When folk hear the phrase “church discipline” a whole host of things may come to mind. For many, they think of a formal process that is really designed to remove a person from a church as quickly as possible, with little regard for actual growth and maturation and repentance in the person being disciplined. At the other end of the spectrum is the non-process of discipline wherein an entire church disregards sin altogether with the attitude, “Who am I to judge?” From discipline being a harsh, unloving, rigid process to discipline being non-existent, we often wonder what is right. Surely it’s somewhere in between, right?
It seems to me that thinking of church discipline as a process is a misunderstanding of Scripture. Many point to Matthew 18 wherein Jesus himself gives instructions regarding church discipline.
“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. 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. 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 say 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.”
Matthew 18:15-20 ESV
What if Jesus isn’t really talking about a process but about a relationship? While there is an escalation that happens, Jesus is not saying, “Here are the four steps you must take to get rid of a person. First, tell him he’s a sinner. Second, have others join you in telling him he’s a sinner. Third, have the whole church tell him he’s a sinner. Fourth, kick him out of the church. By the way, I’m with you in this!” That’s not at all what he’s saying! At the very first step Jesus says if the person in sin listens to you, you have gained your brother! This is the whole point! This is the aim and the intended and desired outcome of discipline!
In these instructions he says clearly that if the worst should come about, namely, that a person must be removed from the church, the church is merely agreeing with what God has determined to be true. The verb tenses are very important. What a church binds on earth will have already been bound in heaven. To say this another way, when a church is led by the Holy Spirit to excommunicate a person, they are simply agreeing with what God has already determined to be true. Conversely, when the church looses on earth, that is, unbinds a person, whether through discipline or receiving as a member or baptizing a person, the church is declaring that God has already loosed that person. The church’s actions are subsequent to the Lord’s determination.
Jesus adds further authority to the church’s actions with the promise that when the church assembles in his name he is present in a unique and powerful way. This is what Paul was getting at when he told the church in Corinth they had to “bind” the man who refused to repent of his sexual immorality.
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 5:3-5 ESV
How is Paul present in spirit when the church in Corinth assembles in the name of Jesus? This is what it means that a local church is the catholic church—it is the church according to its whole. That’s what “catholic” means: according to the whole. Because Jesus is present in his fullness and not partially, and because Jesus never leaves nor forsakes his people, Paul is present spiritually in their gathered assembly, along with the “great cloud of witnesses” we read of in Hebrews 12, for Paul is ever with Jesus and if Jesus is also with the Corinthians, so is Paul.
We know Jesus was not intending to give us a four-step process that must be adhered to rigidly. Surely he was giving principles for church discipline and he was laying down the authority of a local church to exercise discipline, but his point was not, “Follow these steps.” Notice that Paul said the man to be delivered to Satan—removed from the spiritual protection of the church—is handed over “so that his spirit may be saved”. The aim was his salvation, not merely the removal of someone annoying or whose mess is too much to handle.
When churches tightly adhere to Matthew 18 as a mere process, this is usually what they are doing. This is why those in the church who observe it recognize how harsh and unloving it is. Jesus’ instructions are infused with love. Right before these instructions he told them they must leave the 99 sheep to find the lost one. The lost sheep is the one caught in sin. He doesn’t say, “Meh. You win some, you lose some. Stick with the easy sheep.” Love will pursue the lost sheep until it is clear that sheep cannot—or will not—be found.
Another way we know Jesus did not intend to give us a formula for discipline is Paul’s instruction to Titus.
As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned.
Titus 3:10-11 ESV
Where’s the process here? Where are the four steps Jesus mentioned? In this case the person who stirs up division is simply unteachable. Unteachable people short-circuit the entire thing. They won’t listen. Paul moves straight to asking such a person to leave the church. A person struggling with sin who is teachable ought to be given incredible patience and mercy. We leave the 99 and pursue the one. We give that person the time and the attention he or she needs. If that person is not teachable, however, we have nothing more to do with him. He is warped and sinful. He is self-condemned, Paul says, for he shows he is unwilling to listen to the Spirit, if the Spirit is even present and active in such a person.
What does all this mean for us as a church? The truth is we engage in church discipline all the time. In a real sense, every member of our church is “under discipline” for we are actively working to shape and mold each person into the image of Christ. It is because we so often think of church discipline as a process that this notion strikes us as odd.
When you say to a brother in Christ, “Hey, your response the other day seemed a bit harsh. How are you doing?”, you are engaging in church discipline. When a sister in Christ requests prayer for a particular struggle she’s experiencing and you later reach out to her to ask how she’s doing, you’re engaging in church discipline. That is, you are trying to help her become more like Jesus. This is what church discipline is! It is discipleship.
