What is church discipline? In what situations is church discipline necessary? - Podcast Episode 138

The Purpose and Process of Church Discipline

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. Today we're gonna be tackling an issue that we do receive questions about fairly often, but it's something that most churches and pastors, church leaders hope to never have to do, and yet there's very explicit instructions in Scripture about it.

So in today's podcast, we're gonna be talking about church discipline. Now the main passage for church discipline is Matthew chapter 18, verses 15 through 17, and also 18 to 20, which we'll cover a little bit later.

But let me just go ahead and read the passage just to get us started. Matthew 18, verses 15. If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.

But if they will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church. And if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

And so this verse, this passage in Matthew, there's some other passages elsewhere in the New Testament that kind of help to clarify how this is done, kind of gives an outline both for church discipline and it's often applied in interpersonal relationships that if your brother or sister in Christ sins against you, first talk to them privately.

If that doesn't result in repentance, take someone with you. Then the church discipline is a little more formal. If a member of the church is involved in sin, is not responding to a personal and hopefully loving confrontation, then just bring it to the whole church.

And the whole goal of the process, whether it's interpersonal or whether it's entire church, is repentance. It's not to bring condemnation. It's to hopefully point out the person the error of their ways and to point them towards how they should be living in contrast to what they're currently doing.

So that's the goal of the whole process, several steps. The steps should be followed in their biblical order. And again, the goal is repentance. The goal is not to destroy someone's reputation. The goal is not to condemn someone so harshly that they feel they can never be of use to Christ again.

The goal is repentance and restoration.

A lot of people get confused about the exact purposes behind church discipline. It's good that we bring up the idea that the point of it is supposed to be repentance. We're called on all these times in the Bible to pursue unity, that we're supposed to be together as much as we can be.

And if we don't approach conflict and disagreement the right way, that's not gonna happen. One of the things you see in this process for church discipline is that it starts with the most private conversation possible.

If you have a problem with somebody, the best thing to do is to go communicate with that person, just you and them. Not gossip about it, not complain about it, not whine about it to a dozen other people.

You go talk to that person first, and then it escalates from there. One of the things that's really interesting about that is that that doesn't just provide the opportunity for someone who is potentially sinning to be confronted and hopefully repent when it's a personal conversation or when they're approached by several people in the church.

But those steps also provide an opportunity for something almost like a due process. If I go talk to somebody and say, hey, I have a problem with this or that thing that you're doing, they may wind up telling me something that changes my mind.

And now this conflict, instead of me spreading false rumors about them, well, now we've settled it. Now I understand, okay, I was wrong about that. Maybe two of us go to talk to each other and we just can't resolve this disagreement, this feeling that somebody's sinning or somebody's doing harm.

When you take it to a small group of people, you have the same opportunity. Now you bring people in from outside the circumstances who can sort of look at it, and there's a chance for those people to say, you know what, Jeff?

You're really making a bigger deal about this than you need to. This does not need to be escalated. Or you're right. This is something that we need to work with and deal with. So the purpose of all this is not to crush somebody or to slam down on somebody or just do everything that we can to skip to the part where we get to throw them out in the wilderness.

The point of all of it is to seek unity and reconciliation and to do it in a way that doesn't create more drama and division than it absolutely has to.

Discipline as Discipleship and the Need for Biblical Discernment

Exactly, Jeff. And church discipline is a difficult thing, but it is commanded in Scripture. Every church needs to be taking this seriously. If a church is serious about actually discipling people, they have to be practicing church discipline because discipline is part of discipleship.

We all have rough edges. We all have things that we need to work on and we all have blind spots that we need to have people come into us at times and say, hey, I noticed this in your life and can I help you through this?

Can we work on this together? Is there a way that we can correct this? This sinful behavior is what church discipline is aimed at. But I'm struck by Jesus' instructions in Matthew 18, that passage that you read, Shea, how there are built-in safeguards.

And Jeff, you were talking about those. It's possible that the person who's making the accusation doesn't have all the facts and needs to be corrected. And so the process allows for that, to be corrected.

The process that Jesus describes there in Matthew 18 also has some built-in protections of privacy. The very first step is that you go one-on-one and that's as far as it goes at the beginning, unless things escalate because of a refusal to repent, the digging into the heels and the hard, the stiff necked or the hard heart that we sometimes run into.

But I have to say, as a pastor, and in our church, when we've practiced church discipline, I've only ever had to get to the first step. And the one-on-one conversation has had good results and it never had to go further than that.

