Church Discipline - 6. When? (Examples)

All right, well, I think this is week six of church discipline. What, why, when, and how? There should be some notes on the back of the prayer sheet to help you follow along. So we began by thinking, what is church discipline? And we talked about a couple of foundations for understanding it. You know, what's a disciple of Jesus? What is church membership? And then I came up with sort of a, The shortest definition I could articulate of church discipline, and 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 we talked about why. So what is the purpose of this? Why would we, you know, cease to regard someone as a Christian? This sounds maybe unloving to some. Well, what is the purpose? And number one, the purpose is to restore the offender. The goal is not to sort of punish this person, but to win them, to help them to see that sin leads to destruction. And therefore, we want them to be restored and to truly believe and follow Christ. Then secondly, it's to protect other believers. Number three, it's to preserve the witness of the church. And then number four, it's for the glory of God. That's really the umbrella purpose over them all. Then last week we started talking about, so when? When is church discipline called for? What kind of sin would result in church discipline? And I said it's only sin that meets three qualifications. So it must be unrepentant, So even when this person is confronted and so on, they're refusing to repent of that sin. Number two, it must be observable. So it's not just sort of hidden in the heart. There's some sort of observable expression of it through words and actions. We're not just sort of reading between the lines or something like that. And then number three, it needs to be clear. And by clear, what I mean is clear in scripture. So this isn't, you know, something that I've made like five inferences from what the Bible says to come up with, you know, in my conscience says that's sin. And so, you know, like that would be a basis for church discipline. No, it's something that is clear in scripture where it's clear that this person by, you know, choosing to live in that sin, they are not obeying Christ. They're disobeying God's word, not just sort of yeah, the sensibilities of someone else's conscience. So that's when church discipline would be called for, the kind of sin. Now, what I wanna do today is consider a few sort of examples that I think are particularly important to think about because they're either things that maybe people have asked us about, like, hey, what about this case? Or they might be things that will come up somewhat regularly in the life of the church that we're just going to have to deal with, so we need to think through. Or, and or, they're sort of tricky. So we got to think through how do we apply these situations here. It may seem very straightforward when someone is sort of in a adulterous relationship. Yeah, well, of course that's clearly sin, that's observable, and if they're refusing to repent, Straightforward. But what do we do in these other cases? So there's three. If we have time, we'll kind of work through these three tonight. You can see them on your sheet. And the first is what about the case of heresy? So what do you do when someone believes false doctrine? Is that a basis for church discipline? And I just want to briefly argue that in the case of heresy that's unrepentant, I think the answer is yes. That is a situation where church discipline would be called for. Now, what do I mean by heresy? I think it's important to define that to understand what I'm saying. So for those of you who've taken the membership class, you know that we have this, we introduce you to what we call theological triage. And so the idea that there's primary, secondary, and tertiary doctrinal matters. So primary matters would be things that you must believe to be a Christian. So you must believe that Jesus is fully God and fully man. You must believe certain things about who God is and about what the gospel is to be a Christian. Secondary issues are things that you have to agree on to have a church together. So we have to agree on how we're going to practice the ordinances, how we're going to worship God, how our church is going to be governed. These are things that we have to be able to agree about to have a local church together. And other Christians in different churches may disagree. That doesn't mean they're not Christians. It's just we differ on that issue. And then there's tertiary matters, which are things that we could disagree about within the same church. So, it could be a theological issue, like, what's your view of the millennium? It could be something practical, you know, what you think about homeschooling, or a woman working outside the home. Like, there's all sorts of issues that maybe, you know, we have slightly different views on within the church. That's okay, these are tertiary matters. Now, when I say heresy, I mean a primary level issue. So I mean not the secondary tertiary, I mean an issue that is something, you're denying something that you must believe in order to be a true Christian. So church discipline is not for these secondary or tertiary doctrinal differences. Now, hypothetically, I think a secondary tertiary matter could lead to church discipline. You know, if the person insisted on teaching contrary to the elders and they begin sowing division, but then the discipline wouldn't be for doctrine, but for divisiveness and insubordination. So what I'm arguing is that church discipline for belief is for cases of heresy, which are primary level doctrinal issues. Now, just one other caveat in this definition is that I would make a distinction between heresy and apostasy. So I would say that an apostate is someone who once claimed to be a Christian, but no longer claims to be. I think ordinarily when we think of a heretic, we mean someone who's still claiming to be a Christian while believing something contrary to Christian doctrine. And the reason that matters is because the heretic is self-deceived and has the potential to deceive others in a way that the apostate person's not. The apostate person is not claiming to be a Christian. They still are denying