Article “Church Discipline: Guarding the Gospel” by Forrest McPhail – original source – https://rootedthinking.com/2022/06/23/church-discipline-guarding-the-gospe/

Forrest has served as a missionary in Buddhist Cambodia in Southeast Asia for the last twenty years. He presently serves as the Asia/Australia/Oceania regional director for Gospel Fellowship Association missions. He enjoys writing and teaching on missions and the Buddhist worldview. He and his wife, Jennifer, have 4 children.

Ever heard of church discipline? Have you experienced church discipline or seen it practiced in a local church?

Shortly after publishing Pioneer Missions, I had opportunity to discuss the book with a number of cross-cultural missionaries from around the world who read it, including Korean, American, British, and Canadian workers. One part of the book that provoked much discussion was what I said about church discipline. In the book, I urge church planting missionaries to understand the importance of church discipline in guarding the Gospel. One missionary, upon reading how this is emphasized in the New Testament, expressed dismay that he had never seen it practiced in his large urban sending church.

In the last couple of weeks, I have had two cross-cultural missionaries speak with me about church discipline. Our team here in Cambodia has also been re-hashing this teaching. Two Cambodians believers living overseas (Canada and USA) have written me seeking counsel about it. Both Cambodians wanted to know how to deal with someone regularly attending their churches that profess Jesus Christ as Savior but continue to live in sexual immorality. In both cases, the immoral person knew they could not become members without repentance, so they chose not to become members. How would you counsel, from Scripture, concerned believers as well as those still in sin?

We Know Certain Things to be True:

• When Jesus saves a person from their sins, He begins the work of changing them and making them more like Him. He gives them His Spirit (Eph 1:13-14). They have been “born again” (Jn 3:1-7) and have become/are becoming “new creatures/creations” (2 Cor 5:17) by God’s grace.
• God demands that certain sins be repented of immediately if a person professes to know Christ: idolatry (worship of other gods), sexual immorality, drunkenness, greed/swindling/theft, reviling, and refusal to live in unity because of jealousy, envy, and covetousness (1 Cor 5-6; Gal 5:19-21). These sins are listed in regard to repentance multiple times in the New Testament.
• If a person refuses to repent, then their profession in faith in Christ is to be tested by church discipline. If they are God’s child, the Lord will chasten him/her until he/she repents and accepts new life in Christ (1 Cor 5:4-5).
•  If the person living in sin is unrepentant under discipline, it is to be concluded that they are not of Christ. Words mean nothing. The assumption is that they will not “be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor 5:4-5).
• It is supposed to be clear who is “in” Christian fellowship, and who is “out”. Those who are members, those “among us” (1 Cor 5:13) and “of us” (1 Jn 2:19)  enjoy spiritual fellowship with us as acknowledged believers in Jesus. These take the Lord’s Table with us, pray with us, etc. Some, even though they profess to be followers of Jesus, are to be excluded from this fellowship because of their rebellion against the Lord.

To Judge or not to Judge?

Only God can see the heart (1 Sam 16:7). We must not judge others in a self-righteous way (Mt 7:1-5). Yet, as we saw above, God Himself teaches His people to look at the lifestyles of those who profess to know Him and make judgments about them. We are to determine whether or not a person’s life shows that they are a Christian. If someone stubbornly continues in the types of sin mentioned above, their lives broadcast a vivid contradiction to their profession. People that remain like this must not be allowed to stay in fellowship with God’s people. 

It is easy to understand why these passages of Scripture are so unpopular, swept under the rug as though they don’t exist. All of us who are in Christ know we are but saved sinners. We all continue to fight our sinful flesh and the influence of the world. Most of us want to err on the side of mercy and compassion. Some seem to think that church discipline would turn people away from salvation in Christ.

Why is Church Discipline so Important to God?

1. Church discipline clarifies the Gospel. The Gospel message is one of repentance and faith. There is no such thing as faith that is not repentant. And repentance is not merely a mental exercise in the realm of knowledge—it results in a changed life. If the message that we preach does not proclaim repentance and the reality of new life in Jesus, only addressing forgiveness of sins and promise of heaven, then we preach a false gospel. Church discipline undergirds the doctrine of repentance and shows that repentance includes a desire to obey God.

