The Cutting Room Floor Episode 3 - "Does the Bible Teach Church Membership?"

Okay, back again, back again, back again, away. All right, let's go. Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you're listening to this. I am Kofi Adhboye and I'm here with Eddie Casillas.

And this is the third episode of the Cutting Room Floor Podcast.

Eddie, how you doing, man?

So far, so good, man. I'm having some good conversations about the podcast, you know, and talking about the church. So I'm excited to continue.

Awesome, awesome. Like we said, this is the third episode of our sort of Cutting Room Floor. It's not sort of, that's what we've called it. But the basic idea of this is to kind of do a brief review of Sunday's message and then to dig in a little deeper into some of the themes and ideas that were touched on.

And as the name suggests, get into a little bit of what I had to leave out of the sermon on Sunday for obviously time and more practical considerations. So with that, I'll turn it over to Eddie and he will be this week's questioner.

What Church Membership Means as a Formal Relationship

All right, thanks, Kofi. Yeah, so sermon is really good, really important considering, you know, where we're at in the United States and the sort of culture of the Pacific Northwest. You know, one of your first points was defining church membership.

And so can you kind of give us a smooth and good idea of what you mean when you say a formal relationship with the church? I mean, I feel like that kind of language might scare some people. What do we mean when we say that?

Well, what we mean when we say that it's a formal relationship is simply that there's commitment involved, that you are making some promises to the church and the church is making some promises to you.

Jonathan Edwards, who I don't quote for everything. I think he was right on this. Jonathan Edwards described the relationship between a Christian and their church as being akin to marriage. Well, that's an illustration we can all understand.

When you get married, both of us are married men. Well, when we got married, we made certain commitments. We call them vows, but we made certain commitments to our wives and they made certain commitments to us.

Now, nobody looks at that and says, oh, that is. Well, actually, let me tell you, I'm sure some radical feminists somewhere think that's oppressive and that's a terrible thing. But for most of us who live in the real world, we have no problem with that.

We generally think that's a good thing. That's to be encouraged, that a man committing to his wife and a woman committing to a husband is a wonderful thing. Nobody complains that that's too formal or it's too much.

You know, everyone's like, no, that's a wonderful commitment. But for whatever reason, when it comes to the church, people get very scared about that. Which is interesting because the Bible describes our relationship to Jesus.

As a marriage.

That we are the church collectively is the bride of Christ and he is the divine husband. So when you think of it, when we talk about a formal commitment, think of it as essentially that kind of a binding relationship.

While, again, we'll probably talk about this later on in the message, but I don't believe that church membership is ironclad so people can never leave for any circumstance. Once you're in, you're in for life.

I don't think any of us are saying that. What we are saying is that if you have made this commitment, it's a serious commitment and it's a particular commitment. You are committing to particular things.

You're not just committing generally to, you know, I guess I'll turn up once in a while and I might just throw some money in the plate or the box or whatever it is you do at your church if you're watching this.

No, you're actually saying, no, there are certain things that I am saying I will do based on who I am. And the church is saying there are certain things we will do based on who we are. And so that's what I mean when I say it's a formal relationship.

Okay, and you said it was a formal relationship with the universal church?

Nope.

So the definition I gave on Sunday from Jonathan Lehman is that church membership is a formal relationship between the individual Christian and, I added a word, the local church. So all Christians, by virtue of their being born of God, their being baptized in the spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, 13, all Christians are part of the universal church.

But not all Christians are part of particular local churches. I'm not a member of every single church that is out there. I may attend various churches, like if I'm on the road or something, you know, circumstances may change, you go somewhere else.

That's one thing. But generally speaking, I'm not a member. I am not a committed part of every single church that is out there. The number of churches that I'm actually a committed member of are very few, as in one.

And that's what we're saying. In church membership, you are entering into a particular relationship with a particular local church. Again, if we can borrow the marriage illustration. I'm not married to every woman in the world.

I'm married to Laura. You're not married to every woman in the world. You're married to Tiffany. Same thing with local church membership. It's not saying that you don't have relationships of varying kinds with other churches and what have you.

Of course not.

But you're saying that this body is the body that I have chosen to join myself to, to serve the Lord in and to be discipled by. That's, again, it's one Christian to one local church. It's not one Christian to multiple local churches.

