THE GOSPEL OF GOD



GOD’S PURPOSE IN DISCIPLINE (2)

(Matthew 18:15-20)

SUBJECT:

F.C.F:

PROPOSITION:

INTRODUCTION:

A. God gave a song for his people to sing in the Promised Land, the first song God ever commanded them to sin. And it is an unusual song. The lyrics form the substance of a lawsuit God will bring against his people should they ever violate his covenant by becoming unfaithful to him. In this song we find God’s promise to discipline his children so that they will not suffer loss. We found six principles that comprise God’s discipline of his people

I. GOD’S PURPOSE IN DICIPLINE IS GRACIOUS.

II. GOD IS SERIOUS ABOUT FAITHFULNESS.

III. GOD ALWAYS KEEPS HIS COVENANT.

IV. GOD WILL CONFRONT SINNERS.

V. GOD WILL DISCIPLINE HIS PEOPLE.

VI. GOD WILL RESTORE THE REPENTANT.

B. We also noted that God calls us as his people to do the work of the ministry. God doesn’t speak directly to his people, he speaks through prophets. And God does not govern his people directly, he does so through kings (and elders). And God does not immediately discipline his people, but ordinarily does so through the ministry of his people. God calls us to follow his lead and to become agents of his discipline. And so we must reflect God’s own purpose and practice of discipline. So, we said, we need to address six questions when it comes to serving as God’s agents in discipline.

1. Is my purpose gracious?

2. Am I truly grieved by sin?

3. Am I humbly walking with Christ? 4. Am I willing to obey God and confront the sinner, no matter the cost?

5. Am I willing to prosecute the discipline all the way to the end?

6. Am I willing to forgive, longing to forgive, and earnestly praying for the grace of reconciliation?

C. What I would like to do this evening is to demonstrate how the Scriptures speak with one voice on this matter of discipline, and then to show you also how our church, the PCA, seeks to uphold these very same principles in our practice of church discipline.

In Matthew 18, our Lord Jesus warns against the seriousness of sin (5-9), how God highly values every one of his children and wills that none of them perish (10-14), and then he calls for God’s people to be faithful in watching out for those who stray (15-20).

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 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 a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

Here Jesus gives both the practice and the authority for church discipline.

I. THE PRACTICE.

The practice of church discipline has three stages: the private confrontation, the establishment of the case, and the prosecution of the case.

A. It begins with a private, one-on-one confrontation. The vast majority of disciplinary matters both begin and end in this stage. “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.” If there is confrontation and confession, then this is the end of the story.

Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you….” This clearly implies that church discipline is only for church members. Only self-professing Christians are considered “brothers.” This is a family term implying that the offender is a believer. And Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you….” Does that mean that we cannot confront a fellow Christian who does not directly sin against us? No. The rest of the New Testament expands this beyond the mere personal offense. In Galatians 2, Paul tells of how he confronted Peter for his hypocrisy in refraining from eating with Gentiles for few of the party of strict Jews. Peter’s offense was not against Paul in any way, yet Paul still confronted him. Paul also writes to the church in Corinth about a man who was shacking up with his step-mother, and tells them to put him out of the church. This offense was not against any of them, but against God’s law.

So why does Jesus specifically say, “If your brother sins against you….”? And that’s because if the sin is a personal offense, it is the duty of the offended to act first. Presumably, no one else knows about it yet, and no one else should know about it yet, not until the offended party first confronts the offender.

But if we see any Christian in sin, any Christian in any sin, we have a duty to them before God to challenge them and confront them, rather then simply to let them wander deeper into sin and misery. Love requires it; the gospel demands it. God will eventually discipline them, but he urges us to intervene instead.

B. What will this confrontation look like? Paul qualifies it in Galatians 6:1: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

1. First, the confrontation will be offered in a spirit of gentleness. Discipline is to be like the gentle showers in the desert that bring God’s restoring life and grace. Discipline is a dispensation of mercy, not wrath, and this applies to every step of the way. We are gentle not because we are afraid or timid or reluctant, but because we love, and because we know that when someone gets “caught” very often the first response is self-defense, and that self-defense will often accuse the accuser. A gentle accuser, with soft words, a broken heart, and tear-stained cheeks, is hard to accuse.