• Church discipline clarifies what it means to be “the Church.” The Body of Christ and its local expressions in congregations are for believers in Jesus. It is a fellowship of believers that exhorts each another to love and good works (Heb 10:24) , continuing in the apostles’ doctrine prayer, genuine life- on-life fellowship, and the Lord’s table (Acts 2:42), and pursuing new life in Christ to His glory (see all Epistles).
• Church discipline clarifies that local congregations exist for God and His glory above all else (1 Cor 10:31). By obeying Christ and exercising church discipline, we keep God on the throne, not our own ideas or agendas, not unbelievers and their perceived needs. To fail to use church discipline as needed is to remove God’s blessing on a church. It is disobedience. It is a distortion of the Gospel before unbelievers. It betrays a view of the local church that dishonors God.

Patience, love, kindness, and discretion are all needed in good measure when considering church discipline. There is no room for self-righteous attitudes, impatience, or anger.

Practical Ends of Church Discipline

Two practical purposes of church discipline are: 1) to save the soul of the one in need of discipline, that their faith in Christ would be real (1 Cor 5:5); 2) to remove the evil influence of those unrepentant from within the congregation (1 Cor 5:6-13).

Church discipline is vital to making disciples and being the Church.

Many who profess Christianity who have no desire to repent and obey Jesus. They simply don’t yet understand the Gospel until they are faced with church discipline–only then do they see that faith includes repentance.

If we truly love God, the Gospel, God’s people, and the unsaved, then we will most certainly lovingly pursue a sinning brother, all the way to the point of church discipline— if need be.[1]

[1] McPhail, Forrest. Pioneer Missions: Meet the Challenges, Share the Blessings (Kindle Location 579).

Article: 7 Well-Meaning Objections to Church Discipline — And How Pastors Ought to Respond to Them by  Caleb Greggsen, Sam Emadi (original source: https://www.9marks.org/article/7-well-meaning-objections-to-church-discipline-and-how-pastors-ought-to-respond-to-them/ )

“You preached those sermons on church membership and discipline point by point through the Bible . . . and I hated it!”

The chairman of the deacons at North Possum Baptist Church (fake name) spoke those words to a former pastor of mine (Sam). He’d just finished a series of sermons on the doctrine of the church. The most astounding and, frankly, disturbing thing about this opposition to membership and discipline was his acknowledgement that these doctrines were, in fact, plainly taught in Scripture.

Over the years we’ve encountered dozens of people in churches who have opposed the concept of discipline—grimacing, scowling, or bristling at the bare mention of the word. But we “9Marks guys” need to beware that we don’t assume everyone who winces at the mention of discipline is opposed to Scripture and bent on corrupting the church. Not everyone who opposes discipline does so with such brazen disregard for Scripture, as the deacon chairman did above. In fact, as we reflect on the church contexts where we’ve served, many wonderful, godly Christians have opposed discipline (at least initially) for understandable, albeit uninformed, unbiblical, and misguided reasons. They’re opponents, but not wolves. They’re simply sheep who have sadly endured decades of bad shepherding.

To that end, pastors must introduce discipline to a church slowly and wisely, enabling its members over time to exercise this authority faithfully. Merely teaching about discipline is not enough. They must also teach the doctrines that provide the gospel framework to support church discipline: conversion, holiness, repentance, membership, discipleship, and love.

Again, not everyone who opposes discipline does so with nefarious motives. Many are simply confused sheep with well-meaning but misguided theological principles.

Below we want briefly consider some of the “good-faith” objections to discipline we’ve encountered and how we try to help church members understand the theological principles undergirding discipline.

1. “Pastor, we can’t judge someone’s heart, so how could we possibly say someone is not a Christian?”

Of course it’s true that no one has infallible knowledge of another person’s heart. At the same time, we need to qualify that statement a bit. Jesus indicates that we wear our heart on our sleeve, speaking and acting according to what’s inside (Matt. 12:34; 15:10­–20). We can’t know someone’s heart but actions and words typically reveal the state of someone’s heart. As Jesus said, good trees produce good fruit and bad trees produce bad fruit (Matt 7:17).

2. “Jesus never turned anyone away.”

True, Jesus never turned away a repentant sinner. But Jesus did drive out money changers from the temple and didn’t stop the rich young ruler from walking away. Besides, the clearest teaching on church discipline comes from the Lord Jesus himself (Matt. 18:15–20).

Furthermore, discipline is not “turning someone away.” The church never turns away a repentant sinner seeking grace and forgiveness. The church only disciplines the obstinately sinful—those who are unwilling to repent of their sins while professing the name of Christ. Discipline is not turning people away who want Jesus, but identifying those who want sin more than they want Jesus.