It's one Christian, one church.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So just like a marriage, it's like we enter into covenant with one another and before God. And so someone doesn't believe that, I guess, where would you point them to the covenant membership, you know, in scripture?

Biblical Evidence for Covenant Membership

So this was really just the second point of my sermon on Sunday where I started off by making a case that there's a difference between something being biblical and something only being biblical if you can give a clear chapter and verse that nobody argues about.

Because the reality is, if you say that, there are any number of topics for which we do not have a single chapter and verse that makes the case. And I gave some examples on Sunday. Some of them were a little tongue-in-cheek.

But again, it's trying to demonstrate that if that's the logic you hold to, you're, you know, you're setting yourself up for some failure here. And so can I give you a chapter and verse that causes a covenant and says that you must view judgment?

I can't. What I can do, though, is what I try to do on Sunday is to give you a number of lines of biblical evidence that lead to that conclusion. And so we talked about the example of the early church.

We talked about the, you know, pictures of the biblical pictures of the church. We talked about the reality of church discipline. We talked about the call to biblical submission. All of these lines of evidence all come together.

The fact that, OK, the early church had a number for the people who were part of the church. It says that people were added to them. So there was a specific body that existed. And we looked at just the church in Jerusalem.

And there were people who were added to that body. They could account for them. They knew who was part of that body, and they knew who wasn't. In the case of the biblical pictures of the church, we talked about the three pictures we gave in week one.

The church as an assembly, the church as a body, and the church as a fellowship. All three of those imply some sort of commitment. And then we also added the church as a family. So we all understand that.

Again, I may be friends of lots of families, but I'm not a member of every family. And so we talked about that, the reality of church discipline. And I simply made the point that you can't exercise effective discipline without a rubric for determining, as my pastor back in London would say, those who are in and those who are out.

As I put on Sunday, if you discipline somebody, but you don't have an active membership, what are you disciplining them from? What are you removing them from? What really stops you from saying? And again, I haven't heard from anyone, but I imagine that was probably a, well, depending on the setting, that could be a controversial point.

But the reality is, why are you removing them too? Because all they can say is, well, you guys don't want me here, but I'm not committed here. So I can just go down the road and it is what it is. And as long as that person doesn't tell the other church, they're none the wiser.

They basically just slid right out from underneath that discipline. I think membership with teeth, as some people put it, the ability to actually make that discipline binding such that if somebody leaves our church and a half, I can actually contact the pastor of wherever they go next and be, so by the way, just so you should know, blah, blah, blah.

Like, again, that implies a formal set membership. And then just finally, just the reality of the Bible, talking about specific leaders who serve in specific churches. And the command is for those who are not leaders to obey and to submit to their leaders.

Again, if you don't have a particular church you're a part of, who are you submitting to? Yeah. So again, can I give you a chapter and verse that says we must view church membership covenantally with all these responsibilities?

No. And I don't find that to be a problem if I'm honest, because I can, I wouldn't even say infer that I can build the case for that from any number of biblical texts being put together in their context.

Yeah.

Kofi. Can't, can't you though, establish a case that God works in the covenants with his people?

No, you can. I wouldn't disagree with that. I would simply be cautious of the fact that generally speaking, that's why I use the term covenantal church membership versus covenant membership. I say that sometimes I can be interchangeable with that.

If I'm speaking too fast, but generally I try to make a distinction between that simply because we want to be very careful that that technical term covenant in the Bible isn't applied to things that aren't called covenants in the Bible.

So it has the framework of a covenant in that it's a binding relationship, but it is not a covenant in the sense that, well, let me put it this way. It's a covenant between men, not necessarily a divine covenant like we see in the Bible.

If that makes sense.

Oh, that does make, I appreciate the distinction there. Yeah.

Yes. This is a binding agreement among people. I would argue honored by God because it's orderly and it reflects the way he does. He's designed the church, but it's not as though this is okay. God is the one making this covenant with us.

The covenant that we have as God's people is the one that he's made in the new covenant that we're a part of. And if you're a believer, you're part of that already.

The horizontal covenant between men. Yeah. I think it's a good way to put it.

Yeah. A horizontal covenant. Yeah. Cool. That's awesome. Yeah.

So I remember you talking about the formal relationship and you talked about the covenantal membership, but there's one thing that you didn't touch on that I'd like for you to get into here. And that was the church and the keys of the kingdom.

