Church Discipline and Holiness

The blogosphere is all abuzz these days about the story of the woman in Florida who, because she was upset that her biblically grounded church was going to be continuing on with the process of discipline, even though she decided to bail out in the process of that church discipline.

She was so upset about this that they were going to go to the gathered body and tell it to the church, as the Bible tells them to, that she went to Fox News with her concern about her sexual sin being made public.

Of course, by doing so, she made sure that about a hundred thousand times the number of people who would have known about her public sin now know about her public sin. And so I've really completely lost where the rationality of the woman's thinking came in at this particular point in time.

But that particular story has prompted a lot of discussion. Sadly, for most evangelicals today, the idea of church discipline, the idea of holiness in the congregation is, well, it's pretty laughable.

They have no idea why anyone would care. In fact, the idea being since the woman had left the church, then that should be that, right? That should just be it. There shouldn't be any more discussion. In fact, I did see one news article that quoted Daryl Bach from Dallas Seminary.

Now, I immediately recognized because it's a news article, the chances that this actually represents what Daryl Bach said aren't very good. But so looking at it as just what Daryl Bach was reported to have said rather than what he did say, it said, for example, most churches would handle this much more privately than this particular community is choosing to do so.

That strikes me as a little bit odd because evidently Matthew 18 was followed, godly counsel was followed, there was personal contact, there was multiple witnesses who sought to bring about repentance.

And then you have the announcement that the congregation is going to be informed. Now, that is biblically mandated. That's the thing that has amazed me. It's a New Testament teaching. First Corinthians chapter 5 verse 9, the apostle says, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters since then you would need to go out of the world.

But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

Now, I simply have to ask a question. If there is to be this concern within the body of Christ, within the local congregation about this kind of behavior so that there is this apostolic command to not have fellowship with these individuals.

Because if you do, think about it, think about the people outside the congregation. If they see you all just still palling around and chumming around and all is well, and they know this person is sexually immoral, they know this person is a swindler, now they are going to say, oh, see those Christians, they just get together and do their thing.

There is no change in life. Their claim to follow Christ is invalidated thereby. And so, there is an apostolic command to avoid fellowship with this person. Well, if you keep it private between the elders and the person and you don't tell the congregation how are they supposed to fulfill this command?

If you don't do what Jesus said and tell it to the church, how on earth are you supposed to fulfill this command? So, when the people of the world tell us that we should not do these things, and I really honestly have to wonder if there is not going to be a movement in the future to legally preclude the Christian church from following biblical mandates on these matters.

I see stuff coming at us from every which direction right now, and there is so many in evangelicalism that are so far removed from any type of meaningful biblical foundation that they would be so willing to go, oh, we don't need to worry about church discipline.

There is more important things than that. We don't have to follow the whole apostolic council, and they help those outside the church to impinge upon the freedoms of the church in so doing. But anyway, as I go back to these quoted statements, this kind of process normally would happen after, quote, much more private interaction with the person, Bach said, and is normally reserved for church leaders as opposed to, quote, a normal member of the church, end quote.

Really? Now, maybe he's just describing the bad state in evangelicalism, and the reporter didn't understand that because it's rather obvious that there is no such distinction in the comments in 1 Corinthians chapter 5.

I've never read anyone saying that this particular individual who was to be put out of the congregation was in fact one of the leaders of the congregation in the first place. It seemed like he was just one of the members of the congregation.

And then finally, more importantly, he said the actions are unusual given that this woman had severed her relationship with the church. Well, that does really reflect on how we view church membership, doesn't it?

Now, in our church, unlike a lot of evangelical churches, we meet with prospective members. We give them our confession of faith. We give them the church constitution. They have to sign a paper. They have to meet with the elders where we have conversation with them and have an interview with them.

And so they know what is involved, and they would have no basis for saying, well, you know, I just quit. I'm out of here, as if that somehow is going to relieve them from actually going through the process of discipline.

But again, it is the church's right. It is the church's responsibility to do these things. And I think, honestly, one of the primary reasons that people dismiss this kind of an issue and find it unusual that this church has done what's right.

