Let's Recover BIBLICAL (i.e. Congregational) Church Discipline

Church discipline has made its way into the news recently as a result of a situation at The Village Church in Dallas, Texas.  I first became aware of the situation there as a result of some watchdog blogs picking up the story.  It began to spread like wildfire on social media.  Then Sunday I opened up my computer to discover that the front page of Yahoo had picked up the story.  I was grieved as I read the way the Bible's teaching on church discipline was misrepresented to paint the Christian church in the worst possible light.

It is not my intention in this post to address the situation at The Village Church.  The details as reported by the media are certainly concerning.  But it would be wrong headed of me to presume that I know all the facts.  Even if I did have all the facts, I do not pastor The Village Church.  Let's pray for this church as they seek to honor the Lord in this very difficult situation, whether self-inflicted or not.

I never heard anything about church discipline growing up in church.  I do not recall ever hearing a sermon on Matthew 18 or 1 Corinthians 5.  I do not mean that as an indictment on the churches I attended or the pastors who served those churches.  There has been a renewed interest in church discipline in recent years that simply did not exist 15-20 years ago.  Because I wasn't there, I cannot speak as to whether there was teaching on church discipline taking place in the classroom when the generations who have preceded me attended seminary.

But church discipline is biblical.  It is not a new invention.  It is not something practiced only by the so-called "New Calvinists."  Jesus' instructions in Matthew 18 are very clear.  The church has been given the keys of the kingdom.  This means that the church must do the work of binding (membership) and loosing (discipline).  The Apostle Paul is very clear in 1 Corinthians 15 when he addresses a situation that was going on in the church at Corinth.  Paul told the Corinthian church to "Let him who has done this be removed from among you" (1 Cor. 5:2b).

My goal here is to point out that it is not simply a recovery of church discipline that we should desire, but a recovery of BIBLICAL (congregational) church discipline.  We do not need to recover a means of removing people from the church.  We need to recover loving confrontation of sin in an effort to restore our wayward brothers and sisters in Christ.  It may be that through this process we discover that a wayward member is likely not truly a believer.  Then, and only then, do we move to the final step of church discipline.

There is much that could be said about biblical church discipline.  I could unpack the relevant passages of Scripture and lay out exactly what I believe the Bible teaches concerning church discipline.  But that would likely fill much more than a single blog post.  Here I want to highlight a very important, yet sometimes neglected, component of church discipline: the role of the congregation.

Bart Barber, pastor of First Baptist Church in Farmersville, Texas, addressed this in a recent Baptist Press article.  Barber said that one way churches err in their discipline processes is by failing to include the entire congregation in votes to withdraw fellowship from individuals in sin who refuse to repent.  He went on to say that the process of church discipline outlined in Matthew 18:15-18 involves confronting a sinning church member individually, then confronting the person again with two or three witnesses if he or she refuses to repent.

Bingo!  Bart Barber hit the nail on the head.

Church discipline is not a group of elders confronting an individual and then deciding to remove the unrepentant person from the membership of the church.  No, church discipline begins with an individual Christian confronting another individual Christian with the hope of helping that brother or sister remove the speck from their eye, after having removed the log from his/her own eye.  After taking one or two others along to aid in clear communication and demonstrate the seriousness of the situation, if the sinning member still refuses to repent, Jesus says to tell it to the church.  While this necessarily involves the leaders of the church, it does not leave the matter in their hands alone.

Jesus made it very clear that the authority to discipline unrepentant professing believers belongs to the church.  Paul wrote his instructions in 1 Corinthians 5 to the entire church, not just the leaders of the Corinthian church.  But why is congregational involvement so essential to biblical church discipline?  Let me suggest five reasons.

1.       It is the way Jesus said church discipline is to be done.

This is by far the most important reason listed here.  This would be enough if none of the other reasons existed.  No other reason would be totally convincing without this one.  Dear pastor, you do not know better than Jesus.  I know that congregational church government sometimes feels cumbersome, but God has ordained it this way for a reason.  He knows better than we do.  Trust Him and do what He says.