What is that? What do you mean by that? I know I've heard people reference the verses and I think I know what it means,.

But go ahead and enlighten me on that. Sure. So if you give me a moment, I will open up Logos and we can read it together. So while that's opening the concept of the keys of the kingdom is Matthew chapter 16.

So really versus 13 through 20. And like I said, I really wanted to hit this and I realized as I was putting my sermon together, I was like, okay, I'm about the usual page count for my sermon. And I'm already going to have to trim some stuff out, which may get a little more technical than I have time to deal with.

And so unfortunately I had to kind of just allude to it and not really touch it in the sermon, but now we can. So I open up my Bible software here. I probably should turn off dark mode so people can actually read that at home.

Okay. I have to restart. That's funny. So Matthew chapter 16, while that's opening, I'll give you the context. So this is the, you know, who do men say this I am passage. And we often read that passage and we remark on, you know, Peter's, Jesus says spirit empowered confession of Christ as the Messiah, Matthew 16, 18.

You know, I say to you that you are Peter. And upon this rock, I will build my church. By the way, I think that the rock that's referred to there isn't Peter. That's a debate for another time. I'm sure.

But I think a good ironclad case can be made that. Yeah, that's not. Peter's being referred to there, but to the profession of faith in Christ. That's what's in view there. All right. Logos open here.

So we can look at this passage. It's a little bigger. And then by the magic of technology, I can share my screen. Share screen, screen two. There we are. So Matthew chapter 16 and verse 13, it says when Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked the disciples, who do people say that the son of man is?

They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others still Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But you, he asked them, who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God.

Jesus responded, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church.

And the gates of Hades will not overpower it. Here's what we want to get to. Verse 19. I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will have been bound. Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven.

And whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven. Okay, let's do some good old fashioned inductive Bible study here for a moment. So Jesus says, I will give to you. And we'll see if I can pull this up in the original languages.

So it's, again, personal. He's speaking to Peter and saying, I will give to you, Peter, and by extension to the apostles and by extension, the church, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. This kind of is an important phrase.

So we're going to highlight that for a moment. This language of the keys of the kingdom of heaven has caused all kinds of debate. If you know Roman Catholics, they would argue that this is one of the proof texts for the supremacy of the Catholic church, because they would say, well, the Catholic church through Peter has been given the keys of the kingdom.

I don't think that's what Jesus meant even remotely. I think the key comes to us in the next phrase, because he says, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.

We'll highlight that in another color. The point I believe that is being made here, which I think is critical to this whole issue of church government, is that there is an authority given to the church through its proclamation of the gospel to open up the doors of the kingdom, as it were, to sinners who will repent and believe.

And if sinners will not repent and believe, then on the basis of God's word, the church has the power to shut those doors. This same language comes up again in relation to the church, funny enough, in Matthew chapter 18.

In Matthew chapter 18, we all know this passage as the church discipline one. But again, Matthew chapter 16 and verse 18. I like that. Jesus says, truly, I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven.

And whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven. Well, the context here now is church discipline. And he's saying that essentially whatever decision the church makes regarding what we're doing in church discipline is we're basically saying that this person, until they demonstrate repentance, we're treating them like they're not a believer.

Well, Jesus's point here is very simple, that whatever the church on earth says about this person, if they're doing church discipline biblically, heaven recognizes that because it's in line with what heaven says.

Church discipline is not man's idea, it's God's idea. So if we are agreeing with God's idea, then everything is kosher. And the same thing is with whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.

If we see repentance, according to what the Bible says, we welcome that person back. That binding decision is now loosed and the person can return. Not a problem. And so this language of the keys of the kingdom refers to the authority that is vested in the church, and I would argue specifically in the local church when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel and the practice of discipline.

It's a reference to the authority that the church has to open and to close, to welcome and to remove. And so when we think about church membership, one of the critical things in church membership is the act of membership, when a church accepts people into membership, we can rightly understand that as the exercise of the keys of the kingdom.

Again, no individual carries those keys, sorry Roman Catholicism, that is given to the church. Because again, the church is the only entity that God recognizes in that way. And so when I talk about the, or when I allude to the keys of the kingdom, that's a whole teaching in itself, and maybe someday I'll get a chance to do that.

