Sinners and the Church

A good post at Intellectuelle about how the Church should deal with unrepentant sinners:

...Nigerian Anglican Bishop Peter Akinola, speaking on the separation occurring within the Episcopal Church:

The point here is not of separating from sinners . . . but objecting strongly to yielding to the . . . worldly spirit of a materialistic, secularist and self-centered age, which seeks to mould everyone into its own tainted image.

Our argument is that if homosexuals see themselves as deviants who have gone astray, the Christian spirit would plead for patience and prayers to make room for their repentance. When Scripture says something is wrong and some people say that it is right, such people make God a liar.

This upholding of orthodoxy, as Chuck Colson refers to it, applies to every sin imaginable, not just homosexuality or other outward sin. Anyone who would mold themselves or try to mold others to an image other than that of the repentant person redeemed in Christ, as explicated in the Bible, is a deviant. Ouch. Yet such a person cannot be merely "written off"; with patience and prayers may we make room for their repentance. To write a person off is to assume the role of judge.

However, to accept a person into church fellowship without addressing their sin is to compromise the message of salvation, as it is to allow the unrepentant person into church fellowship. I know this goes against the grain of a lot of church practice, but I think the key word here is unrepentant. ...[more]

Source: Intellectuelle: Sinners, separation, and the church