2.       Church discipline starts with the congregation.

When many people think about church discipline, they think about removing people from the church.  This ought not be.  Rare should be the times when we reach the final step of church discipline where excommunication becomes unavoidable.  Church discipline begins in a very informal manner (Matt. 18:15).  It is so informal that we would never refer to it in such a formal way when actually doing it.  We would be more likely to use the language of the writer of Hebrews, "stirring one another up to love and good works."

Church discipline begins with one believer confronting another believer in his/her sin.  It doesn't begin when the leaders of the church are made aware of the situation.  It doesn't begin when the congregation is formally made aware of the situation.  And it certainly doesn't begin when the congregation votes to remove an unrepentant member.  It begins when one believer comes alongside another believer to help him/her grow in Christ.  This should be a regular occurrence in the life of the church.

So if you find yourself frustrated because your church doesn't practice church discipline, I wonder if you have opened yourself to loving rebuke by your fellow believers in the church.  I wonder if you are willing to go and lovingly confront those who have wandered into sin that they may repent and be reconciled to God because of Christ.  This is where church discipline begins: with individual members of the congregation.

3.       It will prevent you from being rash.

I can make a biblical argument for the first two reasons.  This one is of a more pragmatic nature.

You have been dealing with a situation where one of your members is caught in sin for what feels like an eternity.  You are ready to move on from steps one and two of church discipline.  You have spent time thinking, praying, and seeking the advice of others.  You are convinced that this is the right thing to do.  But then you think about the day you announce the situation to the church.  You realize that things aren't going to go well.  You know that the congregation is going to stop you dead in your tracks.  This should cause you to slow down.

Barber said in the Baptist Press article referenced earlier, "Having that congregational basis to [discipline] is helpful because my experience is that congregations are unwilling to extend church discipline sometimes when I'm willing to do it. So there's something of a mediating force in having to go to an entire congregation."

You may be right.  In a perfect world the congregation would see things as you do and willingly (but with sadness) remove the unrepentant member.  Well, scratch that.  In a perfect world there would be no need for church discipline.  But you get my point.  This reason for congregational involvement leads to the next one.

4.       God will graciously use it to prevent you from causing harm to His church.

Again, you may be right.  It really may be time to remove the unrepentant sinner from the fellowship of the church.  But the fact that you can't do it alone will prevent you from creating a situation where half of your people walk out because you removed someone that they didn't think should be removed.

Church discipline is for the good of the unrepentant sinner and the name of Christ, but it is also for the good of the church.  If proceeding with steps 3 and 4 of church discipline is going to cause irreparable harm to the church and your ministry there, God may sovereignly keep it from happening by the very fact that you need a congregational vote to proceed.  He is in charge like that.

In such a scenario, you can trust the sovereign God of the universe, and know that you have done all you can do on your own for the good of the unrepentant sinner and the name of Christ.  You can trust the Chief Shepherd to protect His flock.

5.       There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors.

I keep saying that you may be right.  But you know what?  You may be wrong.  Not only does congregational involvement in church discipline procedures involve the wisdom of your fellow leaders, it also involves the wisdom of your brothers and sisters in Christ who fill your pews and have been serving Jesus for a long time.  You do not have a monopoly on God's wisdom.  God speaks to all believers through His Word.  We can lean into that wisdom when we seek to do things as God has told us to do them and involve the congregation.

There are also varying perspectives among your congregation that may not necessarily be present among the leadership of your church.  This is particularly true regarding ladies.  Some of us men who are gung ho about speaking clearly based on the authority of God's Word in a given situation need the ladies in our midst to help us demonstrate love and compassion to those caught in sin.

The bottom line in all of this is that God has told us in His Word that church discipline is the work of church.  Pastors have a role to play in this.  Other church leaders have a role to play.  But it is the church that has been given the keys of the kingdom.  Those who shepherd God's church must exercise oversight, but they must do so not as those who domineer over the flock, but as examples and fellow sheep under the Chief Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hozier's "Take Me To Church"

Last night, my wife Ashley and I watched The Voice together.  One of my favorite singers this season, Matt McAndrew, sang a song that I had never heard before (I have never been particularly hip.  Do people still say hip anymore?).  The song is called "Take Me To Church," and was originally done by an artist known as Hozier.

