Quote:
Originally Posted by aron
Jesus is saying, "Once two or three of you are agreed that this person is opposed to My heavenly teachings and ways, then it is established."
The establishment is clearly from the harmony of two or three in His name. ... Yet the LSM dismisses the two or three by saying, "They are not the church".
The more I look at it, the more I see a serious disconnect here.
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On the other hand, one cannot simply say that "two or three" is some kind of ironclad, one-size-fits-all formula for God's building work. We have the case in Acts 5 of Ananias and Sapphira, of whom Peter says in verse 9 that they "have agreed and conspired together to try to deceive the Spirit of the Lord" (AMP).
Or we might have two or three in Toronto or Mansfield who want to affiliate themselves with the ministry of TC, and a different two or three agree in the same city to affiliate themselves with the ministry of the BBs. What if you have one group agreeing to disagree with another group? How does one "tell it to the church"?
So my focus the two or three does not lead to some magical formula. But Jesus clearly
is going from a particular to a universal in the case of the unrepentant sinner in Matthew 18, and he is not stressing the effectiveness of "the church" in carrying out God's will, but rather the two or three.