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Saturday, August 4, 2018

The Blessing Of Excommunication

When a car has a flat tire, you must first lift the weight of the car off the tire before you can replace it.

Many people don't understand the purpose that excommunication serves.  The name itself carries the connotation of expelling someone from a society.  That is simply not the case in our church.  It is actually a valuable part of the process of repentance used only in cases of the most serious sin.

Excommunication serves the same purpose as taking the weight off a tire; relieving the sinner temporarily of the weight of the covenants they have made to help them to make the difficult but necessary changes in their life.  Temporary is the keyword.  It only works if the person is repentant.  Just like leaving a flat tire on a car will permanently immobilize it; but temporarily relieving the weight on the tire allows it to be changed.

Repentance in the Church of Jesus Christ is not just a confession of wrongdoing.  It is a change in behavior.  That is true with minor sins as much as it is true of serious sin.  But in the case of serious sin, it may take time to break from the addition of bad habits that have developed.  In such a case, excommunication may be used as a tool to assist the sinner temporarily while those habits are broken.

We are a covenant people.  Those covenants carry with them great responsibility; otherwise, it wouldn't be a covenant.  Sins committed by a person under covenant are greatly magnified because he/she is held to a higher standard.  That is why two people who commit the same sin may be treated differently if one of them has been endowed and the other hasn't.  Similarly, getting a flat tire while sitting in the driveway is very different than blowing a tire while in a loaded truck going 70 miles an hour on the highway.

Excommunication is not something to strive for any more than a person would strive for a flat tire on the freeway.  But if a car does have a flat tire, you have to pull over and get out.  Similarly, a decision to excommunicate a person is an act of love to relieve the pressure on the sinner and help get that person get back on the road.

In cases where the person is defiant and has no intention to repent, excommunication can become the final chapter in their spiritual journey; but only because they walked away from the car rather than fix the tire.  But no matter the sin, no matter the length of time, the door stands open to receive that person back into full membership, if they repent.

Luke 15:18
I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son...But when he was a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.