Church discipline

What he is doing is discipline, and discipline is love.

What this is in this passage is church discipline, and church discipline is love.

In fact, any discipline is love.

if it's done from a good conscience.

But it doesn't mean you hate them and actively try to target them.

And I think that's the beauty of church discipline is that's the heart, is that they want you to come back to Jesus.

If you talk to a brother or sister, that's the heart.

It's like, hey, bro, I've been noticing you've been sinning.

My sister cut him off about six, seven years ago because he won't repent from coming out and identifying as gay.

And so part of that is they both, her and her husband, decided to enact church discipline themselves as them being the church and they're the body of Christ.

So my sister went to him on her own.

Then him himself.

My frustration with that is, A, as I read that scripture and I've dug into it and dug and dug and dug, I just really feel like that was more of a governance of church like you need leaders authorities people with

yeah yeah

and i'm i heard the caller of like four or five ago that's why i called in is because you guys were talking about matthew 16 17 18 from the establishment of the physical church um and then the other part of that is i get frustrated with them because even the last even if they feel like they enacted church discipline correctly

yes

It's not ongoing today.

But others believe this is a reference to church discipline, for instance, excommunication.

And that certainly has its application for us today because there are no apostles here, capital A, but apostles.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul deals with the problem of a sexually immoral man in their assembly.

THIS WAS CORRECTIVE, NOT PUNITIVE.

IT WAS FOR THEIR CORRECTION.

AS A CHURCH, WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THAT CHURCH DISCIPLINE IS COMMANDED IN SCRIPTURE.

AND SO OFTEN CHRISTIANS THINK OF CHURCHES LIKE RESTAURANTS AND WHEN A PASTOR HAS TO TAKE DISCIPLINARY ACTION, OH, I DON'T LIKE THE FOOD HERE, I'LL GO FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE TO EAT.

That's really at the root of everything.

And when we think about life in the church, when we think about church discipline, it all goes back to the root, which is Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Terrific.

Thank you very much.

He's given us direction on how we're to worship him, what we're to do.

Christ is the only head and king of the church.

And the three sort of marks of church that we've seen throughout history are the right preaching of the word, faithful right, administration of sacraments, and of church discipline as well.

This is how the Lord, the covenant Lord works.

Okay, can you tell us? Well, we don't want to talk about it.

we would want to know why they left their previous church, because if they're under some form of church discipline, we would want them to try to reconcile before we would accept them into membership.

So there are times where the church does have to do some investigations.

But the use of deception...

He demands that he be removed from the church because this type of behavior, quote, "Is not tolerated even among pagans." He again warns, quote, "Your boasting is not good.

Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump?" As the ESV study Bible explains, quote, "By analogy, when publicly known sin in the church is not subjected to church discipline, it will silently spread its destructive consequences throughout the whole fellowship." He tells them, "Do not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister," quote, "if he is guilty of sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, slander, drunkenness, or swindling.

Don't even eat with such a person.

The church is to judge those inside the church.

That, that he existed or what he had-

Just about his words, about how they're irrelevant and all this sort of stuff, but that being stated, um, I'm gonna bring that up because, uh, church discipline.

Okay.

Um, St. Paul wrote a lot about church discipline in the, uh-

He did?

...

in significant ways.

So obviously, uh, why is church discipline necessary for clergy, laypeople, and why should we embrace it?

So the whole point of this exercise is not to be punitive.

Church discipline is not punitive.

It's intended to be remedial.

And by the way, there's a correlation in two sets of vice lists.

It has to be that serious.

Can't be just a run-of-the-mill disagreement.

The individual's salvation has to be at stake in order for you to practice church discipline, at least in its fullest sense, of removal from the life of the community.

And then, if that person repents, immediately restore them.