Series Thirteen: Church Membership and Discipline

Church discipline is necessary to protect the purity and the unity of the church. We learn that the grace of the confrontation process results most often in repentance rather than disfellowship. We must be concerned first with our personal holiness and then bear each other’s burdens. To love one another, we are called to speak truth into their lives in the form of exhortation, encouragement, and admonishment.

The principles found within this section on church discipline are a compilation of materials—some developed by Grace Immanuel Bible Church, Jupiter, FL, as well as many adaptations from materials of Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, CA, under the leadership of Dr. John MacArthur. We are deeply indebted to Dr. MacArthur and the pastoral team at Grace Community for their labors and biblical clarity through the years on this vital subject.

Objections to Church Discipline

1. Gossip in the church.
2. Church should be accepting and loving. Discipline is unloving.
3. Church should not be fearful of sin or of those who are weak in faith.
4. Church should be more tolerant and inclusive. We’re all sinners. Stubborn error should not be disciplined, but a sentiment of patience and kindness should apply.

Responses to Church Discipline Objections

1. Each person in the flock must become comfortable and proactive in the early stages.
   1. Personal and private confrontation of the person in the trespass is designed to win a brother back.
   2. Each must speak truth in love and a spirit of gentleness. Confronting sin with truth is the most loving thing we can do.
   3. The personal discipleship process has goal of strengthening faith, confronting lies, seeking repentance and restoring the unrepentant to fruitful fellowship.
2. The church must never invite or allow unrepentant sin in its midst. Church purity is at risk.
3. The church must not allow disunity or divisiveness to spread in the flock. This undermines leaders and disrupts the church’s purity.
4. The discipline process begins with personal purity and is executed by unifying peacemakers.
   1. We avoid factious behavior.
   2. We are always about strengthening the hand of everyone in gospel ministry.
   3. We diligently address any impurity in the church.
   4. Christ wants His people and His church to be pure.

First Duty: Personal Purity and Discipleship

It is our duty in the church to bear our own burden and the burdens of others (Gal 6:1–5).

1. Our first concern is that we are personally walking in holiness.
2. Galatians 6 specifically commands that we have a loving responsibility to the brother who is caught in a trespass.
3. We first bear our own burdens and then we help others in their Christian walk.
4. Loving one another is to speak the truth (Eph 4:15).
5. We exhort, encourage, and admonish (1 Thess 2:11).
6. Our purpose is to keep one another from disunity and ensure the purity of the body.

The Church Discipline Process

The most prominent teaching on the formal steps of church discipline is described in Matthew 18:12–18. Beginning in verse 12, we see how important restoring the flock is. We leave the ninety-nine healthy ones to go get the strays.

