When should a church discipline members?

A veteran church administrator explores the role of church discipline, how to balance justice and mercy in the exercise of discipline, and how to distinguish disciplinable conduct.

Walter Raymond Beach, a former secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, is now retired and residing in Loma Linda, California.
To even begin to formulate an answer to this question involves a further problem: How important is it for the church to be pure and united? The answer is apparent in yet an other question: How important are purity and unity to God? For God designed the church on the pattern of His own character.

What is the character of God? God is holy. God is righteous. God is one, God intends His church, there fore, to be pure, undefiled, and united. When the church is unholy or disunited it denies the character of God. And to the extent the church is wanting in God's character, it loses God's power in its performance.

Certainly a bickering, disunited church projects an image of God that can be expected to turn people off. People believe in love, purity, and unity when they see and experience it. When the church compromises and becomes hypocritical in either doctrine or life, its power is dissipated. Then the church's testimony to the world remains ineffective, and its purpose to provide a family circle (koinonia) in which members can grow into the maturity of Christ (Eph. 4:11-16) is frustrated. When love or discipline is missing, the mission of the church is flawed at the core.

Here we come face to face with a basic problem: How can the church balance justice and mercy, discipline and loving acceptance? How can the church maintain unity and purity at the same time?

A key word is balance, not easy to achieve. We continuously must con tend, it would seem, with the ardent unifiers on the one hand, and the professional purifiers on the other. The polarized human tendency is either to unite at all costs, no matter how delinquent the doctrine and/or conduct, or to proceed to separate the wheat from the tares now!

To be sure, separation to a degree is essential to holiness. There is, however, an unholy separation—a separation that neglects love and mercy, and descends inevitably into judgmentalism and schism. Like wise, unity is good—it is the fundamental character of the Godhead and must be mirrored in the life of the church. Yet unholy unity appears when unity comes at the price of unfaithfulness, compromise, and doctrinal defilement.

What a dilemma! Yet there is a solution: it is the exercise of proper church discipline. And the Bible clearly teaches church discipline. Ultimately church discipline separates people from church member ship. The New Testament outlines a pattern for proper church discipline. None less than the Master made it clear who is to be disciplined, why he is to be disciplined, and how he is to be disciplined. A look at this pat tern will enable us to avoid extremes and to achieve disciplinary balance.

Who should be disciplined?

The New Testament makes it clear that a person must be disciplined if he is guilty of unrepentant, overt moral delinquency. "Root out the evil-doer from your community," advised the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 5:13, N.E.B.).* The apostles required the same stern treatment for one guilty of teaching heresy: "If anyone preaches a gospel at variance with the gospel which you received, let him be outcast!" (Gal. 1:9). John went so far as to say of promoters of heresy, "If anyone comes to you who does not bring this doctrine, do not welcome him into your house or give him a greeting; for anyone who gives him a greeting is an accomplice in his wicked deeds" (2 John 11).

It should be noted that the discipline recommended on these two counts makes allowance for the one who fails in some sin of the spirit or who sins and repents (see 1 John 5:13-18). However, the strictest discipline is to be meted out to one who sins deliberately and continues unrepentantly in open violation of the law of God. It is also important to notice that discipline in matters of faith is not for one whose weakness is limited to personal questionings and doubts. Wrote Jude on this point: "There are some doubting souls who need your pity; snatch them from the flames and save them" (Jude 22). But when personal doubts are nurtured and articulated to the point that teachings contrary to fundamentals of the gospel are proclaimed, church discipline is in dispensable.

When the church fails to discipline in cases of unrepented, overt moral delinquency and the teaching of heresy, it becomes guilty of the sin of impurity and of unholy unity, and stands under the judgment of God. On the other hand, when separation is decreed for reasons other than moral dereliction or the teaching of heresy, the church becomes guilty of unholy separation and the sin of schism, which brings it likewise under the judgment of God.

Perhaps the most difficult problem in this connection is to determine what constitutes disciplinable heresy. Biblical principles indicate that disciplinable heresy concerns the fundamentals of the Christian faith, the cardinal doctrines of the church. Teaching beliefs contrary to such fundamentals, to the point of participating in divisive or disloyal op position to the church, is heresy. A sure test of heresy would come in failure of a member to submit to the authority and discipline of the church.

Why should the church discipline?

The primary purpose of discipline is to save or restore the person who has sinned. Discipline in Paul's day was "so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord" (1 Cor. 5:5). Through discipline, men were to learn not to be blasphemous (see 1 Tim. 1:20).

To the church at Thessalonica, Paul wrote:

"My friends, . . . never tire of doing right. If anyone disobeys our instructions given by letter, mark him well, and have no dealings with him until he is ashamed of himself. I do not mean treat him as an enemy, but give him friendly advice, as one of the family" (2 Thess. 3:13-15).

In short, church discipline is designed as a means of grace, not of destruction; as an evidence of love, not of hate or of fear.

A second motive in church discipline is to warn others. Discipline in this sense is a deterrent to sin. "Those who commit sins you must expose publicly, to put fear into the others" (1 Tim. 5:20).

