- If we don't deal with people
who are sinning against others,
people are gonna be hurt.
So we're not just helping the person
who's committing the sin,
but the people who might be impacted by their sinning.
These are reasons we can't just ignore sin
in the midst of the church.
(upbeat music)
- Welcome again to the Straight Truth Podcast.
I'm your host, Josh Philpot.
As always, I'm joined by Pastor Richard Caldwell,
the pastor of Founders Baptist Church.
And we would like to interact with you
about these discussions.
So please leave a comment right below this video
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Well Pastor, in our church,
we place an emphasis on church discipline.
It's part of the protection of the body of Christ.
It's part of our own accountability before the Lord
and for his word,
and for the purity of the church overall.
We wish, of course, that all churches
practiced church discipline
for the purity of the saints,
and for the church as a witness obviously in the world.
Jesus outlines for us in Matthew 18
the steps of church discipline.
He says if a brother has sinned against you,
is who he says in particular,
then he gives these few steps.
The question is first of all,
what are those steps?
If somebody is
caught in a sin and they refuse to repent
as Jesus says in Matthew 18,
they don't hear you out,
what should happen?
Why does the church discipline its members?
And what should be the motive behind that?
How should it be enacted within the body?
And what does that do for the church
and for its witness in the world?
- We practice it because we're taught to
by Jesus and throughout the New Testament.
We practice it because it is an expression
of our mutual responsibility and accountability
toward each other under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
It expresses love for each other.
And that's the motive that stands behind it.
You asked about the motive.
The motive is love.
The motive is rescue.
So the motive is not retribution.
The motive is not embarrassment.
The motive is not exposure.
The motive, in fact,
we're taught to cover sin to the degree that we can
in a way that, not cover up,
but in the sense of making sure that
as we're dealing with sin,
the dealing with it is restricted to
those who have knowledge of it,
and those who are responsible to deal with it.
So love is the motive.
Rescue is the motive.
Restoration is the motive.
God's glory is the motive.
I think about the book of Titus where
older women are to teach younger women
to live in a certain kind of way.
And he says so that the word of God will not be
blasphemy, it was the word blasphemed.
You know, held up to scorn in the world.
So we're thinking about the testimony of Christ,
the testimony of the truth.
These are the reasons why we practice church discipline.
We might also add to that I guess,
if we deal with people who are sinning against others.
Let me reverse that.
If we don't deal with people who are sinning against others,
people are gonna be hurt.
So we're not just helping the person
who's committing the sin,
but the people who might be impacted by their sinning.
These are reasons we can't just ignore sin
in the midst of the church.
The steps, you first go one on one.
If they won't listen,
then you go with two or more.
If they won't listen,
I'm just thinking about Matthew 18,
then you tell it to the church.
And if they won't listen even to the church,
then you put them out of the church.
They're no longer a member of the church.
And now we regard them as people who need Christ.
Because the assumption is
believers respond to these steps of discipline.
But you can hear even in that process,
what I meant by restricting it to the people involved.
If you go one on one and you win your brother,
the matter's over.
- Yeah, it's over at that point.
- There's no reason to tell it to two or three people,
or tell it to the church.
And if they respond to the two or three level,
there's no reason to tell it to the church.
So this is love that's operating,
not some sort of vindictiveness.
It's concern for their soul.
So that would be the process.
I would say about this process, it's not mechanical.
I've seen this sometimes in churches
that they are so zealous to obey scripture
and practice discipline.
They deal with in a very mechanical fashion.
Like, hey we went one on one last week.
So we're gonna go two or three this week.
- [Josh] So quickly.
- It's just so quickly, yeah.
And you know, let's make sure we follow the rules,
sort of mechanical in nature,
not really thinking about the person.
You know this, Josh.
We've walked through discipline cases here
that have taken us a year to walk through.
- Long time.
- A long time to walk through
as we walk through these steps.
Because you gotta give time and space for repentance.
God does this.
He doesn't always do this.
Ananias and Sapphira it was quick.
And I even think there are discipline situations
in the church that we have to deal with swiftly.
So you know, someone who's in leadership,
and they're dividing the church,
those are things you can't wait on.
But we want to be patient,
and we want to give people room,
time to repent.
Also the two or three witnesses
helps to make sure that we establish the factual
nature of what
the person's being accused of.
So those are some thing that I have in mind.
You mentioned we wish that other churches practiced this.
We wish that all churches practiced this.
Why, because God commands it.
He teaches it.
And I'm thinking now about 1 Corinthians chapter five
where the Corinthian congregation
is reproved by Paul
because there was a man living in open sexual immorality
in their midst.
And they had not taken these steps of discipline.
And one of the things he mentions in that context
is that they were actually boasting in some way
about the fact that they had,
concerning their non-action.
I have to think that in some way,
they had taken their non-action
to be sort of a badge of grace,
or a badge of love,
or a badge of spiritual maturity.
We understand the distinction between
what happens in the body and what happens in the soul,
you know this sort of thinking.
And they were just wrong.
They were dead wrong.
So I think we deal with the same sort of thing in our day
where churches that don't practice discipline
sometimes do it in the name of love,
or they do it in the name of grace,
or they do it in the name of mercy,
or they do it in the name of maturity.