3. “Nobody’s perfect. People make mistakes.”

Church discipline doesn’t mean we demand an extra measure of holiness or that churches that practice discipline are out to “get” the ordinary, struggling Christian. No one should ever get disciplined for not living up to some standard of super holiness. The only requirement to remain in the covenant community is that you daily respond to the gospel with faith and repentance. Nobody gets excommunicated for sin, per se. Rather, the church enacts discipline for unrepentant sin.

4. “But they won’t hear the gospel if they’re not in church.”

Discipline doesn’t require barring the disciplined from corporate worship or other gatherings of the church. Of course we want lost people (including unrepentant sinners who claim to be Christians) to hear the preaching of the Word and experience the corporate witness of the gathering. But we want them to know, if they’re unrepentant, that they observe the fellowship of the church from the border, not the center.

Most disciplined folks will not choose to continue attending church, at least initially. But how much good was their attendance doing before being disciplined if they’re self-deceived about their standing with God?

Moreover, many Christians view the church building as the only place the lost can legitimately receive salvation—as if the gospel is a product you can only get at certain stores. In response, pastors should teach their people a biblical doctrine of conversion and remind them that people come to faith as they encounter the gospel around water coolers, during backyard cookouts, and in innumerable other contexts as Christians faithfully carry out the Great Commission.

5. “I’ve never heard of this before!”

Sometimes Christians are suspicious of new ideas because they don’t like change—especially if it disrupts their comfort. But it’s also the case that many Christians are (rightly) skeptical of novel ministry trends because they feel put off by the many pastors they’ve witnessed parade through their church claiming to have the “silver bullet” for ministry.

When discipline is seen as a new tactic, even your best members will be suspicious of it. For that reason, pastors should make every effort to show how church discipline is rooted in the explicit teachings of Scripture. Church history is also particularly helpful on this point. As your members learn that Christians before their grandparents also practiced church discipline, they’ll see that this isn’t just the latest pastor-fad, but a matter of biblical fidelity.

6. “If we practice discipline, it will hurt the church’s reputation.”

Scripture indicates that we should maintain a healthy sensitivity to how outsiders perceive our congregations (cf. 1 Cor. 14:16, 24; 1 Tim. 3:7). But we should never allow that sensitivity to slide over into a fearfulness that prevents us from obeying Jesus.

Some folks in our congregations may fear that practicing discipline will communicate to outsiders that our church is harsh or judgmental. But we must remind people that discipline is actually God’s way of maintaining the church’s credibility in a lost community. Jesus’ reputation is bound up with his church. If we tolerate sins even unbelievers find scandalous, we compromise our witness to the gospel’s power to transform lives.

7. “We never did this in better days, when our church was bigger.”

Pastors, especially new ones, need to understand their congregation’s history—particularly the history that still lives in the memory of older members. I (Sam) served in a church where many of the members longed for the “glory days” of the 1970s and 80s, when the church was large and the ministry programs were brimming with activity. In those halcyon days, the church never discussed membership, wouldn’t have dreamed of discipline, and prioritized catering their services to unbelievers. Discipline represented the opposite of every ministry intuition cultivated during the “best” days of the church.

In retrospect, I see that many members were motivated by a desire to see the church once again produce that kind of fruit (or at least what looked like fruit). For many, discipline represented a practice that placed the church in direct opposition to the “fruitful ministry” it had known in the past. As a result, people disliked discipline not because it seemed unloving or unbiblical; they disliked it because it’s simply not what the church did when it was bigger, more fruitful, more influential. They’d become well-catechized in the belief that bigger is always better.

In response, pastors should patiently teach their people to trust that God’s ways are better than ours, even if they seem counterintuitive. Second, pastors should teach their people to celebrate the fruit of faith in Christ and holy lives, not a church brimming with ministry programs. After all, on the last day, many will ask, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and run counseling centers in your name, and host VBS in your name?”

Of course, counseling centers and Vacation Bible Schools are good things, but they aren’t a sure sign of the Spirit’s work. If our baptism numbers and ministry programs today don’t translate to accepted servants on thatday, then what good are they? Pastors aren’t the only ones who need constant reminding that success in ministry is a matter of faithfulness and patience, not bigger budgets and packed pews. Care for your flock by teaching them that gospel growth and God’s blessing depend on faithfulness. And teach them that part of holding the gospel faithfully is helping others hold fast as well.

