Church Discipline Matters

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, the practice of church discipline comes under fire. To be sure, the examples given are largely bad examples of discipline, but for believers who love the Church and Christ’s word (see Matt 18), the practice cannot be dismissed and merely regarded as “antiquarian.” (Click on Denny Burk in the “Blogroll” over to the right, as well. Denny recently posted about this very thing.)

I want to argue that biblical church discipline cannot occur unless we get our minds around the fact that church membership matters. The following is a short article I recently wrote for the Southern Seminary Magazine 75.3 (2007): 12-15.

“The Importance of Church Discipline”

I grew up in a small Louisiana town that was at one time known for, among other things, having the most churches per capita of any town our size. I grew up in the local First Baptist Church where my father led worship and mother taught children’s Sunday School. Like many others, I was much older before I ever heard the words “church” and “discipline” brought together, and whenever “church discipline” ever came up, it was always tied to a very unsettling situation, one whose details were always shrouded in secrecy.

Perhaps this is a familiar scenario. It seems that few churches teach on the issue of church discipline, and fewer still practice it. On the one hand, this is understandable since most think of “church discipline” as putting someone out of the local church. To be sure, the practice of biblical church discipline has become somewhat of a rarity in today’s churches, yet this is most unfortunate since this demonstrates a certain negligence of a church’s purity and gospel witness. As I teach the doctrine of the church, I ask my students to define church discipline and to provide an example when they have seen it carried out, either rightly or wrongly, in their home churches. Sadly, over time I have grown accustomed to their blank stares and silence. The absence of this biblical practice is to the Church’s detriment.

Baptist theological J. L. Dagg once contended, “When (the practice of church) discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.” To be sure, the practice was once common in our Baptist churches. In fact, Dr. Greg Wills notes in his book, Democratic Religion, “Through discipline, Baptists sought to repristinate the apostolic church and to stake their claim to primitive Christianity. Through discipline, they would, moreover, sweep the nation, for they believed that God rewarded faithful pruning by raining down revival.” He also notes that after the Civil War, it began to fade from practice, when the pursuit of church purity began to be replaced by the quest for efficiency. Baptist churches had lost their resolve in these matters, and “It simply faded away, as if Baptists had grown weary of holding one another accountable.”

What is it and why is it necessary? Is it necessary? Is it merely putting an unrepentant member out of a church? No. Church discipline has both positive and negative aspects, and the purpose here is to sketch a few answers to the questions of its nature, biblical warrant, and the Church’s need.

I. The Presupposition of Church Discipline: A Committed Church Membership

In his very helpful book 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, Dr. Mark Dever drives home the point that one very practical reason why discipline has eroded is because there is so often a downplaying of what it means to be a member of a local church. The reason why we see so little church discipline, with the resultant effect on the church’s purity, is because we have lost what it means to be a member of the local church. Membership matters, and one will not see the biblical practice of church discipline where there is a low view of commitment to a local body. This is why church membership is the presupposition of church discipline. If membership carries no obligations either for the church or the member, then church discipline becomes a moot point and impossible to practice. Recall that in 1 Cor 5, in order for Paul to tell the church to exclude the immoral man, he at first had to be included in that local body in some kind of fashion.

But being part of a local body of believers does matter. Being a member of a local church should mean commitment to a local church, coming together regularly for worship, as well as the taking of communion. It is the locale where believers exercise their spiritual gifts for the glory of God and edification of Christ’s body. It means taking responsibility. “The practice of church membership among Christians occurs when Christians grasp hold of each other in responsibility and love.” We in fact are one another’s keepers in a very real sense and the only way that this kind of “keeping” occurs is in the context of the community of faith. One must be part of this community (a local church) in order for accountability to take place. To be sure, this kind of accountability among believers is not strong-armed micro-management, rather, it is one of the many practical ways that believers love one another. Jesus’ words are recorded in John 13:34-35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Loving one another and humble accountability between committed believers demonstrates the power of the gospel to a watching world. What does the world see? It sees a group of people committed to one another under the lordship of Jesus Christ who love one another enough to take a vested interest in one another’s ongoing commitment to Christ.

The local church is the manifestation of this group of people living under the lordship of Christ in loving accountability to biblical truth. For instance, in Heb 10:22-25 the writer avers,

“let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”

Notice that, among other important things, the writer of Hebrews emphasizes the role of the Christian community in the context of one another’s lives. They not only draw near together, but they hold fast their Christian confession together, and they are to give purposeful thought and attention as to how they might stir up each other to live Christ-honoring lives. This occurs in the context of the local church, and is therefore the opposite, according to Hebrews, of “forsaking the assembly.” In addition, the little phrase “as you see the day drawing near” contains an implicit warning: Christ is coming and we all must be found faithful at His return (Heb 3:12; 4:1-2, 6, 11; 9:27-28; 10:36-39). From this text we see that we are to “draw near,” “hold fast,” and “consider” within the context of a local body of believers who anticipate the Lord’s return.