Where we can kind of unpack how this works itself out even in the early history of the church. So yeah, like I said, that's a, we need like a whole other show just to get into that, but that's kind of a basic introduction to that.

The power basically to receive and to remove both in the preaching of the gospel and in the exercise of discipline.

All right, well, thanks for that Kofi. And just to comment on that, like that's a pretty big deal when we hear words like authority, sometimes people have a negative connotation to that, but this is actually a really God glorifying good thing.

And in regards to church discipline, that's what the end goal of hopefully restoring a person as well.

Absolutely.

So can you talk about that a little bit? Like people have so many misconceptions and I think it's because the culture doesn't like, you know, authority or discipline and those kinds of things.

Church Discipline as a Restorative Act

I'll save the authority discussion for the next episode because the next message is going to be how the church is led.

Okay.

So I'll save the authority discussion for that. I will talk about the discipline part for a moment. In fact, what I will do is, since I have Logos open, I'm going to read a section from, I want chapter 26 on the church.

So this is a 1689. Again, a very helpful summary of any number of Christian doctrines. And so there's a particular section I'm looking for. Okay, that's not the one I'm looking for. Shoot, shoot, shoot.

There's a particular section I'm looking for where it talks about the nature of discipline in the church. I read it just this afternoon in my paper copy. I should have brought that in there with me, but.

I did not.

Let's see.

Live podcasting folks. Let's see here. Okay, this is about the work of pastors. Okay, that's not the one I'm looking for.

Is it?

I'm looking at the right one. It may be, man, turning up a blank on this one, but it's either 1689 or was it? There was a booklet I recommended in this week's study guide, The Glory of a True Church. It might have been that I was reading just as we were preparing for today.

But in one of the two, in fact, let me put back our regular. I will stop sharing for just a moment. Ah, my mouse is going nuts. Ah, there we go.

Stop sharing.

So there's this language that is used of the discipline of the church and the fact that where you have sin in a local church that is not dealt with, that is basically, you've got somebody who is sinning and does not care that they're sinning.

The church has an obligation for the sake of the purity of the church. This is going to bug me now. Give me a moment. See if I can search this here. You know how I get if I can't find things that bugs me.

Yes.

Well, come on now.

Okay.

Hmm.

That really is going to bug me now, but be that as it may. When we talk about church discipline, church discipline is not done capriciously. It is not done with a desire to basically ruin the lives of people at will.

That's not the point. So Matthew chapter 18 that we didn't get to look at. In fact, I will put the screen back on so we can read that. I know that's definitely in the Bible. Share screen. Screen number two.

Share. Right.

In Matthew chapter 18. Oh, it's right here. There's a process that Jesus himself. This is important, by the way. Church discipline doesn't start with men. It starts with our Lord Jesus. In Matthew chapter 18 verse 15.

It says, if your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he won't listen, take one or two others with you so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses, every fact may be established.

So let's pause for a second. You've got a process where sin takes place. You have the individual. This is step one, if you will. The individual goes to the person who sinned and makes plain what they've done.

If the person genuinely repents, you leave it at that. Nobody else needs to know about that. It's not. Let me say, let me be careful when I say that, actually. Depending on the circumstance, nobody else needs to know about that.

I mean, if there is a crime that has been committed in some way, shape or form, of course, the authorities need to know. Like, I'm sorry. That's not for the church to determine. That's why the legal,.

How should I say,.

The legal powers have their role.

Yeah.

But if it's not that and you go, you speak to individual and it's sorted, this doesn't need to go anywhere else.

Verse 16.

If you won't listen, you take one or two others with you. And it's not you do this one time and then you move to the next step. You might have to do this a few times. So you might have to go individually a few times.

Verse 16.

If they won't hear you, take one or two others with you so that, and this is a quotation from the Old Testament, as you can see there, Deuteronomy 19, 15. You take one or two others with you so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses, every fact may be established.

I will simply point out that Deuteronomy 19 is in the legal context. So whatever this is, this is not just some sort of formal or informal, I should say. We've got a problem. No, at this point, now you're, as it were, you're building up a case.

So that's why you take one or two others with you so that they can see for themselves, oh, okay, this isn't just we heard something is wrong. Like something's actually wrong. Let's go on. If he doesn't pay attention to them, now we're in step three.

You tell the church. I would argue that that's primarily you tell the leadership of the church. And if they choose not to listen after that, then you, again, before the whole body, which is the next step.