And I'd like to commend the church and encourage them and to thank them for doing the right thing in this matter. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why they should be taking any heat whatsoever.

They're simply doing what the Christian scriptures require them to do. Now, those people who don't think that the Christian scriptures can say anything, well, you know, that takes us to a different area of discussion.

But I think one of the main reasons so many people find this to be an unusual topic and cringe when the subject of discipline is mentioned is because there's so little emphasis upon holiness and evangelicalism today.

I remember years ago when I was in high school, I was given the opportunity of leading a Bible study in my high school Bible study. And I went to 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 14 through 18 that talk about being holy as God is holy and having our conversation, our lifestyle in holiness.

And I remember the people in my class just staring at me like, what are you talking about? What do you mean? And I've said many times that R .C. Sproul's book, The Holiness of God, really changed my life.

And I would highly recommend it to anyone who has not read it. But the idea of God's holiness as the object of our love and devotion, if we were truly devoted to the holiness of God, if we saw the holiness of God as something that is, well, to use Jonathan Edwards' terminology, sweet, something that is the object of our passion, of our love, so that we wanted to emulate that, it would have a massive impact, I think, upon our lives.

And congregations that as a body would desire that kind of holiness, well, the idea of discipline wouldn't be strange or odd at all. It would be a given. It would be a voluntary given. But that's not how the church is often viewed anymore.

Because there is a sub-biblical and in many ways anti-biblical view of the church as a place of entertainment, as the primary seat of evangelism in the sense that this isn't a place where the people of God worship God, where if an unbeliever comes in, he will be convicted by what's going on.

No, no, no, no, no. We got to get rid of all that worship stuff and, well, at least redefine it and make it a place of comfort for the unregenerate, comfort for the unbelievers. Now, once you've done that, then it's understandable why the idea of discipline would just be completely outside the realm of experience of so many in evangelicalism today.

And so, once again, my thanks to the church in Florida for doing what's right. Pray for them. Pray that they'll have opportunity of explaining why they must do what Christ commands them to do. But for all of us, I truly believe that our culture is entering into a time period where at least for a while, we are going to have many opportunities of explaining why we do things that are becoming culturally unacceptable.

Holiness of life, church discipline, holding to the law of God regarding marriage, regarding homosexuality, regarding the saving of human life, abortion, assisted suicide, all these places where our culture is just seething in its hatred for God's law.

And the enemies of God have been tremendously encouraged by recent events within our culture. So, they're going to be pushing forward with this this agenda of ridding our culture of all the foundations that made it great in the first place, which of course will only hasten its collapse.

We will have opportunity at least for a while to give reason for why we believe the things we do. The culture is going to do everything it can to marginalize us, to shut us up, to make us feel embarrassed about Jesus Christ and his gospel.

But we will have opportunity for a while anyway to give reason for the hope that's within us. Let us pray for strength. Let's pray for wisdom that as we have that opportunity, we will be able to take advantage of it.

For we do not know how long it will be if God does not bring repentance to Western culture before that culture simply says, we don't want to hear any more of it. If you continue to say the things you're saying, we're going to define this as criminal behavior and we're going to lock you up.

That's what many people want to do. Just listen to the seething hatred of homosexual advocates right now who have gone so far beyond anything could even be called rational. They absolutely want anyone who would dare to express traditional Christian belief that homosexuality is a sin, that marriage between one man and one woman.

You are to be shut up. You are not to have a voice in our culture. You are to be marginalized. You do not have any role in our society any longer. That's what they want. That's what many of them want.

And you see that being expressed with such clarity now that maybe it'll start causing people to realize, wow, these folks really do detest God's law. They look at the hatred. You want to talk about hate crimes.

I guess you have to define these things. And I think there's been many generations of Christians in the United States that read over Jesus's words, do not be surprised the world hates you because it hated me.

And they just sort of went over it because it wasn't our experience. It might become more and more of our experience unless God brings repentance to this land. He's done it in the past. We need to be praying very, very fervently that he does so yet again in the future.

Thanks for watching.