truths of the faith. They still can deceive others. They still should not be a member of our church. But there is something slightly different with the person who is continuing to say, I am a Christian. I represent Christ. I am standing for Christianity and yet they're actually denying fundamentals and misrepresenting that. So there's, just trying to kind of hone in, that's exactly what I'm talking about with heresy. So that's what heresy is. Now, why would heresy be a basis for church discipline? And I want to lay out three reasons. First, because of what a disciple is. So if we go back to remembering the definition I shared way back when about, what is a disciple? Well, a disciple is someone who's committed to believing and obeying whatever Jesus says. Right? So discipleship is, it's, I'm going to trust Christ and I'm going to follow Him and obey Him. Well, heresy is saying, I'm not committed to believing what Jesus says. So they do not meet the criteria for a disciple based on the definition we unpacked earlier. Second, because of what membership is. So if you remember how we looked at Matthew chapter 16 and 18 where Jesus gives the church the keys of the kingdom and the authority to bind and loose. Well, in Matthew 16, that's tied to Peter's confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And then in Matthew 18, that's tied to the person who's saying they follow Jesus, but then they're sinning and they won't repent even when more and more people confront them. So in the first case, it's tied to doctrine. confessing the truth about Christ. In the second case, it's tied to practice or behavior. And I think the point is, a member of a church is to be someone who both confesses the truth about Christ and lives as his disciple. That's what the keys of the kingdom and the binding and loosing is for to recognize those who are living as genuine disciples and welcome them into the church and then to release or remove or discipline exclude those who are either not Confessing the truth about Christ or not living as disciples of Christ so You know, the same way that we wouldn't allow a heretic to join our church, we would not allow them to continue as a member of our church. And then the third reason is just because of examples in scripture. So think about what a disciple is, think about what membership is. And then number three, there's actually examples in the New Testament where I think we see church discipline applied to cases of belief. A lot of times we just think of sort of Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5 when we think about church discipline in the New Testament. But as we saw in the first week where we listed out, I think it was like 13, different passages in the New Testament that relate to this, at least six of them have to do with doctrine. Just to remind you of a few, one in 2 John, it says that everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, Do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. Also in Titus chapter one, Paul writes, speaking of an elder, he must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. For there are many who are insubordinate, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision party. They must be silenced since they are upsetting whole families by teaching for shameful gain what they ought not to teach. Romans chapter 16, Paul writes, I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Avoid them. And then in first Timothy chapter one, we read about the example of Hymenaeus, whom Paul says he handed over to Satan for blasphemy. And he doesn't flesh out what the blasphemy was, but interestingly, in 2 Timothy, he mentions Hymenaeus again. And at that point, he says that he had swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. So it sounds like, you know, in Hymenaeus' case, there was some sort of heretical teaching, the resurrection already happened, that was tied to his excommunication. So for those reasons, I think heresy can be a grounds for doctrine. But now to think, okay, but when? So let's apply the three criteria that we already laid out last time. So is it unrepentant sin? Well, I would start by saying many of us have probably inadvertently been heretics at some point. Has anyone here tried to use an analogy to explain the Trinity? You know, maybe you did that as a young Christian. You probably were being heretical when you did that. You see, excommunication is when heresy is unrepentant, which means this is someone who is refusing correction, right? Not just someone who gets something wrong by accident, but the person who is shown that this is why you're wrong and they stubbornly dig in their heels and it's clear they won't listen, like Matthew 18 says. They won't listen to you or ultimately to scripture. Number two, is it observable? You know, so this is something that has to come out in their words, right? It's not something that, you know, we draw inferences from some vague statement they made. It's we press with clarifying questions to understand exactly what they're saying and there needs to be clear from their own words that yes, they are actually believing heresy. And then thirdly, is it clear? Now, this again goes back to theological triage, and I would argue that anything that actually is heresy is by definition clear in Scripture. Because the whole point of heresy is that this is not one of these issues that all the great theologians are just divided about. You know, there's a consensus, there's a clarity of this is what Christians believe. And these are not sort of peripheral unimportant matters. These are things that tie integrally to the central truth about who God is and about what the gospel is and how we can be saved. And therefore, these are things that God has not left ambiguous in His Word. And these are things that God has ultimately been very clear about. And, you know, believing heresy and continuing to believe it, even when you're being corrected, is to reject God's own word. And so there's real moral weight to it. I mean, it's refusing to trust God himself. And then even in addition to that, I think there's more weight to it because in order to believe something false, like my own works can sort of somehow contribute or earn my