\n\t\t\t\t\t\tDownload Audio\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\tby Jeffrey W. Hamilton<\/p>\n\t
Text: Colossians 3:1-11<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I. When people blended the church and the state, the ramifications are broad<\/p>\n A. The belief was that society cannot hold together without everyone being bound\ntogether by a common religion\n B. When it is expected that everyone living in a nation belongs to the church, what\nhappens to the call for no longer living in sin? – Matthew 3:8\n
1. After all, people are entering the church without repentance!<\/p>\n
C. Seek the things above – Colossians 3:1-2<\/p>\n D. If all in a locality are considered in the church, then the world is no longer\nsurrounding the church but is within it!\n
II. In the early days, after Constantine made Christianity the state religion<\/p>\n
A. Salvation was no longer a result of belief – Romans 10:17<\/p>\n 1. You were expected to be members simply by being born in a land. Thus,\nJeremiah 31:33-34 was lost.\n B. It meant that those rising to leadership and clergy roles were no longer tested in\nregards to their faith.\n
C. Instead, salvation was supposedly granted based on keeping rituals (sacraments)<\/p>\n D. Donatists objected to the blending of the church and state and a significant part of\nthe objection was because it caused a watering down of righteousness.\n E. Augustine tried to argue that you can’t judge the whole by the behavior of some.\n“The unity of the church dispersed through the whole world must on no account\nbe forsaken because of other men’s sins.” \n 1. It sounds good if we were talking about one or two. But the problem was a\ngeneral decline of morality throughout the church and particularly seen in\nits leadership.\n 2. Augustine is arguing that because they have a few good men, you can’t\njudge the church by the bad.\n
III. In the Middle Ages<\/p>\n A. “Ralph of Coggeshal, a notorious inquisitor, himself relates the story of a virtuous\nyoung woman suspected of heresy because she resisted the amorous advances of a\npriest and who was also burned as a heretic (cf. Coulton, Inquisition and Liberty<\/i>,\np. 35ff.). This inquisitor tells the story with the understanding that his readers will\nside with the priest rather than with the girl! That such situations were by no\nmeans unusual is apparent from the writings of Peter the Precentor, who speaks of\n‘certain honest matrons, refusing to consent to the lasciviousness of the priests …\nwho have by such priests been written into the book of death, and accused as\nheretics and even condemned.’” [Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and Their\nStepchildren<\/i>, The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1964, p.96-97]\n
IV. In the Reformation<\/p>\n A. In their rejection of the ritualism of the Catholic Church, the reformers went to an\nextreme of claiming it was all faith without works.\n 1. When people objected that you cannot claim to be Christians unless you\nlive a Christian life, the response was that they were trying to impose\nperfectionism. \n 2. The problem, in their view, was that you can’t have a cohesive society\nwith everyone belonging to the church if you tossed out those in sin.\n 3. Calvin said, “We must think so highly of the Word and the Sacraments\nthat wherever we see them we are to conclude without a doubt that the\nChurch is there, regardless of how much vice and evil there may be in the\ncorporate life of men.” \n B. “Like the Donatists of long ago, they seek to rend the Church because we allow\nevil men in the Church. They seek to assemble a pure Church and wherever that is\nundertaken the public order is sure to be overthrown, for a pure church is not\npossible, as Christ cautioned often enough – we must therefore put up with them.”\n[Justus Menius, associate of Martin Luther, via Schmidt, Justus Menius<\/i>, v. I, p.\n165].\n C. What was being ignored is that there is a difference between those living in sin\nand Christians who occasionally give into sin.\n
1. Yes, everyone sins at times – I John 1:8-10<\/p>\n