Article by Matthew Tuininga from the 9Marks Journal: (original source here)

Soon after John Calvin was appointed as a pastor of the Genevan church, having only recently arrived as a refugee fleeing persecution in his native France, one of his first actions was to petition the city government for the establishment of church discipline. It was a hard sell. In no other Reformed city had the civil magistrates given clergy such authority. The reformers Zwingli and Bullinger maintained that overseeing the moral lives of Christians was a task for the civil magistrate. Most Reformed theologians and magistrates associated ecclesiastical discipline with papal tyranny.

Calvin acknowledged that the Roman church had grievously abused discipline by wielding it tyrannically to accomplish all manner of church goals. To prevent this evil, he called the magistrates “to ordain and elect certain persons of good life and witness from among the faithful” to shepherd the people on behalf of the church as a whole. These elders, along with the pastors, would bind themselves to the procedure laid out by Jesus in Matthew 18, by which professing Christians were to be held accountable to one another in the life of Christian discipleship.

CALVIN AND HIS CONSISTORY

While the city council granted the pastors’ request in principle, it soon became evident that there was little agreement in practice. Calvin found himself banished from the city. Within three years, however, the city asked him to come back. Though he was reluctant, he agreed to return under the condition that church discipline be established. The city relented, though nearly 15 years of conflict remained before the consistory—the body of pastors and elders charged with the ministry of church discipline—could rest secure from political interference.

Calvin’s consistory disciplined members of the Genevan church for a wide range of sins including idolatry, violence, sexual immorality, marital problems, and interpersonal conflict. They disciplined men who abused their wives and children, sons who refused to care for their aging parents, landowners who exploited their tenants, doctors who failed to care properly for the sick, merchants who practiced price gouging or sought to prevent economic competition, and employers who exploited or mistreated their workers. While many people were brought before the consistory, temporarily barred from the Lord’s Supper, and required to express public repentance or reconciliation, very few were permanently excommunicated (i.e., banished from participation in the sacraments).

DISCIPLINE: AN EXTENSION OF THE WORD

Calvin viewed discipline as a necessary extension of the church’s ministry of word and sacrament. While he did not identify it as a mark of the church, he did insist that discipline is essential to the spiritual health of a church, without which a church cannot long endure.

Discipline was necessary to preserve the honor of God and the integrity of the Lord’s Supper, to protect the members of the church from being led astray by other members, and to call those who were straying to repentance.

DISCIPLINE & THE LORD’S SUPPER

At the heart of Calvin’s passion for the exercise of church discipline was his concern that the Lord’s Supper not devolve into a mere ceremony of hypocrisy. The Lord’s Supper is not simply a celebration of the forgiveness of sins, he argued, but a communion of brothers and sisters in “love, peace, and concord.” Calvin again: “None of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offended by us, without at the same time injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot disagree with our brethren without at the same time disagreeing with Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren; that we ought to take the same care of our brethren’s bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body; and that, as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be affected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him” (Institutes, 4.17.38).

In short, when Christians celebrated the Lord’s Supper while exploiting, oppressing, or abusing one another, they made a mockery of it.

DISCIPLINE: SPIRITUAL, NOT POLITICAL

Calvin insisted that discipline is not an expression of political power but of spiritual power. It is not coercive but pastoral. To be sure, when wielded arbitrarily, church discipline devolved into mere tyranny. But Calvin insisted that a person could only be disciplined for conduct that was clearly and manifestly sinful according to Scripture, and only as long as the person refused to repent of that conduct.

Furthermore, where sin was so obvious, notorious, and persistent, the elders and pastors of a church exercising church discipline would merely be proclaiming the truth of God’s Word as it applied to an unrepentant individual. As such, like preaching, discipline was one of what Jesus called the keys of the kingdom of heaven, opening the kingdom to the repentant through the proclamation of the gospel and closing it to those who refused to repent.

As Calvin puts it: “The Lord testifies that such judgment by believers is nothing but the proclamation of his own sentence, and that whatever they have done on earth is ratified in heaven. For they have the word of God with which to condemn the perverse; they have the word with which to receive the repentant into grace. They cannot err or disagree with God’s judgment, for they judge solely according to God’s law, which is no uncertain or earthly opinion but God’s holy will and heavenly oracle” ( Institutes, 4.11.2).

