Church Discipline

Church discipline is both biblical and necessary. “When discipline leaves the church, Christ goes with it.”
~John Dagg

Church discipline refers to the total instructional and developmental program of the church. This program is mainly positive. However, it must still include those more forceful steps prescribed by the New Testament when the initial biblical measures fail, for the protection of the church from schism and corruption, and to reclaim erring members, brothers and sisters in Christ.

What is most understood in today’s world is the heart of discipline in a church or in parenting is love and caring enough, not about punishment. The latter is in fact often not even needed.

Most movements that spring up from the fertile soils of Christendom appeal, in one way or another, to the will of God. But too often, very few probe the will of God very deeply. They deduct, ‘God is for evangelism; therefore He is for whatever way we are proposing to do evangelism. Consequently we invoke His will to sanction our methods. God is love; therefore He is against church discipline except in the most extreme sinful cases (which either will never arise, or, if they do, by the time they do they too are covered by the love of God), and we invoke God’s will to sanction our determined niceness.

In the New Testament, church discipline is part of the ongoing interaction of the entire Christian community. Christians exhort one another, check up on one another, pray for one another, listen to one another, gently rebuke one another, and confront one another. They love each other. It’s normal Christian discipline, a formal discipline.

The higher up you are in church authority, the more you have that responsibility. However, ultimately the extreme sanction is not only approved by the New Testament; it is mandated, because the church is never a social club, a gathering of people who have common social interests. The church is a people
of the new covenant, a redeemed community that aims under God to be a confessional, morally pure group.

An Example of Church Discipline in the Corinthian Church

Some might read 1 Corinthians 4 and conclude that no standards whatsoever are to be maintained in the church. After all, maintenance of standards requires judging, and no one wants to be accused of judging.
However, 1 Corinthians 5, provides a case where the apostle Paul admonishes the church in Corinth
for not exercising judgment and discipline.

Paul insists that, with respect to the man he describes in 1 Corinthians 5:1, two evils are in view.

The first is a horrible sin. A member of the church “has his father’s wife.” The peculiar language suggests he is involved in a relationship with his stepmother. In any case the sin is so gross that it would be shocking even among the pagans.

The second is the limp response of the church. Despite this wickedness among them, their inclination for arrogant strutting, which surfaces in many chapters of 1& 2 Corinthians, never falters. 1Corinthians 5:2 And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among you.

Church Discipline observations from this context

1) The judgment Paul wants meted out is to be communal. The entire church, “assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus” (5:4), in the consciousness of His powerful presence, is to take action. Therefore, the failure to do so is a church-wide failure.

(2) One of the reasons for taking this action is because “a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough” (5:6); evil in the church that no one deals with soon affects the entire church.

(3) Paul’s understanding of what conduct should be subject to church discipline is not restricted to this one particular sin. He means to include major moral defection and gives an exemplary list: greed, idolatry, slander, drunkenness, swindling. Elsewhere, he adds to major moral defection two other arenas: major doctrinal deviation, and a persistent drive for schism. 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, 1Timothy 1:20, 2 Timothy 2:17–18, Revelation 2:14–16.

Now all of this he openly calls “judging” (5:12–13). Christians are to judge “those inside,” while God judges “those outside.” At the very least, chapters 4 and 5 must be kept in creative tension. More importantly, the Corinthians in chapter 4 were imposing judgments “beyond what is written” (4:6). They were deploying standards and criteria with no basis in God’s revelation, and out of their own party interest or rules. They were not imposing biblical judgments in chapter 5 despite what Scripture, properly understood, says. Both actions of adding our own rules or neglecting to follow through on God’s word, are breaches of God’s revelation.

Without being too simplistic, we can cluster all of these various sins that are the occasion for church discipline into three main categories. These core areas demand serious discipline.

Failure in keeping a pure and holy life. A major moral defection, as in 1 Corinthians 5.

Failure to uphold biblical doctrine. When people are disowning and denying fundamentals of the faith that are bound up with the very nature of salvation. .

Failure to strive for unity. Instead they possess a deep-seated, persistent, loveless divisiveness. (Romans 16:17–18; Titus 3:9–10),

Both in Scripture and in Christian experience, whenever the church exercises discipline with brokenness and compassion, there is inevitably an ultimate good result. 1 Peter 1:16 Because it is written, Be you holy; for I am holy. Leviticus 11:44 Be willing to love enough…& to honor God above all else.