If he doesn't pay attention, even to the church, let him be like a Gentile and a tax collector to you. That's where you get up.

Before the church.

And you announce to the church, this is what's happening.

Yeah.

That's the final step. That's okay. Now we've crossed from a discipline situation to a. Now we are kicking you out.

And again, this,.

This is not we do.

Okay.

Step one. I did step one once at this date,.

Right?

We are moving on to step two. Now you might have to be patient with this process. This is not something to be entered into lightly.

Yeah.

And again, in God's providence, I have heard of cases where it got stopped at step one got stopped at step two. It may be even get stopped at step three when the person goes to the elders and they're like,.

You know what?

Yeah, that happened. I need help. Praise God. That's what we want.

Yeah.

This is not. Let's come back to our regular screen here. Area. This is not the church trying to basically load it over somebody or to just be capricious because we can be.

Capricious.

Right.

Every fact needs to be established more importantly than that. We're doing this.

For two reasons.

We're doing this for the purity of Christ Church. This is not about, you know, how can I.

Basically.

Get my own back on this person, so to speak. That's not what we're doing here. This isn't even, this should never be done.

In anger.

Like you,.

You may not be happy about the situation and always saying you should pretend not to be happy.

When you.

Or pretend to be happy.

When you're not.

None of us are saying that. But again, we don't do this out of anger. We don't do this out of frustration. We don't do this in terms of.

You know,.

We ideally just want to make someone's life a misery. That's really not our aim. Like the aim of this is.

That.

We want ultimately for the purity of Christ Church to be maintained.

So again,.

1 Corinthians chapter 5 that we did read in the service. Remember what Paul says right at the end of that chapter? That you are to remove the evil one from among you. And that's a quotation from the Old Testament.

The Old Testament is actually stronger. It says purge.

The evil.

From among you.

You're removing.

That person for the health of the body. But not only that. You're doing that.

For the restoration.

Of their soul. Remember that's Paul's other point in 1 Corinthians 5.

That you know.

We are basically handing the person over to Satan and that's a strong term. We're basically.

Treating again.

Matthew 18 like you're a non-Christian.

We are handing you.

Over to Satan for the destruction of the body. The idea is that there is this spiritual protection that being part of the body of believers provides you. And we're basically saying you are now leaving the bubble so to speak.

Again, that's a frightening thing. No church should do that lightly.

And when churches.

Have done it badly. I want to be honest I think that's a stain.

On.

The Church of Christ when it's done badly. Because if it's done well I like how Mark Dever calls it.

Restorative.

Church membership. Church discipline, excuse me. What you're doing is ultimately to see.

The person restored.

And to see the glory.

Of God preserved.

That's what we want. And if that doesn't happen.

Well.

God is still glorified because his people have been obedient to him even if now the church is minus one person.

So here's kind of like a side question that's kind of scrambling in my mind.

Right now.

Say a church doesn't have church membership and they don't practice church discipline.

You know.

So that stuff has to happen in some other kind of way. Why are there churches in your opinion that maybe try doing that without those labels?

Because they read their Bibles and if you take your Bible seriously you can't ignore that stuff is there. Even if you don't. More often than not people don't want to be formal about things which I'll be honest is one of these weird things about.

The church.

That I don't really claim to understand like we have this like especially in the West this fear and this is what it is it's a fear of formality almost as though if something is too formal God can't be in it.

We genuinely function as though God can't be in something.

If.

We've put structure.

Around it.

In a lot of ways it's kind of a I want to say it's kind of a reflection on just our culture in general which doesn't value.

Order.

And.

Structure and that which is done well. By the way I was still searching for that thing.

Because it bugged me.

Ladies and gentlemen I am somebody who is what's the term who has OCD. In fact I don't think most people who say they have OCD actually have OCD but it does bug me when I try looking for something and I can't find it.

That was actually the Westminster Confession. I haven't forgotten.

Your question.

I'm going to come back to my point about structure.

And our dislike.

Of structure.

So.

The Westminster chapter 30 actually has a section.

Called.

Of church censures in other words.

Of church discipline.

So it says the Lord Jesus as king and head of his church has in the church appointed I'm modernizing.

As I go.

A government in the hand of.

Church officers.

Distinct from the civil magistrate. So the church has as they would understand it a governmental.

System.