Church Discipline - 5. When?

So this is now, I think, our fifth in this series on church discipline. What, why, when, and how. We've looked at what church discipline is. We talked about two foundations of discipline, that is discipleship in the church and then church membership. And then we defined church discipline, as church discipline is when the church confronts a member in his sin, and if he refuses to repent, ceases to regard him as a Christian. And then last week we talked about why, so what is the purpose of church discipline, and I delineated four main purposes. Number one, it's to restore the offender. The goal of discipline is not to destroy, but to rescue and save, to restore that person. Number two, it's to protect other believers. We saw how sin spreads, and so a church that condones sin by having members just live in open sin and not as believers of Christ, that's a bad example that negatively influences others. Then number three, the purpose of discipline is to preserve the witness of the church, So what is the watching world going to think? It's very important that we display what truly following Christ looks like, what the gospel's all about. And then number four, all of this, really the umbrella reason over it all is to glorify God. And so we talked about how keeping that central is very helpful for sort of balancing these other priorities that sometimes can be in tension with one another. So, today what I want to focus on is when. So, when is church discipline called for? What kind of sin could or, yeah, should or could result in church discipline? And at this point, I just want to open it up. How would you answer that question? What are thoughts? What kind of sin? Robert? Habitual and unrepentant. Okay. So, habitual and unrepentant. Now, what do you mean by habitual? This is a question. It's like a lifestyle. Okay. It's something I'm practicing all the time. Okay. We all will sin. Right. Right. It's like, do I speed or am I driving without my life? Yeah. Okay. Good. Other thoughts? Kim? Sin that denies the gospel. Okay, so gospel denying sin, okay. Natalie. Ready? Okay. Yeah. So it's like newspaper kind of. Okay. Kim. I have a question, but is there a difference between an intervention and disciplining? Someone has a habitual sin that they know is a sin, like I don't want to do this but I keep doing it, versus I don't think that's a sin. Great, yeah, yeah, yeah. So certainly a difference between a guy that's struggling with pornography, that's sort of accepting some accountability and willing to take some measures to fight it, versus someone that says, I'm just, I don't think it's sinful, or I don't care if it's sinful, I'm just going to live in it. There's a very big difference there. Good. Yeah, so I think, Yeah, I think these things are helpful. I think habitual is helpful in capturing, you know, especially something like, you know, someone gossip or something, you know, like, is that a one-time thing that, you know, then you kind of work through, or is this sort of a pattern? Of course, there's things like, you know, if you rob a bank. Well, I don't know that it matters how many times you did it if you refuse to repent and you refuse to take responsibility. Well, you know, I think that that would be an excommunicable offense. I think gospel denying is helpful, although thinking through what sin is sort of not denying the gospel, and kind of wrestling through. So certainly, I think a lot of it comes back to this idea of repentant. Because sin, if we're repenting of that sin, well, I think that's what the gospel's all about, whatever the sin is. But sin that's saying, I'm not going to repent of it, I would say that's another way of capturing. That is what gospel denying is. It's saying Jesus isn't Lord. I'm not committed to believing and obeying Him in all of life. Robert? Yeah. Because it's not, I party Friday, I confess to somebody Saturday, I'm sure it's Sunday, next Friday I'm repeating. Right. Because the word metanoia, I don't know if I pronounced it right, the Greek word, means I'm changing direction. Yeah. I'm not just sorry I committed this sin. I'm not going to commit sin. If I'm walking this way in adultery, I'm going to walk this way in faith. Right. Yeah, so repentance is more than just sort of saying you're sorry. In fact, I mean, it can it's even more than feeling bad about your sin and crying over it. I mean, Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians chapter 7, he talks about worldly sorrow versus godly sorrow that produces repentance. So, yeah, we need to have kind of a truly biblical understanding of what repentance is, while at the same time knowing that a true Christian can struggle. You know, that there can be sin that you fall into again and again, but there's repentance that is an ongoing battle and fighting that sin. So yeah, that's a really key part. But on the sheet, I have three kind of aspects. So what kind of sin results in church discipline? I think it has to meet three criteria. And the first of those is it must be unrepentant. And I think one of the clearest passages to see that is in Matthew chapter 18, where Jesus talks about discipline. And if your brother sins against you, you go to him. And if he listens to you, you've won your brother. But if he will not listen, then you take one or two others with you that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. If he will not listen to them, then you tell it to the church. So there's this ongoing process of confronting the person in sin. with more and more people kind of agreeing, yes, this is sin, and the person refusing to listen. So, that would be unrepentance. And that, ultimately, as Jesus is clear there, would result in the person being removed from the fellowship of the Church. Now, on the other hand, I think, as we mentioned before, whatever the sin was, if there's genuine repentance, then that person should not be removed by discipline. Because