salvation. I mean, that betrays something very profoundly problematic about how we think about God and His holiness, how we think about our sin and its seriousness. It's really a moral issue. Kind of like if someone were to study World War II history and then they were to conclude that the Nazis were in the right. You know, that would leave immediately, you know, you would recognize a real moral weight to that belief. You know, it would reveal something disturbing about the heart. And that's really what heresy is as well in terms of our relationship with God. So for all those reasons, I think heresy that's unrepentant, observable, and clear is sin that would call for church discipline. Any pause there for any questions about that? David. So I know that when we're dealing with believers in the church who have been excommunicated, we're not supposed to offer them room in our house or whatever, or I guess that's what that person said. What do you do with Mormons? Because they would say they're the church. I would say they're not. Can you invite them into the house as a witnessing opportunity? Yeah, I think, I would argue, I think the spirit of that is not so much to, like the focus is sort of, okay, if they cross the threshold of your door, like that's what the issue is. It's more the issue of are you communicating to them and also to the watching world that there's some sort of camaraderie there. You know, so the first century, well, these people are going around, and Christianity is sort of this new thing, and they're saying they're Christian, and then they know you're Christian, and they go into your house. Well, they're just gonna assume, oh, those are all Christians together. But these people are not speaking for Christ. They're going around misrepresenting him. So I think he's trying to say we need to be very clear about that. So I would say if the goal is to have a witnessing opportunity, I think that's probably fine. But we should be very careful. We don't want to support them in their work and say, oh, you know, you're here, you need a place to stay. Well, we'll kind of help make that comfortable and you can have a nice, you know, base from which to go out and, you know, reach my neighbors. Like, well, that's participating in wicked work. So, yeah. Jacob? It's a great question. Yeah, and you know, I mean, it really comes back to just, yeah, the the reality of denominations and so on in the world. And I think at the end of the day, it's just it's because of sin. It's because we live in a fallen world and you know, we have space for recognizing that believers who are genuinely trying to understand scripture, there are secondary things that we can come to a different opinion on. It doesn't mean there's not some culpability for that. Like, I don't think the problem is scripture is just ambiguous about something like baptism or how to, the Lord's supper or worship, like, but, There does, I do have a category for someone who, I say, this person's committed to believing and obeying what Christ says, and yet, you know, this is an issue we concede, okay, there can be kind of this agree to disagree, but then there's this level where we just, we can't go there because, yeah, it's just fundamental to, you know, Yeah, what being a Christian means. Yeah. Yeah. I believe this is really the better way, but I don't find a like-minded church where I can feel comfortable that way. But I will go along with what the church has established as a practice and not teach against it and go around saying, we really need to switch that. Because we've been clear about how we're going to do these practices. We've had people at times who essentially Ultimately left us here to a Presbyterian church because they decided on baptism. That was too important to them. But there were periods where we had people who, like, they stayed even though their preference would be to take that Presbyterian approach to baptism, but they thought this was the best church for them. But they weren't going to go around and try to convince everybody else to take that opinion that was different from the church's stated doctrine. I was looking back at what happened recently with Oliver, how the move to remove him was because he joined the Roman Catholic Church. The statement said was that we've done this very amitably. College of the Gospel, they denied the gospel. And many people, apart from just first hearing about that, that during that meeting were confused about what Roman Catholic faith was. of what exactly the person says or believes that is heretical to an information, to have a hereticism. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, it's necessary to be clear what is heretical about this and why. So, yeah. Kind of case by case basis. All right, well, good questions there. We got a few minutes left. I want to press on to at least the second one of these, which is an issue that I think may be sort of more common, and that's that of non-attendance. So what should we do when a member is in prolonged non-attendance at services? Would that be a basis for church discipline? Now to be clear, I don't mean someone with some sort of a legitimate excuse, right? Like a homebound member or someone with sort of a health issue. I mean someone who could be here but is simply choosing not to. Yeah, and I bring this up, as I already said, it's something we're going to face somewhat regularly. Also, I think it's one of those things that doesn't really register for a lot of Christians as something you would discipline for. It just doesn't really offend our conscience the way that someone who's extorting money from the church or living in adultery. That kind of riles us up. In a way, this is one of those things we, I think, often don't think is that big of a deal. But let's try to apply our criteria to think through this one. So number one, is it unrepentant? Well, this is one of the things that's very easy to tell, right? Repentance of not attending church would be just attending church. So it's a very external, obvious thing there. Number two, is it observable? Well, again, yes, it's very clear and outward. So really the question is, number three, is it clear that scripture demands that Christians gather for