WWUTT 2052 Church Polity (Matthew 18:17)

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When Jesus gave His disciples instructions regarding church discipline, He said that if a person who has sinned will not listen to those witnesses, it must be told to the church.

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Well, what does that involve when we understand the text? This is

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When We Understand the Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ that men and women of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

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Tell your friends about our ministry at www .utt .com. Here's your teacher,

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Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 18, we've been considering what

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Jesus taught His disciples about church discipline. This is in Matthew 18, verses 15 to 20.

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I'm going to begin with that passage again today, reading from the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the

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Lord. Now, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault between you and him alone.

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If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

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And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the

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Gentile and the tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

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And whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my

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Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in my name,

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I am there in their midst. Now, I want to pull back a little bit on this passage and come back to verse 17.

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Yesterday, we looked at verses 15 to 17 and went through all four steps of this discipline process that Jesus lays out.

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And then I said that today we were going to look at verses 18 to 20 and talk about church polity. We're still going to talk about church polity, which is the governing structure of the church.

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But I think what we read in verse 17 helps us out with this a little bit better. So we looked at mainly the first two steps of church discipline in verses 15 and 16 yesterday.

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Remember this is a four -step process. So that first step is if your brother sins, and specifically if your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault between you and him alone.

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If he listens to you, you have won your brother. And that's the matter. That's the end of it. You've confronted your brother.

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You've said, brother, you've sinned against me. Here's what it is that you have done. If he's convicted and says, you're right,

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I apologize, then the matter is resolved. No need to go any further with it. But if he will not listen to you, then you go to step two.

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Take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

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So you have two or three witnesses who are able to look in on the matter and decide this brother is in the wrong.

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This one's in the right. They confront the brother that's in the wrong and the brother won't listen to them.

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And so now these two or three witnesses, when you move on to step three, they're able to come before the church and establish this guy's in the wrong.

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This is this guy is in the right. The one who's in the wrong won't reason. He won't repent.

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He continues in his sin. And so then the church needs to come to a decision. So we have step three of this process.

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If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And then you have step four.

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If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the Gentile and the tax collector.

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And that's the part that's the part that we want to look at today. Because what do we mean by church?

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Is it the entire body of people? I think we can narrow down to a local church body at least that far and not any farther than that.

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We're not talking about the church global, OK? If somebody sins against you, you got two or three witnesses now you can broadcast it to the world.

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Look at this guy who won't reason he won't repent of his sin. So hey, all you

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Christians out there, let's shame this guy, OK? That's not the way that we're supposed to handle this. We're talking about a local church body.

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This is one body that these two brothers who are not agreeing with one another are part of so that the church may make a determination between them.

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If the offensive brother, the one who has offended, won't listen even to the church, then he is to be put out of the church.

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And that is made known to the church. But what do we mean by church? What is meant here by church?

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When Jesus says this, of course, this is the word ecclesia in the Greek, which means an assembly or a called out group of people called out from the world to Christ to be holy and set apart.

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It's the same word that's used for Israel in the Septuagint, which was the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament. When you look into that Greek translation, Israel was called an ecclesia.

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They were called out from Egypt, called unto the Lord, who gave them a land, gave them a place where God is to be worshipped.

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And so the church is also called out from the world. Israel was called out of slavery in Egypt. We've been called out of slavery to our sin and out from the world unto

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Christ. And we worship him in spirit and truth. When you read from the

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Puritans and from the reformers, you will see that they will use Israel and the church interchangeably because they saw them as being the same.

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Israel is the church under the old covenant and the church is Israel under the new covenant.

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So Matthew Henry, for example, you go to his commentary. You can find him referring to Israel as the church in his

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Old Testament commentary. And that's not an accident. He's drawing that from the Greek translation of the

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Old Testament. And so then likewise in the New Testament, referring to the church as Israel, because the church is the ecclesia called out from the world, all who are in Christ.

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Christ is the true Israel. And so all who are in Christ are Israel. There is one people of God.

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There's not two. And so it's all who are in Christ are the people of God. This is his church.

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So that's what's being referred to here. But again, the context is that we're talking about a local body.

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We're not talking about every single Christian in the world, but this is a local assembly of people. If he refuses, if the offending brother refuses to listen to the person that he offended and those two or three witnesses that have established that this man is in sin.

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If he won't listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, then he's to be excommunicated.

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He's to be removed from the church. So steps three and four are contained here in this one verse.

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And here's where we need to talk about church polity. Now once again, polity is simply the form or process of governance.

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So what form of governance does your local church have? Every church needs one.

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Even if a church doesn't have one, that's still their polity. It might be kind of chaotic, but it's nonetheless a form of polity.

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Now there are three main kinds of church polity that we see practiced in most churches around the world.