2. However, we are not to wallow in sin – Romans 6:1-2<\/p>\n D. “While we were still in the national church, we obtained much instruction from\nthe writings of Luther, Zwingli, and others … Yet we were aware of a great lack in\nregard to repentance, conversion, and the true Christian life. It was on these things\nthat my heart was set. I waited and hoped for a year or two, since the minister had\nmuch to say about amendment of life … But I could not close my eyes to the fact\nthat the doctrine which was preached … was not carried out; no beginning was\nmade toward true Christian conduct … true repentance and Christian love were not\nin evidence.” [cited by Leonard Verduin, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren<\/i>,\nThe Baptist Standard Bearer, 1964, p. 106].\n E. Martin Bucer complained, “The magistrates are rather coarse and carnal men and\nthe preachers are very neglectful; many of them frequently get drunk. Since the\nlords and the council-men are that kind of people … they drive the poor people\naway with their wild way of life. The plain man cannot bring himself to recognize\nthe Church of Christ among such wild persons, and to distinguish correctly\nbetween doctrine and life.”\n F. One man complained, “One does not find among the Turks and the Tartars such\ngodless conduct as one sees in those so taught … And if one rebukes such\nbehavior, he is dubbed a heaven-stormer, a Shwarmer, a work-saint, or an\nAnabaptist.” \n G. It was so bad that if anyone lived a good life, he was accused of being an\nAnabaptist\n 1. “Because their children are being so carefully and devoutly reared and\nbecause they do not have the practice of cursing and swearing, therefore\nthey are suspected of being Anabaptists.”\n 2. “He is not commonly by the rank and file thought to be an Anabaptist\nbecause he is a churlish fellow who can’t get along with others, starts\nfights and discord, swears and curses, disturbs the peace and carries\nweapons on his person.”\n 3. Preachers in the Reformed Church admitted: “The Anabaptists have the\nsemblance of outward piety to a far greater degree than we and all the\nother churches which in union with us confess Christ; and they avoid the\noffensive sins that are very common among us.” [William Joseph\nMcGlothlin, Die Berner Taufer bis 1532<\/i>, Berlin, 1902, p. 36]\n 4. To avoid their own shortcomings, those in the state churches charged the\nAnabaptists with being hypocrites. “Those who unite with them will by\ntheir ministers be received into their church by rebaptism and repentance\nand newness of life. They henceforth lead their lives under a semblance of\nquiet spiritual conduct. They denounce covetousness, pride, profanity, the\nlewd conversation, and immorality of the world, the drinking and the\ngluttony. In fine, their hypocrisy is great and manifold.” [Henry Bullinger,\nDet Widertaufferen Ursprung<\/i>]\n H. One way of dealing with the problem is to claim that there was a church of true\nbelievers within the church of all within a community\n 1. Terms were coined: The “visible” church referred to the all in a\ncommunity church while the “invisible” church were those who are\nactually faithful\n 2. “When men talk about the marks of the Christian Church, the\ncharacteristics by which men may find it, so as to be joined to it, then we\ncall the Church that mass among which the Word of God is purely\npreached and the Sacraments are administered according to the institution\nof Christ. Where these two marks are in evidence there we are not to\nquestion it but that God has most certainly, among this unwieldy mass of\ncalled ones, His own little group of true believers, let them be few or many\n… Christ has taught in parables how it stands with Christ’s Church on\nearth: ‘The kingdom of God is like a man who sowed good seed on his\nfield but …’”\n 3. This view is still taught among the Reformed Churches, even though it\nisn’t based on the Scriptures.\nV. Somehow, the supporters of state churches had to explain why they allowed sinners in\ntheir midst\n A. After all, if the church is made up of all people in an area, then not all are truly\ngoing to be converted to Christianity\n B. One justification was to cite Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares – Matthew\n13:24-30\n 1. Martin Luther said, “From the beginning of the church heretics have\nmaintained that the church must be holy and without sin. Because they saw\nthat some in the church were the servants of sin, they organized sects …\nAll these cry out in angry chorus that the true church is not the church\nbecause they see that sinners and godless folk are mixed in her and they\nhave separated from her … It is the part of wisdom not to be offended at it\nwhen evil men go in and out of the church … The greatest comfort of all is\nthe knowledge that they do no harm but that we must allow the tares to be\nmixed in … The Schwarmer, who do not allow tares among them, really\nbring about that there is no wheat among themselves – by this zeal for only\nwheat and a pure church, they bring about, by this too great holiness, that\nthey are not even a church but just a sect of the devil.” [Martin Luther,\nWerke<\/i>, Vol. VII, p. 200].\n 2. Calvin said that in the field (the church), “the good grain is so mixed with\nthe evil that frequently you can’t see it at all.” [Institutes<\/i>, IV, 1:2].\n 3. What Luther and others overlooked is that the field in the parable is not the\nchurch. It is the world<\/i>! – Matthew 13:37-38\n a. Christians live in a world filled with evil people, but this does not\nmean evil is to be tolerated within the church – I Corinthians 5:9-13\n