Now, that's not the case in many churches. I understand and I believe that I'm very blessed and I thank God every day for the church that I'm pastoring. But in my particular case, that has taken care of it.

And when that happens, the one-on-one conversation takes place and then there's a resolution. Nobody else even has to know about it. So that's a beautiful thing. You may be saying, my church doesn't practice church discipline.

Well, that may be true and maybe they need to start practicing church discipline, but it also could be true that your church is practicing church discipline and you just never hear about it because things are handled privately and things are handled just through step one.

And that's the situation that I see in my church. And it's a good thing to be following the biblical principles.

So talking to pastors and even questions that we've received from pastors or from people who are involved in church discipline or have had loved ones go through church discipline, there are some aspects of it in our modern context are more difficult to apply.

For example, in most of the New Testament letters written to individual churches, if a sinning believer who was unrepentant refused to turn back to the Lord was in a sense excommunicated, forced to no longer attend the church, there was no other church for them to go to.

In our modern context, in most cities, especially larger cities, there would literally be hundreds of churches to choose from. So you can be disciplined to the point of being forced to leave a church and there's a church two blocks down that you can attend.

So some churches tend to avoid the church discipline thing. Well, they're just gonna go somewhere else anyway, so what's the point? Or I also have heard from pastors, church leaders who, for a very biblical reason, have tried to initiate church discipline only to have some people in the church revolt against it to the point of like, you're making...

So what if my daughter who serves on the worship team is living with her boyfriend and engaging in sexual immorality? What gives you the right to say that that's wrong? And to the point where that pastor was forced to leave for confronting essentially someone who happened to be in one of the powerful families in the church.

So I totally get it that a lot of pastors will tend to avoid church discipline for one, they're not sure it'll do any good, and two, they don't want to stir up dissension. They don't want to have to come back and bite them for trying to do something biblical.

But again, this is something the Bible commands. It gives us very clear outlines of, here are the steps to take and we should take them in those steps. For me, my one confusion or lack of clarity on this issue is what sins rise to the level of needing church discipline?

Like if someone has sinned, which we all do all the time, but at what point is it a big enough sin, I even hesitate to use that language, that it needs to be a personal confrontation or then a group of people or then brought before the whole church.

Maybe I wish there was a little more clarity in this. It's okay, what exactly are we talking about? What specific sins do we need to confront in this way? But it's not. So I think it becomes a matter of discernment for churches and church leaders, for pastors.

A quote-unquote small sin in one situation would not rise to this, but perhaps in another it would. So even in this, while we have clear instructions of how to handle it, what exactly is being handled?

I think there's some discernment involved when a confrontation is necessary or when this is a matter. This is just something that's a matter of spiritual growth and discipleship.

Sin, Accountability, and the Goal of Restoration

Yeah, I think discernment is necessary always. And I think going along with what you said, Shea, we need to be careful that we are only calling sin what Scripture calls sin. We're not talking about pet peeves or things that just rub me the wrong way and I'm gonna go take care of this issue.

It's stuff that the Scripture actually identifies as sinful. Those are the issues that we need to be addressing. Also, I think when we start the process with that one-on-one conversation, it needs to be in cases where that seems to be a true blind spot.

It's not somebody who's just struggling with a sin. And confesses it and tries to forsake it and all of that. But it's somebody who persists in this behavior and seems to not even be aware of it possibly or doesn't care that it's hurting other people.

And those are the cases that we need to be pursuing.

It's really important to remember that the purpose of church discipline, if you watch the way that that proceeds, every step in the process assumes that somebody involved is refusing to accept repentance and accountability for something that's going on.

The point of church discipline is not to prosecute a trial with the end goal being excommunication. Hey, we proved that this guy did this sin, so let's kick him out of the church. If somebody says, you know what, you're right, this is something that I shouldn't do or I should not have done, I'm willing to accept accountability.

I do think that this is something I need to fix. Then that's how Christian life is supposed to work. You know, none of us are gonna be perfect. If all we just do is prosecute when we make mistakes, then we're all gonna be out in no time.

The point of it is to look for opportunities for reconciliation, for repentance, restoring somebody in a spirit of gentleness. And that sort of a thing. It's not just about determining was there a sin, it's what are we going to do about that sin.