When the song began, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  I couldn't understand everything that was being sung (Yes, I felt old), but what I could hear was deeply troubling.  So I looked up the lyrics.  Needless to say, I found the lyrics to be every bit as disturbing as my initial impression of the song.

The best I can tell by reading the lyrics is that it is about the singer having given up on the church as a religious institution in favor of his lover.  He then refers to his lover throughout the song as his "church" and the one that he worships.  Some explanations of the song that I read indicate that it is about a homosexual relationship.  Regardless, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the whole thing is very dark and disconcerting.  It is idolatrous and demonic, centered on sexual immorality.

Now this is not a blog post to rail on Hozier, Matt McAndrew, NBC, and a culture that applauds such filth.  The performance was a wakeup call for me.  The purpose of this post is to remind us all that we are not in 1950 anymore.

Don't misunderstand me.  I am not really suggesting that 1950 was better, when sexual sin was just more hidden, and certainly was not flaunted on national television as something to be celebrated.

I am also not suggesting that these things are new.  I am currently preaching through 1 Corinthians and we have already dealt with the very same issues mentioned above in the first ten chapters of Paul's letter to the Corinthian Church.  Idolatry, sexual immorality of all kinds, and demonic activity were all prevalent in ancient Corinth.  This is not something Hozier invented.

I am reminded also of the Apostle Paul's words in Romans 1.

Romans 1:18-25
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Sound familiar?

This is not intended to be an apologetic piece that would cause Hozier and others, were they to read it, to recognize the error of their ways, repent, and be reconciled to God through the shed blood of Jesus.  It is, in fact, the kind of "religious" teaching found in Romans 1 that Hozier rails against in the song.

I write for you who are seeking to navigate this perverse world in which we find ourselves.  I write for you who desire to flee from sexual immorality (1 Cor. 6:18a) and idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14).  I write for you who are constantly told that you are boring, closed minded, and bigoted because you know what the Bible says about worship and sex and you actually believe it.

Some of you who will read this are teenagers growing up in a day when you are told that Bible is outdated and useless.  Others are twenty-somethings seeking to navigate adulthood as those who are SUPPOSED to adopt the morality of the culture.  Then still others are parents and grandparents seeking to raise kids to love and honor Jesus in a day when any Jesus other than one made in the image of the culture is shunned.  Of course, Jesus was shunned and then crucified during His own life and ministry.

I read something this morning on Facebook from Voddie Baucham.  He wrote that we simply must get over trying to be nice, sweet, gentle, and compromising enough to satisfy those who hate us and our God.  He was talking about same-sex "marriage," but the idea behind what he said was broader than that.  The reality is that nothing short of absolute surrender on our part will be accepted by the sexual revolutionaries of our day.

As I scrolled my news feed, I found an article posted by John Piper where a public school in Chicago had included material on "safe" anal sex in their sex education curriculum for 5^th and 6^th graders.  The curriculum was complete with drawings and advice on how to maximize pleasure.  John Piper commented briefly, "Teaching safe anal sex to fifth graders.  Is this the culture you are trying not to offend?"

I realized this morning that he and Voddie Baucham both hit the nail on the head.  There is nothing that we can do to make the Bible and its teachings more palatable without compromising its truth and authority.  The gospel is an offense.  We need not add to that offense by being intentionally offensive, but we must not take away from that offense either.

God created everything, and He created it very good.  It didn't take long for man to determine that he knew better than God.  He rebelled against God, thus introducing sin into the human race.  Since that day, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). 

Except one.  His name is Jesus.  Jesus, being God, took on flesh and dwelt among us.  He lived the sinless life we could not live, and died the death we should have died.  He died in our place as our substitute.  Not only did He die, but He rose again three days later, demonstrating His power and authority over death.  Therefore, if we would repent of our sin and place our faith in Jesus, we can be reconciled to God our Creator.

This message is offensive because it begins at the beginning.  It begins with a perfect creation that went horribly wrong because of man's sin.  It acknowledges the reality that we are all sinners in need of God's grace.  It acknowledges that right and wrong do exist.  It acknowledges that what feels good does not determine right, but rather right is represented in the holy character of God and revealed to us in His Word.

The culture around us will never come to grips with these truths.  We must never allow these truths to lose their grip on us.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 

                                                      -1 Corinthians 1:18