we believe in a gospel that's powerful to save any kind of sinner. There's no limits to the grace of Christ for those who repent and trust in him. And so to reflect that, it doesn't matter what a person has done wrong, if there's genuine repentance, we embrace them in membership. Now, it's important to clarify that even when there's genuine repentance, that means this person's not excommunicated, that doesn't mean there's necessarily no consequences at all. For example, in 1 Timothy chapter 5, it commands that an elder who's sinning should be publicly rebuked. Also, in a different case, if a member of this church molested a child, there would need to be some ongoing consequence of that. If they're repentant, they would say a member, but maybe that could mean you need to be accompanied when you're here. There can be these ongoing consequences to say part of repentance is going to be accepting some consequence and accountability for the protection of others. So we can think through all those situations, but the point is church discipline is for unrepentant sin. The person who refuses to listen, who has stopped fighting sin and surrendered to it, and is enslaved by it. Number two, church discipline is for observable sin. Observable. And in Matthew chapter 18, as you read through this, you'll notice the word witnesses. In fact, it says in verse 16, 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. And so the point here is that church discipline is not for these sort of secret sins of the heart that other people can't see. It's for outwardly observable sin through our words and our actions. And it's important to clarify that because a huge part of the Christian life is about battling internal sins of the heart. You know, Jesus makes very clear in the Sermon on the Mount that, you know, unchecked lust or hatred will send us to hell. You know, so just because you're not, you know, outwardly committing outwardly observable sins doesn't mean you're necessarily living as a faithful disciple of Jesus. But we can't practice church discipline for sins that we can't observe. And we also need to be very careful not to think that we can just sort of read into people's facial expressions, read into their words, read into their actions, the state of their heart. We've got to be able to just look objectively at what you can actually see. So just because someone seems to have a prideful air about them doesn't make them subject to church discipline. Or just because someone communicated something to you in a way that maybe possibly was a lie, but it also could have just been a miscommunication, right, that doesn't make them subject to church discipline. Those may be issues that would be a good occasion for sort of a heart-to-heart conversation as a friend. And that's an important aspect of discipleship. But again, that's not the kind of thing that church discipline is for. In fact, the picture Jesus gives us in Matthew 18 is a bit more like a courtroom. He mentions witnesses and evidence. I think at least to some degree, it's helpful to have a posture of we're going to presume innocent until proven guilty. We're going to assume the best. We're going to err on the side of grace and charity. So, an excommunicable offense must be outwardly observable and objectively verifiable. Now, in light of that, two things to note. First, I think this is a reminder that church discipline simply isn't the be-all end-all solution for unconverted church members. The church can't hold you finally accountable for the sin you let reign in your heart, but God will. So I think a healthy church, there is a place for a church to counsel charity. in how we view others and also challenge every member to examine himself. Even as Paul does in 2 Corinthians chapter 13, you know, examine yourselves. Second, I think it's important to note that of all the passages on church discipline in the New Testament, arguably the sin that's mentioned the most is divisiveness. And I mention that because one of the things that makes the sin of divisiveness so difficult to deal with is that it's really hard to pin down. It's one of those sins that's hard to prove. You know, in one sense, yes, it's manifested in observable things like words and actions, but divisive people tend to shroud it under a lot of smooth words and sort of, you know, seemingly compelling accusations and that kind of thing. And I bring this up just to kind of say, well, if we press observable kind of too hard in the sense of, well, innocent until proven guilty, and sort of the strongest possible sense of the word, I think we can sort of inadvertently make it functionally difficult to deal with one of the sins Scripture explicitly tells us we'll have to. So just kind of as we think about, okay, what does it mean that it's observable? Well, I think we do need to be able to look at the bigger picture and recognize patterns as we seek to navigate this. That's just sort of a caveat to kind of keep in mind. Scripture does really talk about divisiveness. So, two things so far. We've seen it's unrepentant sin, it's observable, and then number three, thirdly and finally, is it's clear. And what I mean by clear is that it's sin that Scripture makes plain is sin. So these are not things that are based on like five layers of deductions from Scripture that may actually rest more on our personal opinion than the Word of God. These aren't things that are sort of mere conscience issues. This is something that's clear enough in Scripture that choosing this sin in an unrepentant fashion reveals that this person isn't committed to believing and obeying whatever Jesus says. It has to be clear like that. So, a sin could be clear but not necessarily observable. I think pride could be an example of this, where Scripture is very clear, pride is sin, but it's often hard to observe pride. Until it sort of comes out in our words and actions, often in the forms of other sins, it's sort of hard