Now, along with that, we need to make sure that we understand what the end point of the whole disciplinary process is. When we talk about the idea being reconciliation, the idea is gentleness, we need to remember that the end point, if somebody refuses to repent, if somebody doesn't want to cooperate anymore, Bible talks about treating them like they're a pagan or a Gentile or a tax collector.

And in the context that Jesus is talking about, he's basically saying that person now becomes an outsider. There's some churches and some sects that take that to a completely different level. It's sometimes called disfellowshipping or shunning.

What they basically do is they act like the person doesn't even exist. They completely cut them off from family, they totally ostracize them from society. That's not gentle. There's nothing in scripture that says that that's what we're supposed to do.

If we get to the end of this whole process and somebody says, I refuse to repent, I am not gonna cooperate, I'm not going to go along with this, then what we're really doing is we're just removing them from the circle of believers, from the family, from the congregation side of things.

It's not that we're pretending that they suddenly have vanished off the face of the earth or that they have to be removed from society. In fact, because if we're going to treat them as a non-believer, really that means that they're a primary target for evangelism.

We should always be seeking to have this reconciled, to have this eventually become corrected. And I understand that some people who practice things like shunning and disfellowshipping, the idea is to put so much pressure on the person that they want to come back.

But there again, that's not gentleness, that's not anything that really goes with the themes that we see elsewhere in scripture. So we need to make a point about that, that if we're going to pursue this the way that the broad context of the Bible implies, that if we get to the end point and somebody's not cooperative, that the result is not that we erase them from society.

The end point of this is simply that we say, all right, we're now going to assume that that person is a non-believer and we're gonna act accordingly.

And that verse that you just alluded to, Jeff, is Galatians 6 verse one, which says, brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the spirit should restore that person gently and there's that word gently, but watch yourselves or you may be also tempted.

So through it all, this process has to be filled with grace and grace and kindness and unconditional love should not be an afterthought in this process, it should be the first thought as we have that goal of restoration and seek to do what is best for this erring brother or sister in Christ.

Now to share what you were saying, I think there's a sense in which we can sort of say that this church discipline, and we refer to this as the church discipline process, but I think it's really a little bit broader even than that because it really is just sort of the church conflict or church disagreement process.

I think it's fair for us to say that if we're not sure what to do, this is the model that we go to, as long as we're starting with that humble, sincere one-on-one approach that says, look, I feel convicted that I need to approach you about this and say something about this.

Those give us the opportunity to say, what does scripture say? What's really happening? What's going on here? And that's where we get the chance to sort of go through and determine, even if it is something that's ultimately just trivial, well, then we're handling our trivial disagreement in a civil, personal, together sort of a matter.

I think that that's where our discernment comes in is that when we start to get to that level of, okay, now we're gonna take it to a group, that's a chance for the group to say, I don't know that this rises to the level of discipline.

I know you don't like the bumper sticker on their car, but I don't see that that's got anything to do with this and so on and so forth. So I think it's handy that we don't necessarily have to ask, like, do I use this process or do I not use this process?

All we sort of have to do is say, this is the process we're gonna use. And then we go through and just determine whether it needs to continue or whether it can stop.

Church Discipline, Civil Authorities, and the Witness of the Church

Jeff, that's a great point. And I've seen in some employer handbooks a policy very similar to what Matthew 18 describes in terms of even that conflicts in the workplace of how to handle disagreements.

And so these principles apply to many situations beyond just a formal church discipline type of process because, I mean, ultimately, if your goal is restoration, forgiveness, so forth, these are the steps to take.

If you want to nuke your relationship with a person, well, jump straight to broadcasting it to everyone and focus on condemnation. I mean, but if the goal is what Christ is talking about here to lead a believer from embracing sin to rejecting sin, these are the steps that should be followed.

I like that you bring up that idea of a goal, that there's a point and a purpose behind the rules. There's advantages to the process, but those are a little bit different than the goal, the purpose. Why are we doing this the way that we're doing it?

And the ultimate purpose of this is to make disciples. It's to make people more Christ-like. And the first step in that is hopefully gonna deal with that right then and there. But all of the steps in there are meant to have those different purposes.

First and foremost is to disciple, is to help people overcome sin, is to hold people accountable so we actually do grow, we actually do change. And I agree with what both Shea and you, Kevin, are saying is that this is necessary.

You cannot not sometimes have confrontation about these things because we're not perfect. But the process is also meant to protect other people in the church, not just the one who's being confronted. We don't want sin to become so accepted, so ignored that it becomes imitated in the church.