DISCIPLINE & THE GOAL OF SALVATION

What was crucial for Calvin was that the ultimate purpose of discipline is not vengeance but salvation. He rejected the practices of ongoing penance or ritual humiliation, warning that “zeal for discipline” often leads to “pharisaical rigor” that “hurries on the miserable offender to ruin, instead of curing him” (his commentary on 2 Corinthians 2:11). As soon as a disciplined person repented, he or she was to be immediately welcomed into full communion.

When conducted graciously and according to Christ’s word, discipline ensured that the church did not proclaim a false and empty gospel of cheap grace but a gospel with power to draw human beings into genuine communion with God and one another. Calvin: “[E]xcommunication does not tend to drive men from the Lord’s flock but rather to bring them back when wandering and going astray” (Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:15).

For Calvin, discipline expressed the love of a father who does not allow his children to go astray to their own hurt or death but uses restraint and correction where necessary to ensure their flourishing. It’s necessary to the health and survival of a church because it ensures that the religion we practice is not the religion of hypocrisy but of grace that leads to righteousness and life.

Article by Jeremy M. Kimble, Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio, and a member of Grace Baptist Church (original source here)

Throughout church history the practice of church discipline has been largely affirmed, though at certain periods, only sporadically applied. [1] In looking at historical trajectories one can note the ways in which the church remained faithful to biblical teaching on the subject or veered sharply away from such principles. As such, while history is not ultimately determinative for understanding and applying discipline in our churches—Scripture possesses that role—history offers both helpful and harmful models from which to learn.

Patristic Era (AD 100–500)

While disciplinary action within the church had its controversial and contentious moments, it appears that for the first several centuries the church consistently sought to apply disciplinary measures according to the biblical witness. Indeed, the early church disciplined members both for the propagation of false doctrine and lack of moral purity. It was common practice in the early days of the church to announce disciplinary judgments on Sunday in the context of the church service. Tertullian, describing this event, states, “For judgment is passed, and it carries great weight, as it must among men certain that God sees them; and it is a notable foretaste of judgment to come, if any man has so sinned to be banished from all share in our prayer, our assembly, and all holy intercourse.” [2] Tertullian, as well as other church fathers,[3] recognized the seriousness of the disciplinary process.

Most churches recognized two kinds of repentance: a one-time repentance accompanied by faith in Jesus Christ for salvation and a continual repentance of sin throughout one’s life. [4] Christians who sinned had to confess their sin before the church if they wished to be restored to fellowship. Eventually, by the third and fourth centuries, restoration to the church became rather difficult. Undergoing “penitential discipline,” those seeking repentance were first required to come to the place where they met for church services, but not enter the place of worship. They were to beg for the prayers of those going inside, and after a period of time they were allowed inside to listen to the service in a designated area. The penitents would eventually be allowed to remain during the entire service, though without partaking of communion. Only after these steps were taken could an individual be restored to full membership. This kind of penitential action, along with the continued peace the church experienced after the reign of Constantine, contributed to a shift in ecclesial discipline.

Medieval Era (AD 500–1500)

Church discipline was a difficult practice to keep consistently due to the many challenges the church faced, but dedication to its implementation was strong at first. According to Greg Wills, however, the practice of church discipline eventually declined in the early centuries of the church. He claims,

After the fourth century, the system of public confession, exclusion, and penitential rigor fell into disuse. Nectarius, bishop of Constantinople from 381 to 398, apparently played an important role in the change. Since the third century Constantinople and other churches had adopted the practice of appointing a special presbyter in charge of administering the church’s penitential discipline. When the public discipline of a deacon at Constantinople for sexual immorality brought considerable public scandal upon the church, Nectarius abolished the office of the penitential presbyter and largely abandoned efforts to administer church discipline among the laity. Nectarius did not repudiate the strict public discipline in principle but he abandoned it in practice. . . . The process of strict public discipline withered in the Latin-speaking churches of the West just as it did in the churches of the Greek-speaking East. In its place emerged a system of private confession and individual penance. [5]

This eventual emphasis on penance transformed church discipline largely into a private affair between the priest and layperson, and as such the communal role of church discipline dissipated. Thus, church discipline was largely dispelled, and instead private confession and works of merit were common fare in the days leading up to the Reformation.