2. And second, the confrontation is offered in humility, recognizing that the offender is not the only sinner in the room. The confrontation is from sinner to sinner. Yet it is not done hypocritically. It is from one repentant sinner to another unrepentant sinner. The haughty, superior, condescending confronter opens himself up to temptation, so we must watch ourselves that we approach others in true humility. And if the person repents, then that is the end of the matter: “you have gained your brother.”

C. But if he does not repent, then you must press the issue, not vindictively, not arrogantly, but still as a dispensation of mercy. “16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” Unrepentance is spiritually deadly. You are dealing with a person who is standing at the edge overlooking the lake of fire, and who is about to lose their footing. Unrepentance is deadly. It kills one’s spiritual life and growth, it makes all Christian relationships into a sham, and it imperils the soul to everlasting loss.

So you go get a trusted Christian brother or sister or two. Your goal is twofold: first, through the added prayers and pleadings and witness of others, your hope is that the Holy Spirit may open their heart to repentance and reconciliation. Up to this point, the circle is still quite small. No need to spread this all over town. And the one or two others who accompany you must likewise possess a spirit of gentleness and come humbly as repentant sinner to unrepentant sinner. And if the offender repents, then the disciplinary process concludes right here. There is restoration and reconciliation.

D. But if he still will not confess his sin and turn away from it, then you must go the distance. The other reason you brought the one or two others is so that the matter may be firmly established before two or three witnesses, for this is heading toward a trial in a church court. “17 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 a Gentile and a tax collector.”

There are several things here. For example, it is wise to bring the matter not to the whole church, but to the officers of the church, the elders whom God charges with oversight of the congregation. So you approach the session and explain that you allege an offense against another church member. You describe the situation, how you first confronted them, and then with one or two others as Jesus requires, but that even then, the offender did not repent. You also give the names of the witnesses.

The session is required by Scripture and by our constitution to investigate the matter to determine if the offense was valid and if there is sufficient evidence to prosecute the case, and if there is, then the church (officers) will make a formal confrontation. If the person repents, then that is the end of the matter. If they do not, then they are placed under discipline, and if they continue to rebel, then they are put out of the church. Jesus says to treat them as a Gentile and a tax collector.

How are we to treat “Gentiles” and tax collectors? Well, we are not so shame or shun them. We are not to ignore them or gossip about them or publicly humiliate them. Rather, we are to love them and to seek to win them back to Christ. But we are NOT to consider them as brothers or sisters any more. They no longer belong to the people of God. They may come to worship, but they must not try to receive the Lord’s Supper, and they must not be permitted to join in congregational meetings or serve in any positions of leadership in the church because we are to consider them as non-Christians. They have invalidated their profession of faith by violating their covenant vows of membership.

Can they then subsequently repent and be readmitted to the church? That is our great hope and prayer! We deeply desire for God’s discipline to have its full effect which is to bring the sinner to repentance, reconciliation, and restoration.

II. THE AUTHORITY.

A. And Jesus himself gives the church his authority to do so. “18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

B. Now we need to be careful here. The church’s power is a declaratory power not a creative power. We do not believe the church has the authority to tell heaven what to do. We do not think that the church can say, “God, we have examined Joe, and Joe seems like a good Christian to us, so we order you to open heaven’s door to him.” Or, “God, we have looked into this matter about Suzy and Suzy is clearly unrepentant, so we order you to close heaven’s door to her.” By the way, the Roman Catholic church does teach that the Pope has the keys to the kingdom, and that he can open and shut heaven to people. The threat of excommunication was used frequently, especially during the Middle Ages. If a king refused to obey the pope, the pope would threaten to excommunicate him, that is, actually to send him to hell. There is a famous story of Pope Gregory’s excommunication Henry IV in 1076. In retaliation Gregory excommunicated Henry and deposed him, absolving his subjects from their oaths of allegiance.