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Generally, their polity falls into one of these three categories. And this is important for us to understand as we come to translate or apply this instruction to tell it to the church.

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We have to understand polity here. This is an important thing for a church to decide because it has bearing on things like church discipline.

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It has bearing on baptism and the practice of the Lord's table and things like this. So polity is important.

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There's three main kinds of polity. There is Episcopal, there's

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Presbyterian, and there's Congregational. Those are the three main forms of church polity.

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So first of all, you have Episcopal. Episcopal is from the Greek word episkopos, which is also translated bishop or overseer.

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When you go to the qualifications for an overseer in 1 Timothy chapter 3, an overseer must be above reproach.

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So that word for overseer in the Greek is episkopos.

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And that's where we get bishop from, elder, bishop, or overseer. Now a bishop is going to be the top guy in the church.

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He's the one that's making all the decisions for that church. The most well -known form of Episcopalian polity is the

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Roman Catholic Church. The guy that's at the top of the Roman Catholic Church is the Pope. He is the

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Bishop of Rome. That is his title. He's also called the Father of the Church, the Apostolic See, so on and so forth.

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And of course, we know he's not the father or the head of the church. That belongs to Christ.

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Christ is the head of the church. But the Pope is the Bishop of Rome. So therefore, the guy on top and then everything, all the other bishops and councils and everything like that falls under him.

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Now you can have a smaller church with one guy at the top, a bishop, or something to that effect, and that would still be an

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Episcopalian polity. The Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church, which is the

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American version of the Anglican Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, they all follow this

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Episcopalian form of government. Now you can also have an independent Baptist church that's actually

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Episcopalian in their polity. If you've got one guy, a pastor that's on top of everything else, if he's running the show and the church has to do whatever it is he says, guess what?

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Even if that's a Baptist church, they are Episcopalian in their polity. Now some of those churches may have in their bylaws that the church is actually congregational, but you look at it.

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Is the church actually functioning that way? Even if their bylaws say it, does it function in a way that the congregation is actually making all the decisions for the church, or is it the pastor?

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And he even gets the congregation to do whatever it is that he wants. It may say in their bylaws that it's congregational, but if the pastor is running the show, if he's the guy on top and what the pastor says goes, guess what?

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The polity of that church is actually Episcopalian, even if it's Baptist, even if it's congregational.

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The second form of church governance is Presbyterian. The word Presbyterian comes from the

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Greek word Presbyteros, which is translated elder. So where you see elder in the

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New Testament, that's translated from the same Greek word that we get the word

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Presbyterian from. Now in this form of government, there's not authority with a single person, an individual on top, but rather it is with a body of elders, also referred to as presbyters.

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And of course, the Presbyterian church is the most common example of this form of governance.

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You may have a board of elders in that one local body, but even that board of elders is subject to another board of elders that's over them.

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But that's still the Presbyterian form of government. That's Presbyterian polity. If you have a

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Baptist church that is elder ruled, and this is common among like reformed

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Baptist churches, maybe not so much independent Baptists, but perhaps among reformed

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Baptists. If you have an elder ruled church, so you have a board of elders and they're ruling everything in that church.

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It's not resting upon one guy. It's not the pastor that's calling all the shots, but rather it's elders and all of the congregation is subject to those elders and the pastor.

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They still have a pastor, but he has the same level of authority as every other elder on that board.

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That's Presbyterian, even though it might be a Baptist church, their polity is

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Presbyterian. They're still going to have a difference of opinion from the Presbyterians regarding covenant and baptism.

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So you wouldn't call it a Presbyterian church, but the polity is Presbyterian if it's an elder rule.

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OK, there's your second form of church polity. So we have Episcopalian, we have Presbyterian, and the third form is congregational.

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In a congregational church, the final authority rests with the congregation.

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And this is, you know, the vast majority of autonomous churches in America are congregational churches.

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You listening to me most likely grew up in a congregational church or you've been attending congregational churches for most of your life.

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That's the case with me. I grew up in mostly congregational churches where the congregation is making every decision that needs to be made, whether it's the color of the carpet, what missionaries we're going to support, what's the budget going to be, and so on and so forth.

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You know, all of that is a decision that has to be made by the body. It's like the church doesn't do anything unless the body decides it.

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And instead of there being, you know, the whole body that is in on every single decision that gets made by the church, you will have microcosms of that congregation that are designated into committees.

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So a committee is like a small sampling of the congregation, but then they're still going to bring their recommendations to the congregation whenever you have your business meetings and things like that.

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So where you have these committees, you might have a committee on church finance.

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So they're overseeing the budget of the church. You might have a missions committee. They're overseeing everything concerning missions for the church.