1. Step #1: Private confrontation (Matt 18:15)
   1. Legitimate sin and perceived legitimate “brother”
   2. One-on-one; go to him alone, counsel with church leadership is advisable.
   3. It is private because damage has not gone wider.
   4. If he repents, you have won your brother.
2. Step #2: Group confrontation (Matt 18:16)
   1. Church leadership is definitely involved.
   2. Two or three Christians are now addressing the sin and the lack of repentance.
   3. Sin may or may not be seen wider; having additional witnesses brings weight on the event and that the previous one-on-one confrontation occurred without repentance.
   4. The fact of the sin is confirmed in group setting. If the recipient is soft and penitent, you have the opportunity to win your brother back. How precious it is when a person softens after receiving the grace of a confrontation!
   5. The recipient has greater opportunity for self-deception due to wider audience and potential to be defensive.
   6. Often the recipient accuses the church of “ramping it up,” but the charge is without merit. You are “ramping it up” because the person did not repent. The church is responding to the lack of repentance. God has a reaction to unrepentant sin.
   7. Caution is communicated that the next step of the process is imminent. The church leaders must warn the unrepentant sinner that the two next steps are coming.
      1. Since the sinner may not desire to meet with church leaders, often this process includes a written letter.
      2. Even if a meeting occurs, a letter is necessary to ensure protection in defamation cases against church leaders for church discipline.
      3. A church must have a process outlined, and they must consistently follow their process outline.
3. Step #3: If they fail to repent, tell it to the church (Matt 18:17).
   1. The leadership of the church informs the corporate assembly. The whole church is now involved in the confrontation efforts. This is a public call to repentance.
   2. If the unrepentant sinner refuses to repent, the person should be treated as a gentile and as a tax collector (v. 17). This is a shunning or a disfellowship within the body so that they know they are outside the people of God.
   3. The unrepentant individual cannot enjoy intimate fellowship with God’s people while living in unrepentant sin (Rom 16:17).
   4. The church cannot allow normal relations because of the threat of satanic deception broadening in the flock. Rebellious men and deceivers sent by Satan must be silenced because they upset whole families; reprove them severely (Titus 1:10–16).
4. Step #4: Public disfellowship (Matt 18:18)
   1. There is power given to the church to make a public declaration in regards to unrepentant sin in the church. Christian fellowship is lost until they repent.
   2. The church is informed that this specific person has refused to repent of a destructive life.
   3. What is “bound” in church discipline is the earthly confirmation of what heaven is declaring. This does not allow the sinner to just join a neighboring church. The person is not responding to the loving call of the church to repent.
   4. A communion service can be a fitting environment to announce church discipline.
      1. A place and time for people to examine themselves (1 Cor 11:27–32).
      2. A time for people to be called to unity.
      3. A time for corporate and personal prayer.

Purposes of Corporate Church Discipline

1. It honors God. It is not an option, since church discipline is outlined throughout Scripture.
2. It protects the church.
   1. Satan is always secretly introducing error and comes as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). We are vulnerable to his tactics and the weakness of the flesh.
   2. The church discipline process is to protect the vulnerable, naïve, and immature persons in the church from an unrepentant sinner in rebellion against the truth (Gal 5:9; 1 Thess 5:14).
3. It vindicates the glory of Christ (primary purpose).
   1. It vindicates the redemptive purposes of Christ: the integrity and ministry of Christ is upheld. Christ came to save and sanctify.
   2. His bride (the church) must be protected.
   3. The power and fruit of Christ’s ministry is at stake.
4. It aims to reclaim offenders through their repentance.
   1. Express great concern for the sinner and warn of apostasy (Heb 6:4–8).
   2. Aim to reclaim offenders (Matt 18:15; Gal 6:1). Don’t be confused about biblical love. Love requires discipline (Prov 13:24; Heb 12:5–13).
5. It deters the church from sin.
   1. After discipline was carried out by God in Acts 5 on Ananias and Sapphira, it says in verse 11, “great fear came over the whole church, and over all who heard of these things.”
   2. God’s discipline did not destabilize the church; it stabilized it.
   3. The church needs to know the seriousness of sin. There is a greater deterrent in the corporate setting than in the individual setting. Under formal leadership of pastors, there is a corporate accountability and the Spirit does some unique supernatural things in the corporate setting to convict believers of sin.
   4. “Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning” (1 Tim 5:20).
6. It prevents the chastening of God on the local church.
   1. Five churches were charged by Christ in Revelation 2 and 3.
   2. False doctrine and immorality were tolerated, and then they were chided by Christ.
   3. Without the process of discipline, we come under the chastening of God. So the purpose of church discipline is to prevent judgment and the removal of our lampstand (i.e., the loss of gospel effectiveness and influence).

Situational Church Discipline

1. Unrepentance
   1. The key is not the sin; it is the unrepentance (Rev 2:14–21).
   2. The key is the failure of the person to come under the biblical teaching and the Scriptural clarity after progressive levels of confrontation.
2. Heresy/False Teachers
   1. All heresy that is soul threatening (Gal 1; 1 Tim 6:2–10, 20–21) must be removed from the church, urgently. Tolerating heresy allows a little leaven to ruin the whole lump of dough (Gal 5:9).
   2. “Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned” (Titus 3:10–11; cf. 2 Pet 2:1–22).
   3. Gospel-threatening doctrinal error (Rom 16:17; Jude 3) must be removed.