Further, the writer of Hebrews exhorts his readers, “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb 3:13). The encouragement spoken of here rightly occurs in a body of believers who place great value on being committed and responsible to the gospel and to one another. This has immediate implications for our Southern Baptist churches, where the average membership is 233, yet only 70 attend on any given Sunday. Further, a recent Christianity Today editorial states that convention records indicate that of our 16 million reported members, fewer than 6 million people attend Southern Baptist churches each week. This ought not be the case. Before biblical church discipline can be implemented, we all must first commit ourselves to an understanding of church commitment that is responsible, accountable and meaningful. Church membership matters. This is the presupposition of biblical church discipline.

II. The Biblical Basis for Church Discipline

To be sure, there is not enough space here to do a full treatment of the Bible’s teaching on the topic of church discipline, but the practice can be found in several key texts such as Matt 18:15-20, 1 Cor 5:1-13, 2 Cor 6-11, Heb 12:4-14, Gal 6:1, 2 Thess 3:6-15, 1 Tim 1:20; 5:19-20, and Titus 3:9-11. Matthew 18:15-20 is perhaps chief of these, since it sets forth the paradigm for how church discipline is to be carried out, step by step. Matthew records Jesus’ words in vv. 15-18,

“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.”

As we read of the earliest churches (particularly in Paul’s letters) we see that this is the pattern followed by the earliest Christians. Paul’s Corinthian correspondence contains perhaps the most well-known example in 1 Cor 5:1-13. You will recall that there was a member of the church who was having a sexual relationship with his father’s wife. Paul admonishes the Corinthians for their failure to maintain the purity of the church, and calls for church discipline. Sin that is left confronted will ruin a church’s witness because it is no longer pure. This is Paul’s concern when he compares sin to leaven. This man’s sin was not merely confined to himself; when the church in Corinth failed to follow the rule of Christ on this matter it called into question the purity of the entire Corinthian church. They should have grieved over this man’s sin, yet instead they boasted (v. 6). Out of a love for Christ and deep concern for the purity of the church, they should have confronted the man with an eye to repentance and restoration, and be prepared to put him out of the church were he not to turn from his sin. This divinely-authorized punishment is inflicted by the church (Matt 18:17). Paul writes, “Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority” (2 Cor 5:6). As Jesus said, if a brother refuses to listen to the church and repent, he is to be put out of the church and treated as an unbeliever. We see that something along this very line occurred in Corinth. I am reminded of a sermon last year at my own local church preached by one of our members, Dr. Russell Moore, in which he implored us as a body to excommunicate him from our congregation should he ever get to the point of willful unrepentance. Dr. Moore is quite correct: unrepentant sin can ultimately lead to excommunication, a decision that none should desire but one for which all should be prepared.

But we should also note that church discipline is not always negative, in the sense of sin committed and then confronted. There is positive church discipline that is preventative, yet “the remedial side of discipline, like the proverbial squeaky wheel, gets all the grease.” As Jay Adams notes, we have a tendency to focus on the sensational acts in which grievous sin is committed and excommunication may occur. Yet we should more closely focus on preventative church discipline. For instance, faithful preaching of the Scriptures one kind of preventative discipline. Jay Adams, in his helpful book, Handbook of Church Discipline is exactly right when he states that the best thing that can be done in a church is for both leaders and laity to “promote good order and true belief.” This is both the formal and informal responsibility of a church and its members. The teaching of truth promotes godliness and purity. Church discipline is a two-edged sword, and Adams asserts that “when Christians are fed a regular diet of truth from the Scriptures in such a way that they grow by it, there will be far less need for remedial discipline in a church.” The emphasis for all local churches, therefore, ought not be on “rooting out troublemakers,” but on preventative discipline that takes the form of biblical preaching, godly order, and true belief. As stated above, all of this is to occur within a church whose membership soberly assesses the eternal investments each make in one another’s lives out of love for Christ and one another.

III. Conclusion

I will conclude with five brief reasons for the practice of church discipline. First, church discipline (in the corrective sense) should be for the good of the specific individual. Second, it is good for other Christians to see the dangers of sin. Third, it is for the health of the church as a whole. Fourth, it shows love for the corporate witness of the church, which can either make or break a church’s evangelistic purpose. Fifth, yet certainly not least, it shows a love for the glory of God since the church’s purity and holiness should reflect God’s own holiness. Church discipline ought not to be, at best, an afterthought in the life of a local church. Would that all of us think rightly about what it means to be in fellowship with other believers in a local church since being woven into the fabric of a local church matters. Would that God would help us all understand the biblical basis for church discipline in both its corrective and preventative forms. As Dever rightly warns, if we can’t, as a church, “say how a Christian should not live, how can we say how a Christian should live?”

Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South 1785-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8.

Gregory A. Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South 1785-1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 9.

Mark Dever, What is a Healthy Church? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 95.

Mark Dever, What is a Healthy Church? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 96.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/august/17.21.html accessed online August 17, 2007.

Jay Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 22.

Jay Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 25.

Jay Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 22-23.

Mark Dever, What is a Healthy Church?, 106.

Mark Dever, 9 Marks of a Healthy Church, 170.