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You have the personnel committee who oversees all of the staff and things like that at the church hiring of the pastors, so on and so forth.

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All of these decisions that are being made by these committees. Now, I really am not a fan of this form of church government.

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I have worked in churches that were confessionally congregational.

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I don't know that they necessarily function that way, but they at least said in their bylaws that they were supposed to be congregational churches.

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And this is really mob rule. When it comes down to it, that's what a congregational church is. 51 % of the church could decide to remove the pastor and the other 49 % can't do anything about it.

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The pastor really has no authority in a true congregational church. He has to do whatever the congregation says.

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And there are all kinds of problems with this. I mean, you look in scripture and you just see the number of times that a mob went wrong.

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The crucifixion of Jesus, the releasing of Barabbas, the trying to overthrow

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Moses and Aaron and so on and so forth. The worshiping of the golden calf mob rule has never gone well.

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And I don't think that that is the picture of church polity that we're given in scripture. Whether you're talking about Israel or you're talking about the polity that Christ has designated for his church, which we're going to come back to that here and understanding verse 17.

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Even if a congregational church doesn't want to admit this, they're probably functionally egalitarian.

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And what do I mean by that? I mean, women have authority over the pastors.

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And what does first Timothy chapter two, verse 11 says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man.

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Rather, she is to remain quiet. But if you have a congregational church where women hold just as much voting power as the men do, then you have women who are in authority over the pastors and the elders.

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That's congregationalism. And I've seen it work this way before, too, where you have a committee, again, which is a microcosm of the congregation.

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And there are women who sit on those committees. And what they tell a pastor that the pastor has to do, the pastor has to do it.

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So now he is subject to the authority of women in that church, again, functionally egalitarian, even though by confession, they would say that they're complementarian.

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But in their function, they are egalitarian. And that's another problem with the congregational model.

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So what would I say that a church should be polity wise, at least as far as Scripture guides us in church polity?

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A church really should be elder -led congregational. So there are decisions that the congregation makes.

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But even the congregation is told that they have to be subject to the elders. So 1

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Peter 5, verse 5, you younger men likewise be subject to your elders, and all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

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And it's also said in the instructions that Paul gives to Timothy, that an elder who rules well is worthy of double honor, an elder position is a ruling position.

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Now I'm not in favor of elder rule, where elders are ruling everything.

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But the elders do have authority in the congregational model, they really don't. The congregation has all of the authority, even the elders are subject to the congregation.

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But in elder -led congregationalism, there are still decisions that the body has to make, but they're subject to the elders in all of those decisions.

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The elders can basically say that the body is wrong, and you guys have made a poor decision here and you have to go back and make a better one.

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Consider that in Acts chapter 6 when the apostles direct the congregation to choose deacons.

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They tell the congregation, choose from among you men who are fit and able for this task, the caring for the

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Hellenistic widows. But the apostles say, bring those men that you select to us, and then we will appoint them to this.

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So the congregation is choosing men, they're looking among themselves for those men who are most qualified for this job, and then bringing them to the apostles who give their approval of this selection.

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Authority still rests with the elders of the body. And you might say, well yeah, but they were apostles, you're not looking at elders as being an apostle.

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Well just consider that in Titus chapter 1, the apostle Paul directs Titus to go to the island of Crete and appoint elders in all the churches.

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The churches don't appoint the elders, there's another elder that appoints the elders.

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And so once again, you have authority that rests in the eldership, there's still decisions that a church makes, but the church has to be led by the eldership.

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So this is referred to as elder -led congregationalism. And this I believe is the most biblical form of church polity.

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Now of course I'm going to have Presbyterian friends that are going to disagree with me on that, and surely

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I have congregational friends that probably disagree with me on that as well. But that is the form of church polity

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I believe that is given to us in scripture. And once again, the elders are plural.

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There is a plurality of elders. Now if you have a church that loses that plurality of elders,

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I've been in this situation before, all the elders are gone, all that's left is the pastor. Do you have a dysfunctional church?

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Well the answer is, as far as polity is concerned, as far as biblical polity is concerned, yes you have a dysfunctional church.

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But that doesn't mean that you just shut the doors and you go, okay, well this church can't operate as a church because they don't have a plurality of elders.

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It just needs to be recognized by the pastor and the congregation, they need to be in search of men who can be raised up, who can be trained, who are qualified to fit those elder roles.

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If the elders are gone, maybe they've moved away, maybe they've died, whatever reason the elders aren't there anymore, the church just needs to recognize we have to raise up more men to be elders.

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The aspiration of that church still should be for a plurality eldership so that you have elder -led congregationalism.

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And the pastor needs to be humble through that period of time to recognize, I can't be the guy that's calling all the shots, even though our function right now is probably more on the

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Episcopalian side, but he has to be praying and seeking the Lord and asking that men would be raised up among them who can fill those roles and then the authority is equal among all of those elders.