Reformation Era (AD 1500–1750)

Martin Luther, a key figure in the Reformation, is known in the early part of his career as one who had experienced the weight of the penitential system and thus questioned much of its validity, particularly in the issuing of indulgences. His criticism of these practices as substitutes for true repentance and contrition was a catalyst in precipitating the Reformation. This also allowed for a more biblical comprehension and application of church discipline by Luther, as well as others such as John Calvin, the Anabaptists, and later figures like Jonathan Edwards. Continue reading →

Article: The Preemptive Resignation—A Get Out of Jail Free Card?
by Jonathan Leeman (original source here)

Church leaders often ask how they should respond when a person who is being disciplined by the church resigns before the process of discipline is complete. Should they accept the resignation or continue moving toward excommunication?

Suppose a man decides to leave his wife for another woman. Other members of the church ask the man to repent and return to his wife. He doesn’t. They ask again, but this time they also warn him about the possibility of excommunication. So he resigns his membership. Case closed. He’s now immune. Or at least that’s what the adulterous man is saying. Is that correct?

THE CASE FOR ALLOWING PREEMPTIVE RESIGNATIONS

A civic case for allowing preemptive resignations would argue that local churches, in the context of a democratic civic society, are “voluntary organizations,” just like the Boy Scouts, a women’s soccer league, or a gardening club. You can choose to join; you can choose to leave. And no one gives a church the right to say otherwise. In a liberal civic context, the individual reigns supreme.

Now add a theological layer to the argument for preemptive resignation. Human beings do not ultimately depend on their families, their churches, their nations, or their parish priests for a relationship with God. They must depend on Christ. He alone is the mediator between God and man. This means that churches must not deny individuals the ability to act according to their consciences, which includes letting them leave church membership whenever they want to leave. Otherwise, the church effectively denies soul competency and wrongly places itself in between the individual and the individual’s Savior. Right?

THE CASE AGAINST ALLOWING PREEMPTIVE RESIGNATIONS

In fact, both the civic and the theological objections depend on a reductionistic idea about what the church on earth is. The church on earth does not exist just because a number of individuals have freely decided to associate together in an area of common interest to them, as with the Boy Scouts. It does not exist just as an aid to our sanctification as believers, as an over-inflated concept of soul competency would have us believe.

Rather, the church exists because Christ came to establish his kingdom, and he means for a marked off group of people to represent his heavenly rule on earth (see Matt. 3:2; 4:7; 5:3,5; 6:10,19-20; 13:11). The church exists not simply for its own sanctification’s sake or even finally for the world’s sake. It exists to accomplish the task originally given to Adam and Israel but fulfilled finally in Christ, the task of imaging or representing the glorious rule of God on earth.

The problem is, many hypocrites will claim to belong to the kingdom based on family ties or righteous deeds (e.g. Matt. 3:9; 6:1, 2–3, 5–6, 16–17; 8:11-12; 13:47–50), and many will come claiming the name of Christ and saying “Lord, Lord” (Matt. 7:21-23; cf. 24:5). But the kingdom does not belong to any and all professors; it belongs only to those who produce the fruit of the kingdom in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:8; 5:3–12; 7:15–20, 7:24–27; 18:3-4). “Watch out that no one deceives you,” said Jesus, anticipating such false professors (Matt. 24:4).

As such, Jesus gave local churches, who are outposts of this kingdom, the authority to bind and loose, which includes the ability to excommunicate (Matt. 16:19; 18:17-19). Excommunication, then, is one aspect of the authority that Christ gives to the local church for the sake of guarding Christ’s name and reputation on earth (Matt. 18:15-20). It’s a way of saying that someone no longer belongs to the kingdom of Christ, but to the kingdom of Satan (1 Cor. 5:5). Just as baptism functions as a church’s way of publicly affirming an individual’s profession of faith (see Matt. 28:19), so excommunication functions as the church’s way of publicly removing its corporate affirmation from an individual’s profession because that profession appears fraudulent.

Keep in mind what church membership is from the church’s side: it’s the church’s formal affirmation of your profession of faith, together with its commitment to oversee your discipleship. Without discipline, that affirmation and oversight is meaningless, which is to say, membership is meaningless. If a church cannot withdraw its affirmation, what good is the affirmation? For that affirmation and oversight to mean anything, the church needs to be able to “correct the record.” Which is what excommunication is: the church saying to the community, “We previously affirmed this person’s profession, but we can no longer do that.” So the individual might not like it, but the church has it’s own public relations problem to resolve when the individual under discipline tries to resign. In fact, an individual attempting to resign while under discipline is trying to coerce the whole church to make a public statement about the individual the church doesn’t believe.

