This morning I want to address a topic that is a difficult one and yet one of great necessity. I am going to address discipline in the church. And, again, the reason that I address this (as has been the case with the last few messages) is because we are leading up to signing our church covenant on October 29. And part of our church covenant reads, “We will submit ourselves to the discipline of this Church as a testimony of our desire to always walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. And for our brothers and sisters, we will seek their spiritual advancement as dearly as our own.”
Therefore, I want us to know what church discipline is, why we should have it, and how it should be carried out in order that we might know that to which we are covenanting. And I want to show you the connection we have stated in our covenant between discipline and holy living and seeking your brothers’ and sisters’ spiritual advancement as you do your own.
And in order to show this, I want to draw mainly from 1 Corinthians 5, however, I also wanted to read to you Matthew 18:15-17 because I want to pull from that text as well to fill in some gaps on the subject.
Therefore, let me first identify what church discipline is. Here is the definition that I will work from this morning: Church discipline is an act whereby a loving, redemptive community of believers removes an individual from their midst in order that he or she might repent and be restored to a faithful walk Christ.
But in some sense, I do injustice to that definition because putting your so-called brother or sister outside of the community of believers is the last stage in everything that makes up discipline. And I will discuss more of this later. However, let me just put in your mind right now that this is what church discipline is in its final stage.
Let me give you an example from 1 Corinthians 5. In this chapter you have a man who is in the church and yet is involved in an incestuous relationship with his father’s wife. Now, most everyone agrees that Paul is not talking about this occurring at the same time that his father is with her. Probably, therefore, this man is involved in a sexual relationship with his step-mother after his father has died or they have been divorced.
And Paul is perplexed by this because the Corinthian community is not only not mourning about this, but they are proud. Maybe they were priding themselves on their tolerance or boasting in their supposed love for one another, but regardless of what was causing their pride, Paul was enraged. And he tells them that they should not associate with such an immoral individual who claims to be a believer but should remove the man from among themselves.
So it is in this fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians that we see Paul calling for discipline to occur. He believed that the Corinthians were doing wrong to allow the man to remain among them.
And doesn’t that seem strange in the light that we rarely if ever hear of this happening today? I would like to think that it is because there is a lack of immorality in the church as a whole, but I don’t think that is the case. Rather, I think it is because we don’t really understand what church discipline is for nor why it should occur. Therefore, let me give you a few reasons for why church discipline should occur. And I am going to save the heart of why it should occur until the end, so you can be assured if you think I am missing the point of it as you await the final reason.
Paul writes in 5:6, “Your boasting in not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?” Open, unrepentant sin will spread to others within the body.
We should not be naïve to think that we are immune to a lax attitude concerning sin. And one example of this is a child with his or her parents. If a child has parents who are lax concerning the things they put in front of their eyes and the things that they allow in their house, do you know what the child’s attitude is going to be toward those sins? He is going to think nothing of them. He is going to watch pornography while telling himself that it is just something that every guy does—just like his dad for example. She is going to grow up thinking that reading trash in these magazines for women is fine and expected because she has seen Mom do it. A little leaven will leaven all those around.
Sin is like cancer; it spreads. Therefore, unless action is taken against open, unrepentant sin, then it will not be too long before the church loses what makes it distinctive in this world, namely, holiness.
Paul writes in 5:7, “Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.”
And I believe that what Paul is saying here is that by not cleaning out the leaven (or sin) you are showing the church to be different than what it is. And the church is holy and righteous because Christ has become sin for us in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. That is what has happened as a result of Christ being sacrificed, as verse 7 mentions.
Therefore, when the church is not a display of holiness, we are showing the world that our God is not holy. And this is the case because we are the body of Christ. Remember when Paul was talking about divisions in the church earlier in this letter and he said, “Has Christ been divided?” (1:13)? He said that because he wanted them to realize that they were the body of Christ. Therefore, how the world views the church will be how the world views Christ. And unless they understand that he is holy they will only continue to ask such questions as “How can a loving God let anyone go to hell?” as opposed to the right question, “How can a holy God allow anyone into heaven?” - which is the question that the cross answers, as God poured out his wrath on Christ on the cross so that he could justify those who believe on him.
Paul commands them in verse 13, “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.” And our response to commands in Scripture is not to sit and examine whether we think it is a profitable command or not, but rather to simply obey, knowing that God’s wisdom and ways are higher than our own.