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You might have a pastor who is designated as the guy who's leading the preaching and teaching, but he's really a first among equals.

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He doesn't hold more authority than anybody else. If you're familiar with Grace Community Church, which is the church that John MacArthur is the pastor of, that's the way that they function.

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That John MacArthur, even though he's John MacArthur, he doesn't have more authority than anybody else.

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There is a certain respectability he has among the elders, but he does not have a vote that is like double the vote of anybody else.

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He can be outvoted. I've heard him talk about this before, and I've heard him say that he has been outnumbered before.

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So here is what I believe to be a biblical form of church polity, which is elder -led congregationalism.

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So keeping that in mind then, when you come back to verse 17 and you read, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

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So who is the church? Well it could be that those two or three witnesses come before the elders, and the elders are designated the church because they're the leaders of the church.

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There's nothing wrong with reading it that way, but then the responsibility of the elders is to bring it before the entire congregation.

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If the congregation is deciding that this man needs to be removed from membership, then the elders have to be guiding the congregation in that understanding and therefore making the decision to remove that person from the membership because they're not listening.

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They are not repentant. It can be verified that this guy is in the wrong, and so therefore that person is being removed by the body.

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Or it could be even that the elders have gone ahead and taken the step or made the decision themselves to remove that person from the body.

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And then they inform the church and tell the rest of the congregation, this man has been removed and here's why.

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Or maybe the eldership would say, this guy's under discipline, we're in the third step of church discipline now, and here's what's going on.

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And then they inform the congregation. So then the role of the congregation at that point would be to go to that individual and call them to repentance.

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He's not willing to listen to anybody else, that person that he offended, the two or three witnesses. So now it's the body that's coming to him and is saying, look, we know you were in the wrong in this matter and you need to repent.

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And if he will not listen to even the other members of the church, then he is to be to you as the

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Gentile or the tax collector. Now there's that excommunication. He's permanently removed from our body.

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He can be removed at the third step where the congregation is being told about this sin.

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He's now removed from the body. He's been put out. He's not been excommunicated yet.

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He's not considered the Gentile or the tax collector, but he is being removed from us for a time because he's not willing to listen to us.

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And so then at that point, if he won't repent, then it becomes a complete excommunication.

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And again, this is why polity is important. These kinds of things need to be decided about a congregation. I'm not telling you that this is the way that you have to do it.

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I'm just giving you some possible scenarios of the way that a church can handle this. A church has to come to an agreement of this.

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You've got to assign this in your bylaws. What is meant here by tell it to the church?

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Don't just automatically assume that means that whatever wrong is going on or whatever disciplinary thing is happening in the church needs to come before the body.

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That can be really irresponsible because in this particular offense that's going on or in this matter of discipline, there may be some pretty personal things.

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There could be other persons involved that don't want to be included in this. And the elders know about it, but they can't tell the whole body.

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They can't broadcast this and publicly shame people. So you have to be able to trust your elders to handle some of those things on a level that is just not the business of the congregation.

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But the congregation can be told, here's the matter that's going on. Here is how this is where you come in now.

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You need to be able to go to this individual and tell him that he needs to repent. And again, all of this needs to be outlined in the polity.

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You have to decide this in your church polity. I have some examples that I could give of this, but I think

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I'll wait until tomorrow to do that. But in the meantime, we've talked about polity here, church governance, the different kinds of church governance, what

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I believe scripture says about church governance. So that in following this step, we understand the instruction and we understand the ins and outs of the instruction of what is meant to tell it to the church.

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And if this person refuses to listen, even to the church, then he would be excommunicated considered to be like a pagan or even a traitor, the reference to the tax collector.

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So let's stop there. We've got three more verses. We've got to finish up here in Matthew 18. I'm just going to have to wait for the parable on forgiveness until next week.

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That's the final portion of Matthew 18. So tomorrow is verses 18 to 20. As we finish this up, let's conclude with prayer.

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Heavenly Father, I thank you for the good things that you have shown us according to your word and that even we are told how we care for one another in the body.

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If somebody has sinned, how we restore them to the path of righteousness and may we consider as well our weaknesses and our needs for that accountability for the body to come alongside us and show us our faults and call us to repentance if need be.

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For as the apostle Paul said to the Galatians in Galatians 6 .1, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each of you looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted.

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Forgive us our sins and help us to forgive those who sin against us. Forgiveness has been given to us in Christ, who died on the cross for our sins and rose again from the dead, so that whoever believes in him, we have been reconciled to God and to his body.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray, Amen. You can find a complete list of videos, books, devotionals, and other resources online at www .tt