Lax Standards Create Profane Churches

There are two extremes of error in regard to maintaining the purity of the visible church. At one extreme is the error of being so zealous for extirpating hypocrites from the church, that one goes beyond the Scriptures and sets standards for maintaining fellowship with the church that are higher than God's standards, or becomes so rigid in applying scriptural standards for church discipline that he forgets the greater principles of mercy and longsuffering towards others, and does not make any allowances for the occasional weaknesses of men.

But the problem today among the so-called Bible-believing churches is that they are at the other extreme. Their standards for fellowship are so inclusive and principles of church discipline so lax, that they are virtually non-existent.

Consider, for example, the following quote which was found on the web site of a so-called Reformed church, and was followed by a somewhat detailed statement of faith. It's fair to say that these statements reflect the typical standards held by almost all of today's Evangelical churches:

“The following statement of faith is not intended to define our boundaries of fellowship. Some Christians will certainly differ with some of what is set forth here. Such Christians are nevertheless welcome to fellowship together with us. Our basis for fellowship is a biblical confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ, and the absence of a scandalous lifestyle.”

There are two problems with the statements above:

(1) They make meaningless the doctrinal statement which follows them (and it was a quite detailed creed, in this case), because they make agreement with the doctrines expressed in it an optional thing. While new converts to the faith, having little knowledge, cannot be required to do anything more than profess belief in basic gospel truths in order to join in fellowship, everyone in the church must eventually come to be of one mind on the doctrines of the faith. Fellowship without unity in the truth is not godly fellowship, and doctrinal standards which can be ignored are not really doctrinal standards.

(2) To say that a person has the absence of a scandalous lifestyle, is a far cry from saying that he has the presence of a godly lifestyle. True spiritual conversion will evidence itself in a way of life that is markedly different from the way of life of an unregenerate man. Regeneration always produces fruit and that fruit consists of such things as humility, gravity of spirit, a life of habitual self-denial, the repudiation of worldly ambitions and desires, and a diligence to conform one's life to all of God's commandments. There is no reason to believe that those who continue to blithely pursue their own pleasure and gain have really been born of God, and to live the typical American life of materialism, self-indulgence, and frivolous entertainment, is to live in a very ungodly way and habitually violate biblical precepts, though it be free from what many among today's Evangelicals would consider blatant wickedness.

Of course, the result of laxity in standards for fellowship is that any semblance of purity in the church is soon lost. When continuing communion with the church is open to anyone who makes a verbal profession of a few basic truths and abstains from "scandalous" sins (which is only a subjective and ever-changing standard), then only the most contemptible hypocrites can be removed from fellowship while many patently fruitless pseudo-Christians are tolerated and even encouraged. Since "evil communications corrupt good manners" (1 Cor. 15:33), the end result is that the greater part of the congregation quickly degenerates into a loose and licentious walk.

And that, I am sad to say, is the case today with the overwhelming majority of those organizations which call themselves evangelical and Christian.