worship? Is it clear that scripture demands that Christians be actively part of a local church? And I want to argue that the answer to that is yes. That scripture actually does make clear that the just fundamental to following Christ is gathering for worship. I think first and foremost, if we just think back to the fact that, you know, we follow Christ, I mean, He died for us and calls us to die to ourselves, to take up our cross and follow Him. So our whole life is to revolve around Him. And so just how could we not prioritize worshiping Him? To gather, like, whatever else, you know, we may want to do in our life, like the worship of Christ should be so central. I mean, we should want to come together to worship Him for dying for us, saving us, to remembering His resurrection on the first day of the week. Now, some people will say things like, well, you know, I just like to worship Jesus in private, you know, I like to worship Jesus in nature, and certainly we can and should do those things. But, you know, Hebrews 10.25, for example, let us not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Scripture is very clear about this priority of the church assembling. You read through the Acts and the Epistles, and it's very clear that there was a pattern of the early church gathering on the first day of the week to remember the resurrection of Christ, to have special meetings for corporate worship. We don't get to choose just, I want to worship Jesus however I want to worship Him. We need to worship Him how He wants to be worshipped. I think the Bible is very clear that He puts a priority on corporate worship. that that must be part of our worship of Him. Further, when Christ saves us, He saves us to belong to His body, the Church. The very most important command He gives is, He says, a new command I give to you, as I have loved you, you are to love one another. In fact, He says, by this all will know that you're my disciples, by the way that you love one another. I mean, He wants commitment to loving one another to really be this fundamental way that He is revealed to the world and that others know that we follow Him. And then as you read through the epistles not only are we commanded to love one another, but to welcome one another, to instruct one another, to greet one another, to wait for one another, to comfort one another, to serve one another, to bear with one another, to forgive one another, to sing to one another, to speak truth to one another, to encourage one another, to exhort one another, to stir one another up to love and good works, to confess our sins to one another, to submit to one another. I mean, how can we possibly meaningfully fulfill those commands if we don't even meet with one another, if we don't gather? Even more pointedly in Hebrews 13, 17, it says, Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you." You know, how is the person who doesn't even come to church, I mean, how are they obeying or submitting to the leaders of the church when we've tried to say, like, that's the very foundation of discipleship here? And then finally, remember our church covenant. The very first line in the covenant says, we will regularly join in public worship, Bible study, and prayer as a church family. We will also observe baptism in the Lord's Supper, the ordinances of Christ. Someone who's not attending isn't joining for those things. They're not observing the Lord's Supper with us. They're not keeping their own word when they join the church and made that promise to us. So for all those reasons, I think that non-attendance is clear sin. It's unrepentant, it's observable, and it's clear. And so it can be an excommunicable offense. Now, of course, as we'll talk about next week, there's a whole process to discipline. The goal is not to discipline people. The goal is to seek that wandering sheep, to win them back, to help them understand what following Christ is all about. Maybe they would be better in another church. Maybe they're not here because this is just not a great fit. Well, we would love to see them plugged into some church where they can you know, actively participate in the life of the church and follow Christ. You know, maybe they're just not very informed. Well, we have that obligation to help instruct them. But I think the point here is that we really should not and cannot just go on forever with having a member who's on our rolls but is just sort of willfully not present and totally removed from the body. So, any questions about that one? Crawford? How would you deal with, I imagine maybe if someone like I was talking to for a month or longer that that would be clear, but what even just about like consistent like being hit or miss, like how would you deal with something like that? That's a great question. You know, it is one of those places where there has to be some space for kind of where, where maybe I think you should be, I want you to be, and where you choose to be, that, you know, I think, you know, if we're gonna err on being either too sort of firm and disciplined or too lax, I would rather err toward a little too lax. But that's also where, you know, church discipline is just the tip of the pyramid. And there's this much bigger pyramid of, you know, the goal in that case I don't think is thinking, well, discipline, remove the person, but it's, you know, how do I help them be more spiritually healthy? Where they want to be here, where they're better prioritizing and they're growing in the way they should be. So this is really particularly the person that's just not at all present. Yeah. Any other questions? Pat, I saw your hand. Well, we are at time, so I'm going to go ahead and close us in prayer there. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for this time to reflect on your word and your truth and just a weighty topic. Lord, thank you for the spirit of just this body and desiring to obey your word and even address things that are difficult. Lord, we pray that as we reflect on this, we would be spurred on to greater holiness and faithfulness ourselves, and that you would make your church here in this place more and more healthy and holy for your glory. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, as we close,