We don't want to have something going on that we're afraid to speak on or speak about, and then it just becomes a trend, it becomes a habit, and nobody wants to confront it. And worst of all, we don't want the way we as a church act, think, speak to provide the wrong impression to the world.

The first Corinthians chapter five has an example where Paul talks about somebody who's doing something so heinous that he basically says, look, even the pagans know that that's gross. And that's a problem.

If the church is participating in things that even a sinful culture knows are not right, then it's not even just that we're weakening the witness that we have of who Christ is and what he means, but we're almost lying to the world about what it means to be a follower of Christ.

So the fact that these are commands is important for those reasons, for the individual, for the church within the church, and for how the church can witness to and help the world.

If I may, I'd like to share another passage that I think deals with church discipline, and that's James chapter five, verses 19 and 20. My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins.

And so James just gives the encouragement that if you're involved in this process and your goal is to turn this erring brother or sister back to the truth, then you are doing a very good thing. You're acting in love, which covers over a multitude of sins, and you're saving this person from possible destruction down the road.

I like old Westerns, and one of the tropes of that genre is the runaway stagecoach, or sometimes just a runaway horse. But so often there's this stagecoach that for one reason or another has lost its driver.

He's fallen off the bench there, and this stagecoach is going down the path, pell-mell, and the horses are galloping along, and of course there's this damsel in distress that's in the coach, and she's crying out for help, but not to worry because there is a cowboy coming, and he's riding a very fast steed, and he comes up alongside the team of horses, and he jumps off his horse onto the backs of this team of horses, clambers his way up to the front horses, and turns, this is what's important, he turns them off the path that they were going and brings them to a stop.

Then, of course, when everything is calmed down, he goes back to the coach, he opens the door, saves the girl, and all is well. I love old Westerns, but I think that's kind of what James is talking about.

In a way, we need somebody to come alongside an errant brother or sister and turn them from the path that they were going. I mean, there's a cliff down this path at the end of this. You don't wanna go this way.

Turn them out of that way into the safe way. Pull back on the reins and slow things down. Let's hold our horses, and let's get to a safe spot. James says, when you're able to come alongside and guide somebody back into the path of safety and truth, then that is a very good thing, and it's blessed.

It's also good for us to remember that the purpose of going through that is to, we're trying to help that person to not wreck themselves. We're trying not to get the damsel in distress run over. We don't want them to hurt other people.

I think we also need to remember that sometimes people get confused about the concept of church discipline, and they think that the point of church discipline is that no matter what the sin is and no matter what happens, it's all just supposed to be handled completely within the church.

And granted, we've been talking about how important discretion and privacy are when they're possible because we don't wanna spread false rumors. But we also need to remember that repentance includes things like accountability, and nothing in the church discipline process suggests at all that there aren't going to be civil consequences sometimes for some of the things that are happening.

There's a difference between me confronting somebody and saying, hey, I think that you're speaking inappropriately with someone who's not your wife. That is what it is. It's another thing if I say, hey, I think that you're maybe doing something inappropriate with a minor or that you're committing some sort of abuse or crime or something like that.

Nothing in the church discipline process precludes Christians from properly using government for the authority that God intended it to be used for. What we don't wanna do is we don't wanna let people sort of say, oh, we're handling this through church discipline.

It's not an either or, it's a both and. Church discipline involves how we as Christian believers are gonna interact with others who claim to be Christians. But in order for somebody to actually repent and accept accountability, that can, and usually does mean if this is a crime, that person needs to accept accountability for that crime.

So it's a nuance that we wanna make sure that we at least establish so that people aren't confused with that idea of thinking that, well, we're supposed to keep this private, we're supposed to cover something up.

It's not about covering anything up. It's about making sure that we're going through the procedure the right way. And absolutely accountability includes civil authorities if it rises to that level.

Church Discipline for Leaders and the Call to Loving Correction

Yeah, Jeff, that's an excellent point. And I just remember in the past, time frame really doesn't matter. There are many instances of churches handling something in-house that should have been reported to the authorities.

And the damage it wreaks later, it's far worse, because then it looks like the church is trying to cover something up. So yeah, the church discipline process is not meant to cover up crimes or to protect people from the civil consequences of the actions they've taken.

Sometimes the best thing a church can do, and of course, since God calls us to, the thing a church should do if a crime is committed is to report that to the appropriate authorities. And even if the person has fully repented and gone through the full restoration process, that does not alleviate them from the consequences of their actions.

