Treatise Concerning Religious Affections

On Thursday evening we concluded the Mt. Kenya Baptist Bible College week.  The discussions "Church Discipline" class were very intense and needful.  Thank God for this resource that is available to Pastors and Church workers in enabling them help the Church of Christ provide consistency in an inconsistent world!

In the Eighth Mark - A Concern for Discipleship & Growth Mark Dever quotes Jonathan Edwards in his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections.  Jonathan Edwards suggested that true growth in Christian discipleship is not finally mere excitement, increasing use of religious language, or a growing knowledge of Scripture.  it is not even an evident increase in joy or in love or concern for the Church.  Even increases in zeal and praise to God and confidence of one's own faith are not infallible evidences of true Christian growth.  What, then, is evidence of true Christian growth? According to Edwards, while all these things may be evidences of true Christian growth, the only certain observable sign of such growth is a life of increasing holiness, rooted in Christian self-denial. The church should be marked by a vital concern for this kind of increasing  godliness in the lives of its members.

Good Influences in a covenanted community of believers can be tools in God's hand for growing His people.  As God's people are built up and grow together in holiness and self-giving love, they should improve their ability to administer discipline and to encourage discipleship. The church has an obligation to be a means of God's growing people in grace. If instead our churches are places where only the pastor's thoughts are taught, where God is questioned more than He is worshipped, where the Gospel is diluted and evangelism perverted, where church membership is made meaningless, and a worldly cult of personality is allowed to grow around the pastor, then one can hardly expect to find a community that is either cohesive or edifying.  Such a Church will certainly not glorify God.

Peter's final benediction to the early Christians was a prayer couched in the imperative: "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen." 2 Peter 3:18 

Pst Onesmus Kibera

Mt. Kenya Baptist Church

PO Box 483, Nanyuki, 10400

Kenya

+254733600213, +254724626720

www.okibera.blogspot.com