The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-18, titled "Questions and Answers--Part 46."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2000 by John MacArthur, All Rights Reserved.

Question

There is certainly a lot of confusion about personal accountability in church discipline, in the church today, and I am facing a little of that confusion.  I'm studying 1 Peter 4:8, and it says, "Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because 'love covers a multitude of sins.'"  Now, I know that's just one verse; I don't want to take anything out of context, so that may not have anything to do with personal accountability with church discipline, but if it does, how should that affect our obedience to God's plan of personal accountability in the Church?

Answer

"Love covers a multitude of sins."  Let me tell you something, I will not take personally and become defensive over those things that are done against me.  If I felt there was an ongoing pattern of sin, and I think this is how the Church has to operate, in the life of a person, for which there was no sadness; there was no remorse; there was no repentance; there was no sorrow, and this became a constant way of life, then I think it needs to be dealt with.  But it is ridiculous to assume that you are going to go around, every single time someone says something that may be thoughtless, or something that doesn't take into consideration your feelings, or something that misrepresents something about you, that you all of sudden rise to some spiritual level and launch church discipline.

We are talking about the kind of love here that deals with the "peroptamaze" (?) of life, you know: you are sort of overtaken in a fault because you are human, this is not that you have premeditated a massive scenario of an ongoing commitment to this kind of inequity--that's the kind of thing the Church deals with.  But what love does is...love understands human weakness; love understands our foibles, our failures, our tripping up, our falling.  Love understands that are sometimes we say things and do things; sometimes I say things and do things that have no premeditated intentionality to hurt anybody, but because of my humanness, and my weakness, and my sinfulness, it happens that way, and I would be out of the ministry long ago if every time I had ever done that in my life somebody had launched me into church discipline--and we would all be in that situation. 

So, the intent of what Peter is saying here, by the way, which is quoted from Proverbs 10:12, it's an Old Testament proverb, is that in the nature of life, as we go through life, we are going to be offended by people and you just can't "rack up" those offenses, until you become a very bitter and vengeful person.  But where you see in a person, and here is where I would draw the line, where you see in a person, not an offense against yourself, but where you see a pattern of unrepented offense towards God, you then begin to work to helping that person realize that this needs to be confronted and dwelt with.  I mean, if somebody is unkind to me and cruel to me, I might say to them, "You know, that's a sinful attitude you have toward me and I hope that you won't keep that attitude.  I certainly forgive you, but I hope you'll be more gracious in the future and you'll honor the Lord with the right attitude."  But I think, in my heart, that I would have instantly forgiven them.  But if I see a smoldering bitterness in an individual and sowing seeds of discord with that bitterness in the Church, that begins to affect the life of the Church, and looks like it is a pattern, then it becomes an issue if you don't deal with that, you will be going to the next step of discipline, and  if you don't deal with that, then you will be going to the next step. 

So I think the simple statement of what Peter is saying is: in the normal course of life we are filled with forgiveness, and that's exactly what I think Jesus meant in Matthew 18, when He said to Peter, "you are supposed to forgive seventy times seven," in other words, you just keep forgiving, and forgiving, and forgiving, and forgiving--490 times a day if that's how many times you are offended.  You can't just rack those things up and become a bitter and vengeful person.  But where it becomes a pattern that offends the Church, and offends the Lord, from which a person is not willing to turn, then it becomes a disciplinable issue.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
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