The Ethics of Church Discipline

Church Discipline and Individualism

Along with the preaching of God’s word and the administration of the sacraments, church discipline is one of the three marks of the church.  Without it, there cannot be a genuine community of Christian disciples.  Both Jesus (Matt 15:18-20) and the apostle Paul (I Cor 5:1-13, 2 Thess 3:6-14) clearly teach that the church should reprimand its members if they fall into serious sin; if a church member stubbornly refuses to repent of a serious sin after multiple warnings, the church should exclude them from the visible church community until they are willing to repent.  It is necessary for the church to practice church discipline in order to visibly be the body of Christ in the world and carry out its mission of advancing God’s Kingdom.  

In spite of this, many modern Western Christians are reluctant to practice biblical church discipline.  One major underlying reason for this is the individualism of modern Western culture, which has deeply affected the modern Western church.  As theologian Stanley Hauerwas comments, “Many American Christians seem to assume that you can have an unmediated relation to God in which you are your own priest.  Luther and Calvin would have been stunned by the suggestion that the church is a collection of individuals in which each person gets to determine their relation to God.  Yet such individualist presumptions have become the hallmark of Protestantism, particularly in America.”^[1]Stanley Hauerwas, “The Sanctified Body,” in Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified, (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016.  In contrast to such individualist presumptions, Scripture teaches us to find our Christian identity and our salvation as inextricably interconnected with being members of the people of God, the body of Christ.  

If Christians operate with individualist presumptions, rather than according to a biblical understanding of the church, then the rationale for church discipline becomes undermined,  As John White and Ken Blue comment, “Our individualism (as well as our sinfulness) militates against exercising corrective church discipline.  To be members of the people of God means that our physical and spiritual well-being becomes our brother’s business and his well-being becomes ours.  But such attitudes are so alien to the Western church that when we do opt for biblical church discipline, we will be criticized.”^[2]Healing the Wounded: The Costly Love of Church Discipline (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1985).  If we desire to be faithful disciples of Jesus, though, we must resist the toxic individualism of Western culture and obediently practice biblical church discipline when necessary, in spite of the criticism we will receive.  

Objections to Church Discipline

Many modern Western Christians criticize the practice of church discipline as inherently “unloving.”  As evidence of this, they point to many Christians who have been hurt by their churches disciplining them.  Now, when someone claims to have been hurt by their church disciplining them, we should take this with a grain of salt.  After all, is anyone who is excommunicated by their church going to openly admit, “My church lovingly confronted me with the truth about my sin and I did not want to hear it; I wanted to keep sinning”?  Of course not.  Instead, they are going to try to justify themselves and to deflect from their own guilt by accusing their church of wrongdoing.  

Just because someone feels hurt by their church, this does not necessarily mean that their church has done anything wrong.  It could be that their church acted in a perfectly loving manner in disciplining them, but, due to their own immaturity, it made them subjectively feel hurt.  So, we should have a healthy skepticism about a person’s claim that their church acted in an unloving manner when it disciplined them.  

Nevertheless, there certainly are times when church discipline is practiced in an unethical manner.  There are times when a church has legalistic standards and disciplines a Christian for behavior that is not actually sinful.  There are times when a Christian is falsely accused of a sin and is disciplined by their church, in spite of their innocence.  There are times when a church disciplines a church member who is in fact guilty of a serious sin, but does so in an unkind, unloving manner.  

These unethical instances of church discipline, however, do nothing to delegitimize the practice of church discipline per se.  They just show that Christians, as individuals and as the church, are imperfect and sometimes fall into sin.  The church does sometimes practice church discipline badly, but the church also sometimes practices preaching, worship, the sacraments, and evangelism badly.  This does not mean that any of these practices are not good, important, and essential for the church to practice.  In spite of the fact that the church sometimes practices church discipline badly, it is a good, important, and essential practice.  We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  

Another criticism of the practice of church discipline is that it is inherently self-righteous and hypocritical.  When a church disciplines a church member, Christians single out one member of their church community and exclude them on account of their sin.  In doing so, they seem to be claiming that they are not sinful like this one member is.  But if all members of the church are forgiven sinners, this seems to be an illegitimate assertion of self-righteousness.  

There are two important points to make in response to this criticism.  First, there is a difference between sin that leads to death and sin that does not lead to death (1 John 5: 16-17).  As they follow Jesus, all Christians continue to struggle with sin, but this is different from deliberately committing serious sins such as murder, theft, and fornication, which indicate one is deliberately turning away from following Jesus.  According to John, “If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life” (v. 16).  But if you see a fellow Christian commit a sin that leads to death, you should not pray about it (v. 16); instead, you must confront them and rebuke them in the hope that they will repent of their sin and turn back to the path of following Jesus.  

Second, there is a difference between struggling with sin and stubbornly refusing to repent of a sin.  Christians are forgiven sinners, but they are by definition repentant forgiven sinners.  What makes someone a Christian is not an absence of sin, but a commitment to walking the path of repentance, the path of discipleship to Jesus.  No Christian should be excommunicated for a single sin.  According to biblical teaching, it is only after a church member has been confronted and rebuked multiple times and still refuses to repent of their sin that exclusion from the visible church community should take place.  This has nothing to do with the other members of the church community asserting their own “self-righteousness”; rather, the purpose of such exclusion is to try to get the wayward member to come to their senses, repent, and turn back to following Jesus.  It is a matter of mutual accountability to one another as we all seek to follow Jesus together.  

Unfortunately, there will always be some hypocrisy within the church.  There will always be some members of the church who claim to be following Jesus but, perhaps secretly, deny Him by the way they live.  But if it becomes known to the church that a member has visibly turned away from following Jesus, the church must discipline that member.  Otherwise, that church is failing to live out its identity as a community of truth and holiness.  

Another criticism of the practice of church discipline is that it implicitly contradicts the fact that Christians are justified by faith alone.  If we are forgiven and justified before God by faith alone, then no sin we commit can take away our salvation.  So, it seems that it should not matter if a member of the church sins, and we should not exclude them from the church, since that would imply that their sin has somehow made them unsaved.

In response to this criticism, Christians are justified by faith alone, but there is no such thing as faith without repentance.  We cannot earn our salvation through good works, but if we are truly saved, the saving grace of God will be made manifest in how our lives are transformed as we follow Jesus as His disciples.  Thus, we are told, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves” (2 Cor 13:5).  There is no such thing as being justified by faith alone without being a disciple of Jesus.  So, the church must function as a community of disciples and hold its members accountable to their commitment to walking the path of repentance.  

Speaking the Truth in Love

The practice of biblical church discipline is not “self-righteous” or “unloving.”  It is, in contrast, an expression of genuine love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.  As theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer puts it, “Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to their sin.  Nothing can be more compassionate than that severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.  When we allow nothing but God’s Word to stand between us, judging and helping, it is a service of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine community.  Then it is not we who are judging; God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing.  After all, we can only serve other Christians; we can never place ourselves above them.  We serve them even when we must speak the judging and sundering Word of God to them, even when in obedience to God we must break off community with them.”^[3]Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5 (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2005), page 105.  The practice of biblical church discipline, of speaking the truth in love to our brothers and sisters in Christ, is a vitally important moral responsibility for all Christians.