One can perceive in apostolic discipline a third legitimate motive: church discipline can be useful in protecting the reputation of Christ and of the church. The fair name of the church and the Christian deserve protection from public reproach. The church should be sensitive to this requirement. Protection like wise extends to the members of the church. Defilement must not be given free course. Significantly, though, the protection motive is in the background of New Testament teaching. Protection is implied, but this apparently is not the primary motive in the apostle's mind. The name of Christ and the church are strong and quite able to survive human failures. So can the individual Christian who trusts God. Could it be, too, that there was fear, should protection become the primary motive in place of love for the sinner, that discipline could quickly degenerate into forms of inquisition?

One must note that the purpose of church discipline never is to be punitive or retributive. Our God re serves retribution to Himself. "My dear friends," wrote the apostle Paul to the Romans, "do not seek revenge, but leave a place for divine retribution; for there is a text which reads, 'Justice is mine, says the Lord, I will repay'" (chap. 12:19).

In short, Biblical teaching excludes all legalism, vindictiveness, fear, pride, or human presumption from the exercise of church discipline.

In the church only God can be the ultimate judge. We are a fellowship of mercy receivers.

How is church discipline to be administered?

The first step in the exercise of discipline is prayer and self-examination. Said the Master, " 'First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's' " (Matt. 7:5). Paul established ground rules that excluded conceit, rivalry, jealousy, and wrongdoing. "You who are endowed with the spirit," he said, "must set him [the erring one] right again very gently. Look to yourself, each one of you: you may be tempted too. Help one another to carry these heavy loads" (Gal. 6:1, 2).

''Not until you feel that you could sacrifice your own self-dignity, and even lay down your life in order to save an erring brother, have you cast the beam out of your own eye so that you are prepared to help your brother. Then you can approach him and touch his heart. No one has ever been reclaimed from a wrong position by censure and reproach; but may have thus been driven from Christ and led to seal their hearts against conviction. A tender spirit, a gentle, winning deportment, may save the erring and hide a multitude of sins" (Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, pp. 128, 129).

The person who has not carefully examined his own life is disqualified to be God's agent in discipline.

The New Testament pattern for church discipline is outlined by the Master Himself (see Matt. 18:15-18).

The first step is to go to the brother in personal counsel. " 'If your brother commits a sin, go and take the matter up with him, strictly between yourselves, and if he listens to you, you have won your brother over'" (verse 15).

Paul emphasized the importance of this first step (see Galatians 6:1, 2; Rom. 15:1). For him it was schismatic and evil to go to anyone else first. When one does speak to others first, unfavorable reports soon circulate through the church. One per son is told, and then another and still another, until salvation of the sinner becomes well nigh impossible.

The second step, should the first be ineffective, is to take other spiritual-minded members along to counsel with the erring one. " 'If he will not listen, take one or two others with you, so that all facts may be duly established on the evidence of two or three witnesses'" (Matt. 18:16).

Apparently Paul practiced this procedure when he required that "a heretic should be warned once, and once again; after that, have done with him, recognizing that a man of that sort has a distorted mind and stands self-condemned in his sin" (Titus 3:10, 11). And that a charge was not to be entertained against an elder "unless it is supported by two or three witnesses" (1 Tim. 5:19).

Collective church discipline then follows as the final step. " 'If he [the erring one] refuses to listen to them [one or two others], report the matter to the congregation; and if he will not listen even to the congregation, you must then treat him as you would a pagan or a tax-gatherer' " (Matt. 18:17).

It should be noted in connection with this procedure that church discipline is best carried out by disciplinarians who, in addition to spiritual preparation, can speak authoritatively for the church community. It is dangerous and often confusing to assume the responsibility of administering discipline independent of responsible relationships in the church.

An overview of this subject prompts me to make the following observations:

1. The secular world seems to grow more lax in moral matters and in the observance of God's commandments. At such a time the church must not compromise the absolutes set by God. Proper church discipline requires prompt, decisive action. On the other hand, there must be no substitution of private standards for those proclaimed in God's Word and adopted by the church. No minister, individual church, or conference has authority to establish tests of fellowship for the world church.

2. If erring members are to be separated from church fellowship, this should be accomplished as set forth in the apostolic pattern. There are, you see, many ways besides this to break fellowship or to separate, hurt, discipline, or punish the erring one. Critical talk, unholy pressures from the pulpit or the pen, and other un-Biblical ways are occasionally resorted to. The result often is the sin of schism, which God does not view lightly. Paul places strife, jealousies, factions, divisions, and intrigues right along with other works of the flesh (see Gal. 5:19-21.)

3. God's balance in righteousness, love, and faithfulness is the way of Calvary, through which it is impossible to have too much love or too much faithfulness or too much justice. It is quite possible, however, apart from Calvary's agape love to have unfaithfulness masquerading as love and unlove masquerading as faithfulness.

So we return to our point of departure: God's character must find its reflection in His people today, for God designed the church on the pat tern of His own character. Church discipline is the human instrumentality that God uses to achieve His design.

Note:

* Unless otherwise indicated, all texts quoted in this article are from The New English Bible. The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970. Reprinted by permission.


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Walter Raymond Beach, a former secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, is now retired and residing in Loma Linda, California.

March 1978

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