“At last, driven to make peace with the Holy Father by a revolt among the German nobles, Henry appeared before Gregory in January 1077 at Canossa, a castle in the mountains of Italy. Dressed as a penitent, the emperor stood barefoot it the snow for three days and begged forgiveness until, in Gregory’s words ‘We loosed the chains of the anathema and at length received him…into the lap of the Holy Mother Church.’”

Rather, the authority Jesus gave was declaratory. It is only to recognize what God has already done. If you are reading the ESV, verse 18 reads this way: “18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” But the note at the bottom gives an alternate reading, “shall have been bound in heaven” and “shall have been loosed in heaven.”

What this means is that church membership (loosing) is a declaratory. When the elders hear someone make a profession of faith, if it is believable and if there is no outside evidence to the contrary, we admit them into the membership. We say, “As far as we can tell, this person has genuinely come to faith in Christ.” We only recognize what we believe to be God’s work in saving them. And likewise, when a church member is caught in sin and refuses to repent, then the elders eventually recognize what has taken place. “As far as we can tell, this person was not sincere when they professed faith, and so they should not be considered a member of Christ’s church.” We are simply declaring what we recognize to be the case, but the session cannot actually open or close the door of heaven.

C. And yet, Christ has entrusted his church with the authority to admit and exclude from the visible church. Sometimes when there is a small crowd for a church service or Bible study, someone will say, “Well, that’s okay, because Jesus said, ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.’” I always want to ask, “Why? Who’s under discipline?” For that, of course is the context. As a general principle, I would agree with them. But this text was given in the context of church discipline, to assure Christ’s church that when the elders exclude an unrepentant offender from membership, Jesus is right there among those two or three disciplining elders.

CONCLUSION

To conclude this study, I want to read with you chapter 27 from the Book of Church Order, the introduction to our constitutional rules of discipline.

CHAPTER 27

Discipline – Its Nature, Subjects and Ends

27-1. Discipline is the exercise of authority given the Church by the Lord Jesus Christ to instruct and guide its members and to promote its purity and welfare.

The term has two senses:

a. the one referring to the whole government, inspection, training, guardianship and control which the church maintains over its members, its officers and its courts;

b. the other a restricted and technical sense, signifying judicial process.

27-2. All baptized persons, being members of the Church are subject to its discipline and entitled to the benefits thereof.

27-3. The exercise of discipline is highly important and necessary. In its proper usage discipline maintains:

a. the glory of God,

b. the purity of His Church,

c. the keeping and reclaiming of disobedient sinners.

Discipline is for the purpose of godliness (1 Timothy 4:7); therefore, it demands a self-examination under Scripture. Its ends, so far as it involves judicial action, are the rebuke of offenses, the removal of scandal, the vindication of the honor of Christ, the promotion of the purity and general edification of the Church, and the spiritual good of offenders themselves.

27-4. The power which Christ has given the Church is for building up, and not for destruction. It is to be exercised as under a dispensation of mercy and not of wrath. As in the preaching of the Word the wicked are doctrinally separated from the good, so by discipline the Church authoritatively separates between the holy and the profane. In this it acts the part of a tender mother, correcting her children for their good, that every one of them may be presented faultless in the day of the Lord Jesus. Discipline is systematic training under the authority of God’s Scripture. No communing or non-communing member of the Church should be allowed to stray from the Scripture’s discipline. Therefore, teaching elders must:

a. instruct the officers in discipline,

b. instruct the congregation in discipline,

c. jointly practice it in the context of the congregation and church

courts.

27-5. Scriptural law is the basis of all discipline because it is the revelation of God’s Holy will. Proper disciplinary principles are set forth in the Scriptures and must be followed. They are:

a. Instruction in the Word;

b. Individual’s responsibility to admonish one another (Matthew 18:15, Galatians 6:1);

c. If the admonition is rejected, then the calling of one or more witnesses (Matthew 18:16);

d. If rejection persists, then the Church must act through her court unto admonition, suspension, excommunication and deposition (See BCO 29 and 30 for further explanation).

Steps (a) through (d) must be followed in proper order for the exercise of discipline.

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