-19). As new creatures in Christ, the church now represents Him to the world. Thus it’s essential that we deal with sin in our midst.
Because God’s name is bound up with His church, when His people sin, He will disassociate Himself from them and take them through severe discipline if they do not repent and deal with the sin in their midst. For example, in the messages to the churches in
Revelation 2 & 3, the Lord repeatedly warns that if they do not deal with their sins, He will set Himself against the church and even remove that church’s lampstand. God would rather have no testimony in a city than to have His name mingled with sin!
2. Toward the church itself, church discipline restores purity and deters others from sinning.
In
1 Corinthians 5:7, Paul commands, “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.” Leaven (yeast) is a type of sin. If you put a small amount of yeast in flour, it spreads through the entire lump. Paul is saying symbolically what he also states plainly (
1 Cor. 5:2, 13), that the church needed to remove the sinning man so that the purity of the church would be restored and the sin would not spread any further.
You can see this principle in a family. If the parents do not discipline a defiant child, very soon the other children learn that there are no consequences if they disobey their parents. The sin of the first child spreads to the others. The same thing happens in a culture. If the government does not enforce the laws, the whole country soon devolves into anarchy.
In the local church, God has given authority to the elders (
Heb. 13:17). Part of their responsibility is to uphold God’s standards of holiness and do all that they can to keep the church doctrinally and morally pure. For example, take a single Christian woman who knowingly disobeys Scripture by marrying an unbeliever. If the elders do not deal with her sin, other single women in the church, who have been waiting on the Lord for a Christian husband, will be tempted to date and marry unbelievers. The biblical standard that believers should only marry believers would be diluted and sin would spread through the church.
If we don’t uphold God’s standards of holiness, it doesn’t take long for the church to become just like the world. Although the city of Corinth was infamous for sexual promiscuity, this sin went beyond what the pagans practiced (
1 Cor. 5:1)! But, it didn’t shock the Corinthian church! They were actually boasting about their acceptance and love toward this man who was intimate with his stepmother (
1 Cor. 5:2)! The woman was probably not a believer, or Paul would have told the church to remove her as well. But he says that they should have mourned and removed this man from their midst. Sin in other professing Christians should cause us to mourn, not to be tolerant. God would rather that a local church be pure and small than that it be big, but tolerant of sin in its midst.
3. Toward the world, church discipline displays God’s standards of holiness and draws a line between the church and the world.
But Scripture is clear that the church is to be distinct from the world by being separated unto our God, who is holy.
First John 2:15 puts it, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” I’m not talking about adding legalistic rules for things that are not in the Bible, but rather about being a people who love God so that we willingly distance ourselves from this corrupt world.
Toward God, church discipline vindicates publicly His honor and holiness. Toward the church itself, church discipline restores purity and deters others from sinning. Toward the world, church discipline displays God’s standards of holiness and draws a line between the church and the world.
unsafe says ----Unbelievers believe as the World Believes ----Believers Believe what God says in His Word to be True and Right ---
True Christians have no business judging unbelievers as they are living and behaving like the Word behaves and believes ----there are 2 different standards for believing and living -----The World's way and God's Way
Jesus taught us That Twisting Scripture to suit our own needs is not Truth and is Not OK ----Jesus taught us that adding our own Traditions is not Truth and is Not OK -----Jesus taught us that Saints are responsible to adhere to His Standards of behaviour and to rightly judge unbecoming behaviour in True Christians that defiles His Name -----
unsafe posting here from John------
. no one can do anything Right in his view, only he is perfect