The cessation of the ban is only a celebration if it is centered on the life and love God offers to the people for free, without conditions. If we are proclaiming the cessation of the ban faithfully, the Pharisees of our day will be offended. How do we respond to the rage of the Pharisees? This is not something to be feared. It is rather something to be welcomed. The church can only be the conduit of God’s outrageous love if it stops being concerned about its reputation in the eyes of those who feast on a religious version of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The only reputation we need to be concerned with is to have the one Jesus had. He was known for his unprecedented love, by those who would receive it, and scorned for his irreligious attitudes, by those who would not. Jesus was not concerned about reputation. He did what he was called to do and left other matters in the hands of the Father. Jesus came to heal the sick, not to placate the religious sensibilities of those who thought they were healthy (Mark 2:17).

We have seen that the church is called to be the corporate body of Christ that unconditionally loves and embraces all people, regardless of their sin. To heal the sick, you have to love the sick. And this means you have to fellowship with the sick. Jesus loved with reckless abandon. The singular task of the church is to replicate this eternal, reckless love to the world. A church that celebrates the cessation of the ban effectively and loves as God loves has to be willing to have their reckless love scorned as compromising, relativistic, liberal, soft on doctrine, or antireligious.

What kind of church attracts and embraces prostitutes, drunkards, gays, and drug addicts? What kind of church routinely has smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and bums ushering during their services, hanging out in their small groups, singing in their choir, signing up for classes, volunteering for ministry, and so forth – without anyone immediately confronting their sin? What kind of church blurs the boundary between those who are “in” and those who are “out” to this degree? The answer is, I submit, is a Jesus kind of church.

To love like this, a community has to be freed from an obsession with its perimeter – its ability to know or decide who is “in” and who is “out.” It has to be okay with wheat and weeds growing alongside each other. It has to surrender to God any attempt to distinguish wheat from weeds (Matt.13:24-30).

Hurting and hungry people are to be drawn into the reality of God’s love by seeing it demonstrated in his body. To the extent that the church embodies the spirit of Jesus, it will be a magnet for prostitutes and tax collectors. To the extent it embodies the spirit of the Pharisees, however, it will repel them.

This of course raises the question of how a community that lives from the center rather than the perimeter can corporately grow in Christ-likeness. We shall discuss this in Chapter 12.

While all sin is equal in the sense that it separates us from God, sins differ in the terms of their impact on people and thus differ in how they need to be dealt with. When religious sin infects people, they feed off their judgment rather than love. For this reason, religious sin sabotages the whole enterprise of the church when it is found in leadership. If people aren’t being drawn to the Lord by the church’s love, this is the church’s fault.

Love doesn’t always take the form of warm and compassionate words. In exceptional circumstances, it involves confrontation and questioning. It is important for us to notice that religious sin is the only sin that Jesus confronted. Religious sin is the most destructive kind of sickness, for it masquerades as and feeds off the illusion of health. By its very nature it resists soft correction. People afflicted with religious sin thus tend to disdain compassionate love, even if it is extended toward them. If a person is in a severe state of blindness and hardness of heart, and especially if a person is in a leadership position is damaging others with his or her blindness and hardness, intervention may be necessary.

Whereas love usually requires we affirm worth by showing compassion toward people, in certain cases it requires aggressive confrontation toward people, in certain cases it requires aggressive confrontation. There are occasions when the destructive nature of a person’s unrepentant attitudes and behaviors requires removal from fellowship (1 Cor. 5:1-5, 2 Thes. 3:14-15), as we shall discuss in Chapter 12.

The church must always remember that it has no business confronting people outside the covenant community, even leaders of other religious groups who are leading people astray (1 Cor. 5:12). Whatever we make of Jesus’ precedent of publicly confronting destructive religious leaders, therefore, we mustn’t apply it to people in general or even religious leaders in general.

I don’t believe this means that believers should never publicly intervene and stop leaders who sabotage the mission and destroy the unity of the church. But it does mean that if and when we feel called to do so, we must do it with a humble awareness of our own fallibility, sinfulness, and ignorance. When considering confronting religious sin in leadership, therefore, we must always err on the side of mercy.

If the church is to be the outrageously loving community God calls it to be, however; how can it also grow in becoming the holy community God calls it to be? If all are welcome as they are, how can they ever be motivated to become other than they are? To address this, we proceed to Chapter 12.

Boyd, Gregory A. Repenting of Religion – Turning from Judgment to the Love of God. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2004.

Now, a thought provoking consideration from history.

Loving Your Victim and Enemy Neighbors

https://wng.org/opinions/loving-your-victim-and-enemy-neighbors-1732276365