It's none of those things.
When we don't obey scripture,
it's not humility, it's pride.
When we don't obey scripture, it's not love, it's hatred.
We don't obey scripture, it's not mercy,
it's giving people over to their sin.
And we don't obey scripture, it's not maturity.
It's gross immaturity that's on display in our thinking.
Now, let's think for a moment about
how people respond to the discipline process.
And let's think about repentance.
Let's envision the case of someone actually repenting.
What do you do then?
Obviously you forgive them
and you forgive them fully and sincerely,
and they're restored to fellowship with the church.
Doesn't mean we don't restore them wisely.
It would not mean we put them into the exact same situation
where they have failed.
But we have to come alongside them in such a way
that they realize we really do love them,
and we really do forgive them.
So, discipline issues,
talked about it in 1 Corinthians.
The church must have obeyed Paul's instruction.
There's evidence in 2 Corinthians
that discipline had happened.
And then we get to one passage I want to read,
2 Corinthians chapter two.
When we get to the second chapter of 2 Corinthians,
I find this kind of exhortation
something that we need to hear.
He says, this is chapter two verse five,
now if anyone has caused pain,
he has caused it not to me,
but in some measure,
not to put it too severely to all of you.
For such a one,
this punishment by the majority.
Now that's the language of church discipline, the majority,
the body has disciplined this person.
The punishment by the majority is enough.
So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him,
or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.
For this is why I wrote, that I might test you
and know whether you are obedient in everything.
Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive.
Indeed what I have forgiven,
if I have forgiven anything,
has been for your sake in the presence of Christ.
So it's not just their obedience in taking
the steps of discipline.
But their obedience is also tested on the other side of it.
The obedience to forgive,
the obedience to love,
the obedience to comfort,
the obedience to walk alongside a person.
All this is wrapped up in the church discipline process.
We have to obey in confronting sin the right way.
But we also have to obey in forgiving sin
and restoring people who've been forgiven.
- And so Jesus says, you know,
if you go through this whole process of church discipline,
they shall be to you like a tax collector and a sinner.
Then Paul is saying here,
after having gone through that process it seems, right,
that to love them.
So my question is,
what should the church do in terms of this person
who's been disciplined out of the congregation.
They receive them still in worship?
Or is it better to keep that outside?
It's a difficult question.
I know every situation's probably different.
But I wonder what your response would be.
- Well a person who...
If we excluded all sinners from worship,
no one would be there. - We'd all be gone.
(Josh laughing)
- But there's a difference between someone
who walks into our fellowships
who has not made a profession of faith in Christ,
they've not been baptized into the fellowship of our church,
or maybe they profess faith in Christ,
but they haven't joined our church.
And they're living in some sort of sin.
And they're coming and they're sitting
under the preaching of the gospel.
That's one kind of issue.
Once a person has joined the church,
covenanted together with us,
put themselves under the authority of the elders,
and the congregation as a body,
and then they have hard-heartedly,
rebelliously,
without repentance,
held onto their sin to such an extent
that they've had to be disciplined out of the church,
we don't even eat with such a one now.
And what that means is not
if you're passing them on the street you're unkind to them,
you know, you turn your head and walk past them.
That's not what that means.
What it means is we cannot now carry on with them
as if this didn't happen.
So now I'm going to dinner with them on Friday nights,
going to the movies with them,
as if none of this has happened.
You can't live like that.
You have to deal with this person in such a way
that they understand their need before God.
So to deal with them as a tax collector and a sinner
is to deal with them as an evangelism project.
And my fellowship with people,
my fellowship with people,
is with people who walk along with me as we follow Christ.
I have friendships with people who don't know Jesus.
But I am a very poor friend
if I'm the friend of someone who doesn't know Jesus
and I can't say that the number one
thing on the priority list for this friendship
is that they would come to faith in Christ.
I mean, what kind of a friend would I be?
I know they're on their way to hell.
I never mention the gospel.
I never bring up Christ.
So the focus even for my friendships outside of Christ,
my focus is evangelism.
So someone's disciplined out of the life of the church,
now I'm just going to dinner with them,
we're just hanging out,
and I'm not talking to them about their soul
and calling them to repentance?
There would be a major, major issue in my own soul
at that point.
- So Paul when he says that
to comfort this one who has been disciplined.
- This is a repentant person.
- Yeah, oh that would be a repentant person in that case.
- This is a repentant person.
He's afraid they're gonna over-sorrow.
So they've repented
and he says now you come alongside them and you love them,
lest they are over-sorrowful,
which tells you they're sorrowful, right.
So his fear there is that this person
doesn't have it register in their own heart,
I'm forgiven.
And the congregation has forgiven me.
And he calls upon the congregation to forgive them.
I think sometimes we can walk through discipline issues,
a person repents,
and then we treat them as if
well now we're gonna watch you.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah, and just really make sure you are really...
- Just always hanging over your head.
- Always hanging over your head.
You live under the cloud of this, you know,
for the rest of your time with us.
No, no.
We've gotta forgive this person and now comfort them.
We don't want them to over-sorrow.
- Thanks for joining us again
for the Straight Truth Podcast.
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