Think of the Great Commission Jesus gave to the apostles. He told them to go into all the world and make disciples, first by baptizing new believers and by “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”. He doesn’t say to make converts! So many replace discipleship with making converts, but that’s another article. When you exhort a fellow believer to pray or to commit to participating in the life of the church, you’re making a disciple—teaching that person to observe what Jesus has commanded. When you encourage a person to trust in the Lord in the midst of a particularly difficult season, whether financial strain or marital stress or a struggle with sin, you are teaching that person to observe what the Lord has commanded. You are discipling that person—disciplining that person.
Remember that there are two sides to discipline. First and most common is formative discipline. Like a mother teaching her child to brush his teeth, not because he’s done something wrong but because good oral hygiene is important, she is seeking to form him through discipline. She is forming him. When that same boy hits his sister and dad addresses this problem, this is corrective discipline. Bad behavior is being corrected. Though young parents might disagree, the reality is that formative discipline is much more common. We often do this through ordinary activities like telling our children to close the door or to turn off the light or to help with dishes. We are forming positive behavior in them. Sometimes children need corrective discipline. Too often we reduce church discipline to only corrective discipline, and this is to our loss.
Most corrective discipline in the church remains unknown to other members. There are times, for example, the elders meet with someone to help him or her see some blind spots. Sin is deceptive and we often cannot see our own sin. We tend to look on others with harsher judgment than we will look upon our own sin, and sometimes we simply can’t see it. This is where leaving the 99 to find the one is so important. It’s also extremely difficult because sin is so very deceptive.
Even God himself experiences the difficulty of helping another see his or her sin. Think back to the garden of Eden. When God confronted Adam over Adam’s sin, Adam doesn’t admit guilt. He doesn’t say, “Yep; I ate it! I straight-up rebelled against you.” Instead he says, “Who me? No! That woman you gave me? I was just doing what she told me to do. I don’t know if it was sin or not… I mean…I was just trying to be a good husband. Maybe she should try to be a better wife.“
Then God confronted his wife. He asks why she sinned against him. “Who? Me? What sin? Wait. Was that sin!? I didn’t know that was sin. The serpent deceived me! I wasn’t really sinning—the serpent was.”
The hardest task the elders have—and this does not fall exclusively to the council of elders! it’s your hardest task, too!—is trying to help people see their blindspots. When you try to help someone see sin in his or her life, so often that person will turn against you. This is not absolute, of course. Many will respond with gratitude—painful gratitude, but gratitude. God’s people should desire righteousness and should say with David, “Search me, O God! Show me if there is any wickedness in me!”, and if he uses his people to show me, so be it.
This is part of what it means to make disciples. We engage in discipline, both formative and corrective. Nobody wants to correct others. Nobody finds joy and delight in pointing out sin—well, nobody who is not actively sinning by finding joy and delight in it! It should grieve us when it is necessary to address the sin in a person’s life. It is painful. It can be incredibly more painful when the person being confronted begins accusing you instead. Few things in ministry hurt more than this. Few things can be as joyful as seeing one acknowledge shortcomings and seek to rectify them! This is always our aim. In the words of Jesus, when this happens, “you have gained your brother”! This is always the intended and sought-after outcome!
I was recently asked about New City’s “process” for church discipline. I’m not sure how to answer, as we don’t have a “process”. Again, in Matthew 18 Jesus wasn’t really laying out a process but describing an important aspect of the relationship between members of a church. “If your brother sins against you”, he says, indicating the relationship between the two of you. You go to that person alone. This implies a relationship already exists. It makes no sense to go to someone you either barely know or do not know altogether. What is our philosophy of ministry here at New City? “Discipleship happens in relationship.” There is no other way!
If your brother listens to you, that is, if he acknowledges his sin, you have gained your brother. Fellowship is restored. If your brother won’t listen, involve other brothers and sisters, which further implies they know the person and can attest to the sin in that person’s life. They aren’t witnesses that you are in the right in confronting the person. They are there to help your brother see his sin. If he remains steadfast in his sin and rebellion against God, you must bring it to the whole church. The church stands united against the sin—not against the sinner! The aim is to gain your brother, not condemn him.
If, after all this time has passed, and at this point a lot of time must have passed, for this is not a four-step process but various points in a relationship, if this person still refuses to repent and turn from his sin, he is demonstrating for all to see that he is not, in fact, a believer. This is literally the worst-case scenario. No one should ever be eager for this final step of handing a person over to Satan. Jesus says such a person shall no longer been seen as a brother, but “a Gentile and a tax-collector”. That is, not only is the person not part of the family, he is a traitor to your people. This doesn’t mean we are to treat such a person with anger and hostility, for we are to love our enemies. Rather, we must no longer see that person as being in Christ with us in the new covenant. He has steadfastly insisted with his refusal to repent that he is not in Christ, that God’s Spirit is neither present nor active in him.