So thank you for bringing that up. That's very important. If I were to think of one other point I would really like to bring up, is that church discipline is not just for church leaders to take congregants or church members through.

The same principles also apply to church leaders. I point to the language in 1 Timothy 5, verses 19 to 20, which says, do not entertain an accusation against an elder unless it's brought by, again, two or three witnesses, using the same terminology.

But those elders who are sinning, you are to reprove before everyone so that others may take warning. So it uses a lot of the same language that we see in Matthew 18. And even in the case of an elder or a pastor, the goal is restoration.

Several times, prominent church leaders have done something that resulted in them going through the church discipline process. And I have heard people who are in the church who, not the best word to use, but like a fan of the pastor to the point of, why are we being so unloving to them when they're going through a tough time and those sorts of things?

And to me, every time I hear that, it takes my mind back to Hebrews 12. And the verse, actually a quote of Proverbs 3, says, my son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines the one he loves and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.

Whether it's church discipline, whether it's parental discipline, whether it's discipline directly from God, it should be done in a spirit of love. Seeking to restore someone is an act of love. Seeking to help someone to see the error of their ways, to point out a blind spot, a sin that is in their life that they are enslaved to is an act of love.

And so keeping that in mind throughout the whole church discipline process, that the motivation should be love, the end result should be repentance and restoration, gives the whole church discipline process a whole different perspective.

So our attitude in how we go about church discipline is as important as following the precise steps that are laid out in scripture.

Binding and Loosing in the Context of Church Discipline

It's also interesting when we look at the context of what goes on there, it's very important that we use this unified approach. And I know, Shay, you've made comment before about how you find some irony in that there's this description of the church disciplinary process that you read.

And what comes immediately after that are words that are really, really important for this process. And they're very often just pulled out of context and applied in situations where they don't mean anything like what people are trying to use them for.

What's your take on that?

Yeah, so in the Matthew 18 passage, the very next verse after the one I read earlier is whatever you have bound on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.

And then the next verse after that is for wherever two or three witnesses are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. The binding and loosing verse I hear quoted all the time about, well, I'm binding this demon.

I'm binding this, preventing this bad event from happening. I'm loosing God's blessings. And it's not at all what the verse is talking about. And that where two or three are gathered is usually quoted in the context of prayer.

Like, okay, let's gather two or three of us together and let's all pray for the same thing. And God is especially gonna be with us during that time. And I'm not saying there's an absence of truth in that concept, but both of those passages are directly connected to church discipline, saying that God is, if we're following the biblical principles of church discipline, God is with us in that process.

And he's in agreement with us when we are confronting a believer and his spirit of love with the goal of restoration. And the two or three witnesses in the passage above, take two or three with you. And then two verses later talking about when there are two or three there, I'm in the midst saying God is with us throughout this church discipline process.

So this is a powerful reminder of that when God has ordained a process like this, if we are following the biblical steps, he is with us, he is guiding us, he is working in that process. And ultimately he is the one who has to bring about the repentance.

He is the one who has to change a person's heart about the sins they are committing. So participating with God, allowing God's word to guide and inform the whole process is crucial. Now, taking these things out of context, to me it's more of an annoyance than anything else.

And I'm not saying these verses don't have any application outside of the church discipline process, but it's always, and we did a podcast about this not too long ago about taking verses out of context.

I can't remember if we discussed this one, but keeping verses in their context is crucial because we don't wanna make them say what they don't say, but we do want them to inform what the context they're actually found in.

And these two verses applying to church discipline gives you a whole different perspective on how the process works and who's in charge of it, namely God. I hope our conversation today on church discipline has been informative to you.

Hope you, after listening or watching this episode, walk away from it with a greater understanding of what church discipline is and what church discipline isn't. And each of us, to varying degrees, have had to engage in church discipline with a believer who's sinning.

And to varying degrees, we've seen repentance happen, we've seen people just walk out and leave the church. Obviously our goal should always be restoration, confrontation in love, and victory over sin rather than condemnation.

So hope you hear that spirit with us today. Not a fun topic to talk about, but something we're asked about fairly often and something that is not applied in churches as often as it should be. So it's been the Got Questions podcast on church discipline with Jeff, the administrator of BibleRef .com, and Kevin, the managing editor of Got Questions Ministries.

Got questions? Bible has answers. And we'll help you find them.