C. The parable of the dragnet was used in a similar way – Matthew 13:47-50<\/p>\n 1. Urbanus Rhegius, an associate of Martin Luther, tried to use Augustine’s\napproach to say that as long as there are some good people, then you have\nto ignore the bad. “Aha, there Bernhard resorts to a genuinely Donatist\ntrick. They condemned and abandoned Christendom on account of some\nevil and false Christians … Nevertheless there have always been some true\nand devout Christians in the masses, and we hope they are present also\nwith us … does not concern us; we haven’t told them to drink and\ngourmandize, to be immoral or covetous … We don’t want to rend the net\nbecause there are some bad fish in it, as the super-saintly Anabaptist\nBernhard is doing. He gives himself away at this point and shows that he\nhas the Anabaptist devil in him which blinded also the Donatists in Africa.\nThey also opened their eyes wide and saw with a hypocritical face that\nmany wicked people were wearing the name of Christ, folk who were in\nreality genuine heathen; and they proceeded to go off by themselves, apart\nfrom Christendom, and made off that they wanted to build up a truly\nreformed Church, one in which there were nothing but saints. And they\nwere so pure in their own eyes that they declared the baptism performed in\nChristendom by evil priests to be no baptism, and baptized anew. By this\nmethod, they thought to raise up genuine holiness. They scolded Augustine\nfor abiding in the gathering of the wicked – to which Augustine replied\nthat there were indeed evil people in his fellowship … and saying that\nexternal fellowship of good with evil does not harm the former’s salvation,\nseeing that they don’t approve of the latter’s evil and godless way of\nexisting. We are not to cause a separation; he who separates from the\nChurch becomes a heretic and a schismatic. Let Bernhard consider himself\ntold off – for he is a neo-Donatist who has taken offence at the evil lives\nand has … tried to raise up a holy and unspotted Church, one in which\nthere are only saints, a pure net without a foul fish, he and his company,\ncut loose from Christendom … I would forsooth prefer to be a coarse\npublican in the Christian Church, or a patent sinner, rather than be the\nmost holy Pharisee of all in Bishop Bernhard’s spleunk.” [Widderlegung\nder Munsterischen newen Valentianer un Donatisten<\/i>, 1535]\n
2. I recall what God charged the Israelites of doing – Ezekiel 22:26<\/p>\n 3. Again, through Paul, God told Christians the same thing – II Corinthians\n6:14-7:1\n
4. Yet, these people make striving for holiness a crime – I Peter 1:14-16<\/p>\n
5. Are there bad people in the church? Yes, some enter in.<\/p>\n 6. Does that mean most of the church is bad? It should not be this way – I\nCorinthians 5:6\n 7. What is happening is the assumption that entire sea is in the net. It is\noverlooked that the net separates from the majority of the sea.\n
D. Another verse cited was II Corinthians 11:13-15<\/p>\n 1. Henry Bullinger claimed that those leaving for non-State Churches are\nhypocrites for “even Satan can transform himself into an angel of light …\nhe who wishes to catch fish does not throw out an unbaited hook.” He\nagreed that they were “people of devout and blameless lives … But this is\nan old trick of the devil, with which he has in all churches, from the days\nof the Apostle Paul, sought to catch his fish.”\n 2. Living godly lives was labeled a ploy to draw people away from the State\nChurches. It reminds me of Isaiah’s warning – Isaiah 5:20-23\n 3. Living righteously wasn’t what Paul was warning against. He warned that\nyou couldn’t always tell a false teach just by his correct application of\nChristian living.\nVI. The church invites people to enter, but we are not omniscient. People will enter who are\nnot truly converted. People will enter but return to the ways of the world.\n
A. This is what the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 is truly about<\/p>\n B. There are going to be times when sinners have to be dismissed from the church,\nsuch as Matthew 18:17 or I Corinthians 5:4-7,11\n
C. How is that done if the whole community is the church?<\/p>\n
