The Severe Grace of Church Discipline
INTRODUCTION
As a young church, we have not yet experienced a public church discipline case. While the elders have been active in encouraging, admonishing, and occasionally suspending individuals from the Lord’s Supper privately, we have not yet reached the point of needing to go through the formal process of excommunication.
But if we are a faithful church, a time is coming when we will have to work through this together. Therefore, we should seek to understand the biblical practice of formal church discipline now in order that we may be found faithful when confronted with the task.
THE TEXT
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife! 2 And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. 3 For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. 4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 5 deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. 10 Yet I certainly did not meanwith the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. 12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? 13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person”
(1 Corinthians 5 NKJV).
WHAT WE DISCIPLINE
It could be said that there are two kinds of church discipline. The first kind is formative discipline – we sit under the preaching/teaching of God’s Word, we receive the sacraments, and we participate in the ebb and flow of community life. This is positive discipline.
The second kind is corrective discipline – beginning with private admonition, bringing in two or three witnesses, suspension from the Lord’s Supper, and ultimately excommunication (Mt. 18:15–20). This is remedial discipline.
The kinds of sins that lead to formal church discipline are unrepentant, outward, and serious.
WHY WE DISCIPLINE
We practice discipline for the good of the offender, with the hope that they will repent and be restored.
We practice discipline for the good of the church, to prevent the spread of sin, to maintain our witness to the world, and to honor God and prevent His coming in judgment against us.
HOW WE DISCIPLINE
All remedial church discipline is conducted with patience and grace, imitating our Lord.
When the individual is simply unrepentant and their sin rises to the level of needing formal discipline, the elders will suspend them from the Lord’s Supper for a limited time (2 Thess. 2:15–17). If they continue in their unrepentant sin, the final step is public excommunication. This typically involves a hearing, in which charges of sin with witnesses are brought forth and the individual has the opportunity to defend themselves. At a subsequent meeting of the elders, a verdict is voted on and communicated to the congregation at the next Lord’s Day service.
CONCLUSION: THE SEVERE GRACE OF DISCIPLINE
At the end of our passage, the Apostle Paul ends with this exhortation, “Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person” (1 Cor. 5:13b).
This is a quotation from Deuteronomy, in which the unrepentant sinner was to be put to death, removing them from the covenant community (Dt. 13:5, 17:7–12, 19:19, 21:21). Under the New Covenant, while the civil magistrate still bears the sword (Rom. 13:4), the people of God remove the unrepentant from the covenant community by excommunication. In a very real sense, this is an obvious mercy under the New Covenant. At the same time, excommunication points to a spiritual reality more severe than physical death—spiritual death. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt. 10:28).
Discipline that honors Christ must be exercised with a sober understanding of the severity of such judgment, and with a spirit of meekness, humility, and love.
The goal of excommunication is not punishment but restoration. It is meant to be an act of mercy toward the unrepentant sinner, that by the Spirit they would be awakened to their sin, repent, and seek the forgiveness that is only found in Christ.