Church Discipline

The subject of church discipline is often a tricky one and people try to keep away from addressing it. But thankfully the Bible does address it because discipline is inevitable in any area of life. Ask people in the working place and they’ll tell you that they have had to exert discipline in one way or the other. Ask individuals who are raising families exactly the same thing. They would tell you that they’ve had to exert discipline in one form or the other. The Church is no exception. It is here on earth.

Common Mistakes Churches Make

What I find often are three mistakes that churches make. In one case with respect to discipline, they seem to have a list of sins, particular sins that if you commit those sins, you must be disciplined. Other areas you commit sins, you seem to get away with it. That’s not the biblical position. Another error is that of only targeting individuals who offend church leaders. Those are the ones who get disciplined. Everyone else, the leaders tend to turn a blind eye. Again, that’s not the way discipline is to be meted out.

The Bible urges leaders not to show favoritism. But the third error, and I think it’s the most common, is that of the lack of discipline all together. The thinking of a lot of people is that to exert or exercise discipline is to be unloving. So if you love, you must not be a church that is exerting or exercising discipline. Surely that’s not the case because all you need to do is to read your Bible and you’ll discover both in the Old Testament, and especially in the Church in the New Testament, that discipline was part of the way in which the Church of the New Testament was administered.

Types of Discipline in the Church

Very well then, we need to ask ourselves the question, what should we do with respect to this subject? It seems to me that one reason why people are afraid of dealing with the subject of leadership is because they always think in terms of corrective discipline. There’s another form of discipline and it is that of formative discipline and it refers to having good order in the context of the Church. We see that for instance in 1 Corinthians 14:40, “But all things should be done decently and in order.” That’s the Apostle Paul expressing concern with respect to the use of gifts in the context of the Church which he begins to deal with in 1 Corinthians 12. He deals with it in I Corinthians 13 and he wraps it up at the end of 1 Corinthians 14 with those same words that the things should be done decently and in order. That’s a form of discipline that we must not lose sight of because it enables institutions to run properly.

So for instance, if you went to a home, you visited them and then you came back to your own home and you said, “Wow, those children are disciplined.” You are not suggesting that while you were there, they were being spunked throughout the time. It is the fact that they seem to have known what to do and when to do it. It’s also the fact that they seem to have been respectful towards leaders and visitors in the context of the home. It’s also the fact that they were participating in household chores, each one as though they were an army – a wellordered army. So you come home saying, “Wow, I wish it was the same here.” Because you also want to have a a well ordered home. Well, that’s the first form of discipline. You are to disciple believers so that they know how to live as Christians, how to relate to one another, how to use their gifts, their time and so forth in the context of the Church. And if everybody is serving in the right way, you have a well-ordered church.

But then we come to the area that is less popular and it is that of restorative discipline, corrective discipline. And we find that especially in Matthew 18:15, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” And then the second, Matthew 18:16, “But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” And then there is the third level. Matthew 18:17, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I said to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Lessons from Matthew 18

A few quick lessons that we learn from that passage of scripture. First of all, it is the fact that church discipline must begin at a personal level. In other words, the person who is aware that somebody is committing a sin, it might be against them. It might be something they’ve simply observed, they should take it upon themselves to confront that person lovingly so that if that person repents of their sin, the matter ends there. You have salvaged a brother or a sister. But let’s suppose that person stubbornly continues.

Again, what you do is you move into the second stage. Bring one or two brethren along so that it is still semi-private. You try to help that brother or sister to amend his or her ways. If again the person is stubborn, they continue in their sinful ways, then you bring it to the church. And by that, the Bible is not saying you announce it to everybody in a church service. Of course not. You bring it to the church’s leadership. And what is going to happen there is that the people that were called in to try and help now become witnesses. They help to assertain the stubbornness that is taking place in this person’s life and the leadership of the church perhaps together with one or two other people may want to try and help the person. If the person continues in their sin, whatever that sin is. In other words, we shouldn’t have a little list of sins. It is whatever is stubborn sin, then the church’s leadership are to act by way of excommunication. In other words, removing this person from the church’s membership.

Now, somewhere along the way, they may have used public or private rebuke. In other words, confronting the person now as church leaders, saying to that person in no uncertain terms that if they continue in those ways, they will be removed from the church’s membership. So that is something that is authoritative, something that the leaders of the church can carry out. But if the person continues as I’ve said, then excommunication – out of fellowship, that’s an act that needs to be done so that God’s glory is maintained, that the church remains healthy because it is still pursuing godliness. Again, as I began, sadly we tend to be very selective as to who will be disciplined in that way. We mustn’t be because ultimately the church is not ours. It belongs to Christ.

Conclusion: Be Holy or Be Out

So the church’s message must be very clear – ‘be holy or be out’ because holiness is not something that the church can afford to compromise in. The reason is quite simple because God himself is holy. If we do not clarify this matter through the discipline of the Church, the Lord himself will come against the Church. Pity the church that is now directly under the discipline of God.