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These two extremes have a parallel in the affairs of the Christian communities during the
Acts period:
"Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye
withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the
tradition which he received of us" (II Thess. 3: 6).
"I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a
fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or an extortioner; with such an one no
not to eat" (I Cor. 5: 11).
The object of this break of fellowship with disorderly believers, was that they might
be "ashamed" and come to repentance, but they were not to be counted as "enemies"
(II Thess. 3: 14, 15).
The more serious offences, dealt with only by the Apostles themselves led to
"the destruction of the flesh" (I Cor. 5: 5), and were probably the "sin unto death" of
I John 5: 16, seen in the experience of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:), and suggested in
I Cor. 11: 29-31.
Excommunication from the synagogue was the experience of the blind man
(John 9: 34). It was a constant deterrent to confessing faith in Christ (John 12: 42), and
was to be the lot of the disciples of the Lord before His return to the earth (John 16: 2).
No.10. Relationship of Christ's Coming
and the Acts Church to Judaism.
pp. 29 - 33
The Lord Jesus Christ came unto His own. He came not to overthrow, but to fulfil.
His ministry assumed a continuance of the Jewish institutions of the day, but reformed to
His standard of righteousness. The Law was given a new, deeper, inner meaning, which
touched not simply the outward man (Thou shalt do no murder), but the inner also (Thou
shalt not hate). His formula was, "Ye have heard . . . . . but I say unto you".
The disciples of Christ, who formed the Acts church, were not the first-fruits of some
new, predominately Gentile church, whose sway was to be largely exercised in Europe
and the Americas, but a nucleus, centred in Jerusalem, from whence the good news of the
"kingdom of the heavens" was to be carried into all the earth. And so, at the return of
Christ (looked upon then as being imminent), would the earth be governed from
Jerusalem through the redeemed nation of Israel, who would stand to the other nations as
priests of God, and carry "the knowledge of the Lord" to the ends of the earth. The great
hope before these disciples was the restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1: 6), with
all that implied.