1. Exile?<\/p>\n 2. This is why so many of these state churches issued death sentences for\nthose they disapproved of. But ironically, they allowed sinners to remain.\nThey only went after those who said the whole system was wrong, which\nthey labeled “heresy.”\n D. Thomas Aquinas, a Roman Catholic, said that those guilty of heresy deserve “not\nonly to be separated from the Church by excommunication but also barred from\nthe world by death.” [Summa<\/i>, II, 2, Q. 11, Art. 3].\n E. “Our view of the Church of God is diverse from that of ‘the men;’ they exclude\nthe office of the magistrate from the Church and they refuse to ascribe to the civil\npower any punitive function in the Church of God. But we, in keeping with the\nWord of God, include the office of the magistracy in the Church of God. For this\nreason, they say that in the Church punishment over and above that of\nexcommunication shall not and may not be employed. To the question whether a\nminister and a Church are bound by the Word of God to admonish the civil\ngovernment to pursue the heretic and put him to death, we say ‘yes,’ but they say\n‘no.’” [Embder Protocol<\/i>, fol. 300 verso.]\n
VII. Becoming a Christian requires dying to the world and its sins<\/p>\n
A. Romans 6:1-7 – Baptism represents a death, burial, and resurrection<\/p>\n
B. This is why Peter said to the Jews to repent and be baptized.<\/p>\n
C. You have to die before you are buried. <\/p>\n
D. Have you died to world? Are you ready to put on Christ and have a new life?<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChurch and State\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Download Audio by Jeffrey W. Hamilton Text: Colossians 3:1-11 I. When people blended the church and the state, the ramifications are broad A. The belief was that society cannot hold together without everyone being bound together by a common religion B. When it is expected that everyone living in a nation belongs to the church, what happens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[119,32],"tags":[448,310,609],"class_list":["post-69261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-sermon","tag-church","tag-government","tag-worldliness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":68815,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/church-and-state\/","url_meta":{"origin":69261,"position":0},"title":"Church and State","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 14, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jeffrey W. Hamilton The Problem Enforcement of Religion Worldliness Rituals","rel":"","context":"In "Audio"","block_context":{"text":"Audio","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/audio\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":55535,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/church-kitchens-and-fellowship-halls\/","url_meta":{"origin":69261,"position":1},"title":"Church Kitchens and Fellowship Halls","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by David Riggs Church buildings with kitchens and fellowship halls are quite common today because the social gospel has gained acceptance in the minds of many. In fact, more and more churches of Christ are running headlong in that direction with complete apostasy being the only outcome. Unauthorized There is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":30327,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/origins-of-denominations\/","url_meta":{"origin":69261,"position":2},"title":"Origins of Denominations","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 12, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jeffrey W. Hamilton Over the years, I've done lessons that look at various issues that caused the rise of the various denominations that we see today. Rather than leaving them scattered, I'm gathering them up on a single page so that they will be more easily found. Where Did\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Audio"","block_context":{"text":"Audio","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/audio\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":86168,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/everyone-in-the-church-is-important\/","url_meta":{"origin":69261,"position":3},"title":"Everyone in the Church Is Important","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 30, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Warfel","rel":"","context":"In "Audio"","block_context":{"text":"Audio","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/audio\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":18079,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/given-the-state-of-the-church-today-of-course-christians-are-not-required-to-attend-services\/","url_meta":{"origin":69261,"position":4},"title":"Given the state of the church today, of course, Christians are not required to attend services","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"March 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: What you are saying about Christians who are not going to church are not saved is utter rubbish. It's all one-sided. I Kings 18:21 tells us not to limp between two opinions. Amos 3:3 says how can two walk together except they be agreed. 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