With all this in mind, consider again the example of the man who leaves his wife for another woman. The man continues to profess faith in Christ, but his profession now appears fraudulent, because his life does not produce fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:8). He has been asked to repent, but he will not. Given a choice between his sin and the commands of his so-called Lord, he chooses his sin. Precisely for such occasions, Jesus has given the local church the authority to excommunicate, the authority to remove its public affirmation of the man’s profession. Once upon a time, the church had publicly affirmed the man’s profession by accepting him into membership and by sharing baptism and the Lord’s Supper with him; it had said to the on-looking world, “Yes, we affirm that this man is a Christ-follower.” But now the church does not want the world to be deceived by the man’s apparently false profession. Therefore, it acts through church discipline to clarify this man’s state for its own members and for the watching world.

In so doing, it effectively says, “No, this is not what a Christ-follower looks like. We cannot affirm his profession, and we cannot identify him with us any longer, because to identify him with us is to identify him with our Lord. And our Lord would never abandon his wife.”

Yes, individuals are ultimately accountable to God and not to their churches. Yes, individuals should choose God’s side rather than the church’s side whenever a church requires its members to go against the Word of God. Yes, the church is a “voluntary organization” insofar as the church cannot conscript members as with an army draft, or keep them from leaving, as with a slave. We’re justified by faith alone. Still, Christ has given the corporate gathering of believers an authority he has not given to the lone individual: the authority, we might call it, of guarding the borders of the kingdom by making public statements on behalf of Christ. It’s the authority of the White House press secretary to speak officially for the president, or of an embassy to speak officially for its government. The individual who attempts to preempt this process by resigning before the church enacts formal discipline is guilty of usurping the church’s apostolic authority to speak in this manner. In so doing, he compounds his guilt, like the criminal charged with “resisting arrest.”

PRACTICAL STEPS

Does a church put itself at legal risk by denying a preemptive resignation and proceeding with discipline? It can, but that risk is ameliorated, if not altogether relieved, by taking two practical steps:

Include a statement concerning church discipline in the official church documents, whether a constitution or by-laws.
Clearly teach about the possibility of church discipline to all incoming members, and include this teaching in the standard curriculum for prospective members.

Should churches discipline members who explicitly renounce the faith? I don’t believe so. Rather, the church should do what it does when someone dies—acknowledge the fact and delete the name from the church’s membership directory. That’s all it can do. Christ has not given the church authority over the dead or over those who do not name his name. In each case, the church covenant is simply rendered moot. It’s worth observing that two of the most important passages on church discipline (Matt. 18:15-17 and 1 Cor. 5) both instruct the church in how to respond to someone who claims to be a brother.

CONCLUSION

To state the argument here in a single paragraph, we can say that ending one’s membership in a church requires the consent of both parties. We join a church by the consent of the church, and we leave a church by the consent of the church, because it’s the local church that has the authority to publicly represent Christ on earth, as an embassy does its home government. Christ gave the church the authority to bind and loose, not the individual Christian. The man who continues to call himself a Christian and yet attempts to avoid the church’s act of discipline is guilty of usurping the power of the keys. Christ has made the church his proxy on earth exactly for such occasions, lest heretics and hypocrites presume to continue speaking for Christ.

Article by Matthew Tuininga, From the 9Marks Journal (original source here):

Soon after John Calvin was appointed as a pastor of the Genevan church, having only recently arrived as a refugee fleeing persecution in his native France, one of his first actions was to petition the city government for the establishment of church discipline. It was a hard sell. In no other Reformed city had the civil magistrates given clergy such authority. The reformers Zwingli and Bullinger maintained that overseeing the moral lives of Christians was a task for the civil magistrate. Most Reformed theologians and magistrates associated ecclesiastical discipline with papal tyranny.

Calvin acknowledged that the Roman church had grievously abused discipline by wielding it tyrannically to accomplish all manner of church goals. To prevent this evil, he called the magistrates “to ordain and elect certain persons of good life and witness from among the faithful” to shepherd the people on behalf of the church as a whole. These elders, along with the pastors, would bind themselves to the procedure laid out by Jesus in Matthew 18, by which professing Christians were to be held accountable to one another in the life of Christian discipleship.

CALVIN AND HIS CONSISTORY

While the city council granted the pastors’ request in principle, it soon became evident that there was little agreement in practice. Calvin found himself banished from the city. Within three years, however, the city asked him to come back. Though he was reluctant, he agreed to return under the condition that church discipline be established. The city relented, though nearly 15 years of conflict remained before the consistory—the body of pastors and elders charged with the ministry of church discipline—could rest secure from political interference.