We do not discipline an error or disagreement of secondary or tertiary doctrines, as long as they come under the leadership of the church’s doctrine and do not teach their contrary matters of conscience.

3. Unrepentant Adultery/Fornication
   1. The porneía word group
   2. Get the “so-called brother” out of the church (1 Cor 5:11).
   3. If the sin was adultery, and the person has repented by leaving the relationship and going back to that person’s spouse, then fruit of repentance is clearly seen. The unity and purity of the church is protected.
4. What about lust and pornography? What about gluttony, anger, unruly behavior, etc.? All unrepentant sin is a matter for discipline, but at what level and which steps are appropriate?
   1. Holding to steps one and two may be sufficient when dealing with some sin.
   2. The hinge point is the matter of the fruit of repentance and how much the sin threatens the unity and purity of the church.
   3. Anger and gluttony are sins where weakness may take years to overcome in the power of the Spirit.
   4. We must often pray for the Lord to bring clarity and conviction of sin. We may even pray for pain and suffering to bring about repentance.
   5. If the sin is lust:
      1. The epithumía word group indicates strong cravings.
      2. Sins of the mind, even pornography, are behind all sexual sins. But the Bible puts them in a different category (epithumía). They are not in the same category as fornication and adultery (porneía).
      3. These weaknesses often take longer repentance time, and more time is needed to see the fruit of repentance. Even in repentance there are weaknesses that need maturing.
      4. There is a dynamic in the first and second step, where someone has a lust issue and is willing to work and failing a lot, bear with them and help them over time. It could potentially threaten the purity of the church over time if they do not deal with it, but time will make that clear.
      5. Sins of the mind don’t necessarily threaten the unity and purity of the church. Yet, over time secret sins may spill out as perversions in the church. Sins of the mind (known only by God and person) need the Lord’s conviction for repentance; it is a supernatural work.

Questions to Anticipate

Should we distinguish between members and non-members?

No. The reason is due to the threat. The threat to the purity and the unity of the church is the same from a member and a non-member in unrepentant sin.

• There are onlookers in the church. They often try to avoid discipleship, discipline, and membership.
• There are fringe people in the church and are non-committed participants. You confront them and tell them “you can’t bring that here.” It may not be as formal a process.
• There are the not well-known people in the church who are longstanding attendees. With these people, you go through the formal process.
• There are factious or defiled people (1 Cor 5; Titus 3:10). These must go immediately. Legal action may come into effect.

How do I treat someone in my own family who might have been disciplined out of the church?

We don’t cut off all communication with family; we don’t ignore them. It may be an evangelism opportunity.

• At family functions, don’t allow the offender to assume that all is well because of his life. Cordial interaction will happen, but acting as though no sin has been committed by continuing to have the same fellowship is not possible.
• If the opportunity arises, privately ask them, “Have you repented?”

What happens if someone gets disciplined out of the local church and they get restored somewhere else?

If it is true restoration, then the person would/should want to reconcile also with the previous church (2 Cor 7:9–11).

Are defamation lawsuits a concern for the church?

Yes, but they are easier to defend when the disciplined person was a member and signed a corporate doctrinal statement. They agreed to a set of principles. Churches should have legal counsel and know their national and local laws to avoid exposure when carrying out church discipline.

Do we discipline teenagers living with their parents?

No. We will speak with a parent and call them to discipline their child.

• The teenager’s spiritual position in the church has not yet been established, and he is under the spiritual care and authority of his parents.
• Once they are outside their parents’ authority, church discipline is operative.

What if a member of the body does not want to attend church discipline services because they cannot handle the event?

People choosing this path are missing out on a couple very key components to their Christian life:

• It is a supernatural, corporate accountability and deterrent.
• It holds them accountable to bond with the body.