Local Church Autonomy and Church Discipline

This post is a continuation of a previous post on local church autonomy.  That post can be found here. 

I recently completed a four sermon series on church membership.  The first two sermons in the series dealt with Matthew 16 and 18 respectively.  You can find them here and here.

In Matthew 16, Jesus promises to give Peter the keys of the kingdom.  By extension, the keys are given to the other apostles, and by further extension they are given to the church.  We know that we can extend Jesus' statement in Matthew 16 to the church because of Matthew 18 where Jesus, in referring to the church, uses the same phrase that is found in Matthew 16, "whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

How does the church exercise the keys of the kingdom?  By binding and loosing.  How does the church bind and loose?  I would submit that the primary ways the church binds and looses are through church membership and church discipline.  In fact, it is church discipline that Jesus deals with very clearly in Matthew 18.

Jesus lays out four steps for church discipline in this passage.  Steps one and two of church discipline can be carried out among fellow believers without the influence of the church body as a whole.  However, steps three and four necessitate the involvement of the church as a whole.  You cannot tell it to the church without getting the church involved.  Neither can you remove a person from the fellowship of the church without the church getting involved.

Sadly, church discipline is a biblical practice that has been neglected in most Baptist churches in America for a long time.  Curiously, these same churches hold firmly to the doctrine of local church autonomy.

In what ways is the church autonomous?  I would submit that one of the primary ways that the church exercises its autonomy is through church discipline.  Church membership is all about our commitment to one another.  We are responsible for each other.  The writer of Hebrews says that we are to "stir up one another to love and good works" (Hebrews 10:24). 

There is something special about the relationship between two members of the same local church.  It seems that the difference in relationship between two members of the same local church and two fellow believers who are not members of the same local church is related to church discipline.  I can exercise formal church discipline over a member of my local church in a way that I simply cannot with a fellow believer of another local church.

I would further suggest that this is one of the primary ways in which the church is autonomous.  There is no board outside the local church that has this kind of responsibility for the lives of the people in the church.  This responsibility belongs to the local church.  It is through practicing biblical church discipline that the local church exercises her autonomy.

Local church autonomy and church discipline are two very important and interconnected doctrines that must be preserved if the church is to fulfill her mission in the world.

I am indebted to Jonathan Leeman of 9Marks for the excellent thinking and writing that he has done on church membership and church discipline.  Some of the ideas found here have certainly been developed in my mind by reading his works.  I heartily recommend the little books Church Membership and Church Discipline.