It is hard to put this into a process, for sometimes Paul says when a person is essentially unteachable, you wash your hands of him. Or as Jesus put it,
Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Matthew 7:6 ESV
Don’t hear in this animosity. Instead, hear Jesus’ warning that there is a point in which you leave a person to his or her sin—but that point is never first or second or third or fourth in the “process”. It is always a final step and every step prior should be taken with the hope that the final step never comes. Remember, too, when Jesus said this. It was right after warning his people to not have an attitude of judgment. When he says, “Judge not, that you be not judged”, he’s not prohibiting judgment. Rather, he’s warning that the method you use to judge is how you yourself will be judged. Do you judge by assuming motive? Your motives will be judged. Do you judge fairly by observing and clarifying, etc? Then this is how you will be judged. Finally, he says do not presume to correct your brother when you are in obvious sin. Don’t point to the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye when you have a log in your own! This is when he says to not give what is holy to dogs, to not throw what is precious and valuable to pigs. There is a point when the precious call to faith and repentance will remain unheeded and further calls become a literal waste of time. As with the one who stirs up division and is unteachable, warn him once and then twice and if he still refuses to listen, stop throwing pearls into the muck. Such a person is warped and sinful.
The question I received recently is about the language of a person who resigns his or her membership “while under discipline”. What does this mean in light of the reality that we say every member is being disciplined? In this particular context it means a person was receiving corrective discipline and cut short the process by resigning his or her membership. Rather than acknowledge there is sin in that person’s life, that person chose to walk away. Rather than receive loving correction, that person rejects any and all correction and simply leaves the church. Such a person usually has every intention to go to a different church.
In such cases there is nothing we can do for him or her, beyond praying. That person has rejected the authority of the local church. Such a person completely stops the “process”, such that it is. This is what we mean when we say a person resigns membership “under discipline”. That person has rejected our help in forming him or her into the image of Christ.
With that, let me share a real-life example of this working well. When we launched as a new church we had far more tasks than we had volunteers to do them. We had a member who loved to serve and I thank God for this person. Each person who was active in the church was, in many ways, doing too much. Again, we had too many tasks and not enough people. As the church grew each person needed to scale back so as to allow others opportunities to serve. This, by the way, is a significant reason many leave a church plant after a few years; they sense they aren’t “needed” (which is untrue) because the work is being spread out among more people.
It became apparent to me and to the elders this person was making an idol out of serving. This person began to find meaning and purpose in serving rather than in Christ. I then approached the person as a brother in Christ and asked if I could share this concern. In the context of our relationship I told this person how it was appearing to others that something good was being elevated to something ultimate in that person’s life. The response was fairly predictable: denial. I asked the person to pray about it and to ask God if there was any truth to this. Bear in mind this was an act of church discipline! This person was being discipled by being corrected with great patience. The person agreed to pray and ask God if it were so but was quite certain it was not.
A few months went by and this person continued serving. We continued to observe what clearly appeared to be a growing idolatry and identity with serving. One day the person asked to speak. The person had been praying and heard a sermon on the radio about idolatry and said it sounded like what I was saying, but the person still wasn’t convinced. A few weeks later the person had a conversation with an old friend and shared this interaction with the friend, with a dose of incredulity: “Can you believe my pastor said this?” The friend replied, “Well, you do tend to jump into things in ways that prevent others from helping.” Not long after the person heard another sermon on the radio from a different preacher. The sermon was about making good things like Christian service into the most-important thing in a person’s life, supplanting God from that role.
The person then acknowledged the truth of it, how Christian service had, in fact, become an idol. We talked through some ways to combat this tendency and in the end, “I gained my brother”. If Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18 were a formula, a detailed, four-step process, after that initial interaction in which there was denial, I would have had to confront the person with others. Surely the denial would have remained and I would have had to bring the person before the whole church. None of this would have been loving or kind—or in line with Jesus’ instructions.
The “process” of church discipline involves a lot of encouragement and exhortation to trust the Lord and obey him. The process involves regular reminders that what we do isn’t what gives us meaning and purpose and certainly isn’t what makes us right with God; rather, it is faith in the Lord Jesus that makes us right with him. The process involves a lot of patience, for love covers a multitude of sins. Sometimes, those sins are unrecognized so church discipline may involve direct confrontation. Even then there is great patience as the Lord works in a person to bring that person to repentance. This is the kindness of God! When there is repentance, we move on. We allow the Lord to continue working in the person just as he works in us.
It is only when there remains an obstinate refusal to repent that the “process” (I really hate calling it that!) escalates, so to speak. The process, such that it is, is simply pointing a person to Christ, calling him or her to repentance and faithfulness. In other words, our process remains: Making disciples. Period.