Understanding Church Discipline

Jonathan Leeman

• Publisher: B&H Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781433688911
• eBook ISBN:
  9781433689048
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Should we actually practice church discipline today? Is it unloving?

Once an ordinary part of church life, churches gradually stopped practicing church discipline in the 20th century. But Jesus commands it. Paul practiced it. And churches benefit from it. Why practice church discipline? It shows love for the individual caught in sin, love for the whole church, love for non-Christian neighbors, and love for the glory of Christ.

Chapter 1

You Have a Job to Do

If you have children, you have probably felt that leaden thud in the gut—“ugh”—when you realize it’s time to discipline one of your kids. Right up until that moment, you have done everything you could to give her a way out of trouble (I only have daughters). You let her explain any extenuating circumstances. You have second-guessed whether your instructions were clear. But now the facts overtake you like a foul stench: she is guilty. Your precious, heart-enrapturing little Cinderella flagrantly disobeyed you. Or lied. Or nailed her sister in the face. And now love requires you to discipline her. Ugh.

For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, just as a father, the son he delights in. (Prov. 3:12)

The one who will not use the rod hates his son, but the one who loves him disciplines him diligently. (Prov. 13:24)

Discipline your children, for in that there is hope; do not be a willing party to their death. (Prov. 19:18 niv)

Striking verses, no? Failing to discipline our children is hating them. It is forsaking hope for them. It is being a willing party to their death.

Love disciplines.

Tragically, turn on the news and there is a decent chance you will hear a story about a horribly abusive parent. And such stories can cause us to back away from the idea of discipline. Would that Jesus return and end such abuses! Yet in the meantime we know we cannot throw out the baby with the bathwater. It remains our job as parents to discipline. We do it for love and life.

For a command is a lamp, teaching is a light, and corrective discipline is the way to life. (Prov. 6:23)

You Have a Job to Do

Just as it is a parent’s job to discipline his or her children, so it is your job, Christian, to participate in the discipline of your church. Did you know that? This is as basic to being a Christian and a church member as it is for a parent to discipline a child. It is part and parcel of following Jesus. Listen to how Jesus puts it:

“If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he won’t listen, take one or two more with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses every fact may be established. If he pays no attention to them, tell the church. But if he doesn’t pay attention even to the church, let him be like an unbeliever and a tax collector to you.” (Matt. 18:15–17)

To whom is Jesus talking in this passage? He is talking to you, assuming you are a Christian and a church member. Jesus, the one with all authority in heaven and earth, is tasking you with this job. This is your job description. It’s not just for the pastors or elders. It’s not just for the old Christians or mature Christians. This is a job for you.

“The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, but the kisses of an enemy are excessive.” (Prov. 27:6)

If a brother sins against you, you are tasked with addressing him. This is what it means to be a true friend.

“Without guidance, people fall, but with many counselors there is deliverance.” (Prov. 11:14)

If your friend listens, praise God. Your job is done. If he does not listen, then it’s your job to bring a few others. Other eyes and ears help to make sure you are seeing straight. If you all agree, and if your friend remains stuck in his sin, then you may need to bring the matter to the whole church (with the help of the elders). And if he does not listen to the church, then you are to treat him like an unbeliever who no longer belongs to the church.

Speaking of this last step, who is the “you” in the concluding command, “let him be like an unbeliever and a tax collector to you”? Is it a plural you, as if to say, “treat him like an unbeliever y’all”?

If we had super-powered Greek-reading glasses on, we could see that behind the English word “you” is a singular Greek “you.” It means: you. You are to treat as a non-Christian this fellow church member who doesn’t repent. So is every other “you” in your church. You become personally and corporately responsible for this work of exclusion. Just as it is your job to confront, so it is your job to participate in the corporate exclusion.

Some churches involve only the pastors in these last couple of steps. The elders or pastors are said to stand-in for the church. So “tell it to the church” is interpreted as “tell it to the elders.” Of course, that’s not what the text says. That’s not how the first readers would have understood the word church there. And it interrupts the ascending numeric trajectory of the text: from one, to two or three, to the whole assembly. Clearly, Jesus treats the gathered church as the final court of appeal in matters of discipline.

No doubt, this passage requires a few asterisks and some fine print. We will come to those later. The simple point now is, you have a job to do. It is to participate in the discipline of the church.

This may be hard to hear. Maybe Matthew 18 elicits an “ugh” of its own. Doesn’t Jesus tell us elsewhere not “to judge”? Indeed, he does in Matthew 7. But whatever Jesus means in Matthew 7, he does not mean to hinder you from this job assignment given a few chapters later.

Notice that Paul, too, calls us to rescue our fellow church members from sin:

Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you also won’t be tempted. Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Gal. 6:1–2)

By “spiritual,” Paul doesn’t mean mature. He means walking by the fruits of the Spirit as opposed to the fruits of the flesh (5:16–26). He is talking to everyone who would presume to be a fruit-bearing Christian and church member. If anyone is caught in sin, you who intend to walk by the Spirit should work to restore this person. This is one way to carry a person’s burdens and to fulfill the law of Christ. It is acting like a Christian. The flip-side is obvious: refusing to confront brothers and sisters in their sin is to forsake the law of Christ. It’s to wander off Christ’s path.

What Is Church Discipline?

What is church discipline? The broad answer is to say it is correcting sin in the church. Notice how the book of Proverbs, speaking about the idea of discipline broadly, places discipline and correction in parallel:

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge,

but one who hates correction is stupid. (Prov. 12:1, italics added)

To discipline is to correct, to rebuke, to warn. Such correction can occur privately and informally, as when a friend at church remarked how selfish I could be. That was a small act of discipline. Hopefully I learned from it. But once in a while such correction becomes formal and public. This involves telling the church and—if a person still does not repent after the church is told—removing him or her from membership. This very last step of removal is sometimes called “excommunication.”

Roman Catholicism has used the word excommunication to describe the process of removing people from church membership and salvation—as if the church could deny salvation. Among Protestants, excommunication simply means removing members from membership in the local church and the Lord’s Table (a person is ex-communioned). It is not saying the person is assuredly a non-Christian. We don’t have Holy Spirit-eyes to see souls, after all. Rather, it is a church’s way of saying, “We can no longer lend our corporate kingdom name and credibility to affirming that this individual is a Christian. Instead, we will treat this person as a non-Christian.”

In this book I will use both the words discipline ...

Table of contents

• Church Basics Series Preface
• 1. You Have a Job to Do
• 2. Getting Ready for Work
• 3. Your Place of Work
• 4. A Description of Your Work—Part 1
• 5. A Description of Your Work—Part 2
• 6. Working with Others
• 7. Abuses of the Work
• Conclusion: Gospel Courage and Fear of Man