And one aspect of loving one another is that you seek the salvation of others. When you have a so-called brother who is walking in open, unrepentant sin, he is walking in danger. Therefore, we are called to go and try to restore that brother. In other words, this is a salvation issue.
I believe that salvation is wholly by grace through faith in Christ alone. And I also believe that sanctification and holiness are a necessary aspect of saving faith. I don’t believe that there is ever saving faith present for salvation unless it is followed by a striving for holiness, because saving faith is infallibly followed by that. I think that is why Hebrews 12:14 says, “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord”. Without sanctification, no one will see the Lord. Therefore, we need to strive for holiness in our lives and in the lives of one another.
We know that God endures all true believers.
- Romans 8:30—“And whom he predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”
- 1 Corinthians 1:6-9—“Even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
- John 6:37-40—“All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
And yet we also know that only such are true believers as are sanctified and continue in the faith.
- Colossians 1:22-23—“Yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you holy and blameless and beyond reproach—if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard …”
- 1 Corinthians 15:1-2—“Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.”
- Hebrews 3:14—“For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end.”
Therefore, I think these seemingly contradictory passages simply confirm that sanctification is something that genuine, saving faith produces and is therefore necessary in salvation. And that statement does not work against assurance, that salvation is through faith alone, or that it is wholly of grace. That is how amazing our God is.
And I bring all that up to again emphasize that when you restore a brother, you are being vessel for his salvation. “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth, and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20). And that is the main reason that church discipline should occur.
For a church that does not want to practice discipline and is claiming that it is because they want to be loving is even more naïve than a parent who doesn’t want to punish his child for doing things that could harm him and thinks he is loving him. Church discipline is one of the greatest things that you can do in my life if I am one day in open, unrepentant, obvious sin if you really love me.
Finally, how should it be carried out?
Jesus gives us guidelines in Matthew 18:15-17. And as we read this, I want you to keep in mind that your goal is to restore your brother or sister in love. Without going into these verses with that mindset, we often miss the nature of Jesus’ instruction.
The passage says, “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. “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.”
And so we see that there are some steps that one should go through. The first is that if you see a brother in sin, you should go to him in private, address his sin, and hopefully he will listen to you and repent. And if he does, then you should be the happiest person around and rejoice because you have played a part in the sanctification of your brother. Your happiness should never ever stem from the thought that you have “scored points” over your brother or else you misunderstood what loving your brother and striving for his sanctification is all about.
And if he is refusing to repent, then you go to the next step and bring one or two more people with you and confront him.
But let me say something about this. Don’t just go to this without your brother refusing to repent. In other words, if you confront him on sin and he says, “I don’t want to sin in this area anymore, but I need help,” don’t run off and grab two other people and say, “He won’t do away with his sin.” The best situation is to address this privately. “There should be no attempt to bring all this out into the open … and if the sinner can be persuaded to repent and seek forgiveness, the whole affair is over” (Morris, 467).
However, if the person is refusing to repent, at that point you bring in one or two other people in hope that he will take notice of more than one person—especially if he has had a difference of opinion with that one person. And only then if he is refusing to repent in the present of two or three witnesses would you bring him before the church. And before doing that I would even say you might want to grab a couple more people and try one more time to confront him. Remember, your goal is not to expose him publicly but rather to restore him to a faithful, holy walk with Christ.
However, if you do all this and telling it to the church is the only thing left, then do just that. Your hope is that surely if he sees that the whole community of believers opposes him that he will repent. And only if all of that doesn’t work do you put him out of your midst, out from the community of believers. And even this action is only in hope that it will bring him to his senses, he will repent, and he will be restored to a faithful walk with Christ.
And for a final note, I would always remind such an individual in all soberness the truth of Hebrews 3:12-15, namely, that no matter what he thinking, as he proceeds in his sin, he is risking his heart being hardened to the point that repentance will be impossible. And one day it might be said of him, “[He] went out from us, but [he was] not really of us; for if [he] had been of us, [he] would have remained with us; but [he] went out, in order that it might be shown that [he is] not of us” (1 John 2:19).
Therefore, I urge for us to strive for holiness to such a degree that we covenant with one another to strive for one another’s sanctification and request that our neighbor would show love for us in the same way. It is a comfort to me that my brothers and sisters here would care as much for my spiritual advancement as they would their own. May we continue to pray that God would make us one in love. May we be a display of our Lord in this world by displaying deep love and holiness. And may his grace be with us always. Amen.