Calvin’s consistory disciplined members of the Genevan church for a wide range of sins including idolatry, violence, sexual immorality, marital problems, and interpersonal conflict. They disciplined men who abused their wives and children, sons who refused to care for their aging parents, landowners who exploited their tenants, doctors who failed to care properly for the sick, merchants who practiced price gouging or sought to prevent economic competition, and employers who exploited or mistreated their workers. While many people were brought before the consistory, temporarily barred from the Lord’s Supper, and required to express public repentance or reconciliation, very few were permanently excommunicated (i.e., banished from participation in the sacraments).

DISCIPLINE: AN EXTENSION OF THE WORD

Calvin viewed discipline as a necessary extension of the church’s ministry of word and sacrament. While he did not identify it as a mark of the church, he did insist that discipline is essential to the spiritual health of a church, without which a church cannot long endure.

Discipline was necessary to preserve the honor of God and the integrity of the Lord’s Supper, to protect the members of the church from being led astray by other members, and to call those who were straying to repentance.

DISCIPLINE & THE LORD’S SUPPER

At the heart of Calvin’s passion for the exercise of church discipline was his concern that the Lord’s Supper not devolve into a mere ceremony of hypocrisy. The Lord’s Supper is not simply a celebration of the forgiveness of sins, he argued, but a communion of brothers and sisters in “love, peace, and concord.” Calvin again: “None of the brethren can be injured, despised, rejected, abused, or in any way offended by us, without at the same time injuring, despising, and abusing Christ by the wrongs we do; that we cannot disagree with our brethren without at the same time disagreeing with Christ; that we cannot love Christ without loving him in the brethren; that we ought to take the same care of our brethren’s bodies as we take of our own; for they are members of our body; and that, as no part of our body is touched by any feeling of pain which is not spread among all the rest, so we ought not to allow a brother to be affected by any evil, without being touched with compassion for him” (Institutes, 4.17.38).

In short, when Christians celebrated the Lord’s Supper while exploiting, oppressing, or abusing one another, they made a mockery of it.

DISCIPLINE: SPIRITUAL, NOT POLITICAL

Calvin insisted that discipline is not an expression of political power but of spiritual power. It is not coercive but pastoral. To be sure, when wielded arbitrarily, church discipline devolved into mere tyranny. But Calvin insisted that a person could only be disciplined for conduct that was clearly and manifestly sinful according to Scripture, and only as long as the person refused to repent of that conduct.

Furthermore, where sin was so obvious, notorious, and persistent, the elders and pastors of a church exercising church discipline would merely be proclaiming the truth of God’s Word as it applied to an unrepentant individual. As such, like preaching, discipline was one of what Jesus called the keys of the kingdom of heaven, opening the kingdom to the repentant through the proclamation of the gospel and closing it to those who refused to repent.

As Calvin puts it: “The Lord testifies that such judgment by believers is nothing but the proclamation of his own sentence, and that whatever they have done on earth is ratified in heaven. For they have the word of God with which to condemn the perverse; they have the word with which to receive the repentant into grace. They cannot err or disagree with God’s judgment, for they judge solely according to God’s law, which is no uncertain or earthly opinion but God’s holy will and heavenly oracle” ( Institutes, 4.11.2).

DISCIPLINE & THE GOAL OF SALVATION

What was crucial for Calvin was that the ultimate purpose of discipline is not vengeance but salvation. He rejected the practices of ongoing penance or ritual humiliation, warning that “zeal for discipline” often leads to “pharisaical rigor” that “hurries on the miserable offender to ruin, instead of curing him” (his commentary on 2 Corinthians 2:11). As soon as a disciplined person repented, he or she was to be immediately welcomed into full communion.

When conducted graciously and according to Christ’s word, discipline ensured that the church did not proclaim a false and empty gospel of cheap grace but a gospel with power to draw human beings into genuine communion with God and one another. Calvin: “[E]xcommunication does not tend to drive men from the Lord’s flock but rather to bring them back when wandering and going astray” (Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:15).

For Calvin, discipline expressed the love of a father who does not allow his children to go astray to their own hurt or death but uses restraint and correction where necessary to ensure their flourishing. It’s necessary to the health and survival of a church because it ensures that the religion we practice is not the religion of hypocrisy but of grace that leads to righteousness and life.

For more: https://www.9marks.org/article/a-biblical-theology-of-church-discipline/