to observe it. But on the other hand, a sin can be observable, but not clear. To an extreme example, there have been plenty of Christians through history, even Baptists, that have thought playing cards is sinful. Well, that's certainly an observable behavior, right? There's no question if you're playing cards or not. Is that clearly sin in Scripture? I would say definitely not. So, that's the other side. Now, when it comes to this question of clear, the question is not how big the sin is. We're not making a judgment about whether the sin seems like a big deal to us. You know, remember, I think Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount makes very clear that every sin is deserving of hell, therefore it's all big in God's eyes. Also, we can notice in Matthew 18 that Jesus doesn't give any sort of criteria here, He just says, if your brother sins against you, there's not a sense of, well, if it's this big of a sin, it's just, is it clearly sin? The question is, is scripture clear that what this person is doing is definitely sinful? So just as one example, maybe there's a movie that has a lot of violence and gore. And maybe one person thinks, I think it's wrong to watch this movie. Philippians 4, 8 says whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just and pure and lovely, we're supposed to think about those things. Well, maybe another Christian thinks, well, there's some historical and educational value here. Or they think, you know, even as I watch this movie, there's a lot of evil, but it just reminds me of just the evil of sin and makes me more thankful for what Christ has done in saving me. You know, they may have a justification for why they think watching that is fine. And the point is, whether or not you're convinced by their argument, the point I'm making is I don't think scripture is clear enough on that issue for that to be a matter of church discipline. I think that's a matter of conscience. I think we would go very much astray as a church if we try to start imposing that, because it's just not sort of a one-for-one explicit thing biblically. Now, on the other hand, we already mentioned the issue of pornography. And of course, there are some who will try to make arguments about how pornography is not necessarily sinful. It's art. You know, it's some way of preventing sort of worse sin or something like that. And I think that's a place where, you know, we need to put down our foot. You know, it doesn't have to be a verse that says, thou shalt not look at pornography. But I think scripture is clear enough there that we can say definitively, no, that's sinful. And no Christian can just look at pornography in an unrepentant way and just think that's consistent with following Christ. That's sexual immorality. So that would be an example of clear sin or adultery, or you can go down the list of lots of other things. So what I'm saying here is that I think when with every church discipline, well, it's when there is sin that is unrepentant, that's observable and clear. I think it has to meet all three of those criteria. But if it does, then it would be sin that would lead to being removed by discipline. So I want to pause there and open up for any questions about that. Jay? So what if the situation is a refusal to submit to the eldership of the church? That would be the sin. What if the issue is a matter of conscience? So I guess a silly example would be, what if I were in a church or a seminary, but the church has requested that the man go to a prolonged suture? I mean, that's like a legal assistance, but I'm trying to get the picture. But the leadership has specifically said this. I think it's a great question. Yeah, I think it would probably be easy to envision some really dicey situations. I think in principle, I mean, certainly we as elders want to be as careful as possible not to bind people's consciences beyond scripture. So we want to be very careful not to try to require things that are unnecessary and not specifically sort of required by scripture. So I do think there's a responsibility of the elders to be careful in what we're expecting people to submit to. And then I think on the other hand, scripture clearly puts a responsibility on members to be submitting. So hypothetically, that's the kind of situation I would hope we work through. I think it would be sad for something like that to lead to this kind of thing, but yeah. In the same vein, could we maybe answer by saying that it's a discipleship thing? That if the elders are asking someone to do something that is against their conscience, that's a discipleship of the elders. We want to mature you, not necessarily we're disciplining you for something. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So certainly the goal is not discipline, but we want to be disciplined formatively. And I think another thing is there's also a category for going to another church. So if your conscience is just compelled to baptize an infant child, we're not going to condone that, but we're going to recognize, well, you can be a believer and you know, join a Presbyterian church and we're happy to transfer you there, so. Good question. Andrew? Observable. A Christian who is walking in sin can make up every last justification for why he's not sinning. So in that sense, like, you know, drawing that line can feel maybe difficult. Because you're like, you know, you would want to be pressing somebody for something that is against, that's not demanding of us for sure. Yeah. I guess that, I don't know if that is a real question, but it felt tensioned. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, on one hand, it is good for us to have the humility to sort of listen and be challenged, because we can fall into maybe lacking sort of the ability to understand how someone would come to a different conclusion about something. There are certainly examples of churches in the past that have been too quick to excommunicate. On the other hand, I think we can rest on the sufficiency and the clarity of Scripture to say, Yes, there's all sorts of rationalizations people come up with, but if it's just totally wrong and they're not willing to actually listen to God's word, I think we have to have a place of saying this isn't merely sort of an innocent misunderstanding. This is actually a culpable refusal to understand and believe what God's word says. So that's how when you get to something like a pornography, homosexuality, the end goes, you're right, people will try to justify anything. And we have to be able to put the line down and say, no, that's not Christian conduct. Even while I think being very careful not to kind of, we do want to err on the side of charity and grace, yeah. Robert? If you're not around the body, the body can't see what you're doing. Yeah. And the other one is, do you have an idea, I'm not asking, I'm not asking that as a decision, I keep on saying the word, but how many cases have the elders dealt with that stopped shy of the final step, that result in the first step? And you had many, or are they always, if it comes up, y'all are just, that came out wrong. If it comes up, they're already in the point where step one and two Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it's a great question. I would think quite a few. Yeah. I would say most. Yeah. If you're ever in a discussion about, hey, this is something we need to think about pursuing, a number of those all the way to the end of the process is a minority. Yeah. Because I know the ones that don't go to the church, we don't hear about, and we're equally stuck. Yeah. Yeah. Faith? So in Matthew 18, it says if your brother sins against you, what sort of qualifier is that? To start that, go to him. Because someone else doing pornography, right? Is it just once you're aware of it, that becomes? How do you define it, I guess? Yeah, no, great question. hit on that a little more in the coming week or two, because we're talking about the process of how to practice it. And there are some that, because Matthew 18 is most directly talking about personal offenses. And there are some that try to view that as exclusive to that. And then there's this whole different process for a different kind of offense, like a public sin. Well, that's what 1 Corinthians 5 calls for. It's totally different. I think there's somewhere in the middle where there are some core principles that we need to apply universally. But then there are some distinctions. For example, if it's something on the newspaper, I don't think there's this rigid, well, we have to go one person and then two or three. There are some differences. But the principle of, yeah, we want to keep it as private as possible, and it only becomes more public if necessary, I think that's more universal. So we can talk through some of the specifics there, but great question. Yeah? Jay and his deserter wear a tank top. The clarity isn't just clarity with scripture, but maybe clarity in terms of like being able to present it to the church that is clearly out of bounds. So I think there's some level of like, okay, if we could ask the other stuff, we're going to get tinkered up with and it's distracting, but that's more like a wisdom issue. Now if you were to start bringing a tambourine and beating to your own drum every Sunday during the music, that's going to threaten the goodness and order, where everyone's going to say, that's not a good idea. So some of it, there's a clarity in which we all can see this is out of bounds with scripture. because the whole church has to be convinced about it. So there's a way in which, you know, it's not just principle like it's so clear in scripture, you're not doing what I want you to, but it's also like everyone would also agree, like, this isn't helpful for the whole body. And I think to some degree, just God's wisdom, because it's something the whole church has to vote on, there's a certain protection. It's not just a couple people deciding, well, we think this is so clear. It does require the whole body agreeing. You may have covered this earlier, but I may have missed it. Can you go into more detail of what it means to be removed from a fellowship? So I know in some cases, they figure that's more than they have time for. But yeah, some cases, that's just, you can't have community with us, but you can still fellowship with us, come to Bible studies, come to church. Yeah, super good question. We are out of time. I will try to give the very, very brief answer. Can you explain about this one right now? Yes, I think there. In general, even someone who is removed by discipline, we would welcome to come to a public service because it's a public service so they can hear the gospel because we actually want them to repent and we think God's Word being preached is a chief means that might bring that about. We would not share communion with them. We also would need to be careful in how we relate to them. I'm not going to sort of casually hang out with them in a way that is sort of conveying a sense of camaraderie. because I am trying to communicate to them something of the gravity and weight, and be very careful, because I think they're already self-deceived in thinking things are okay between me and God when they're not, and I don't want them to misinterpret that as sort of an affirming. So those would be, there's some nuance there, but it's a great question. All right, well, I'm gonna go ahead and close us in prayer. It's been a great discussion. We'll pick this up next week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we as a body can talk about this weighty topic, and thank you for the spirit of this church and a desire that we share to do what your word says, even when it is difficult. Lord, we pray that through this you would sanctify us, you would help us to become more faithful disciples of Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.