Be The Fruit

Church Discipline

by Bill Blair on 10/11/07 at 2:43 pm

We just began studying First Corinthians in my small group.  We worked through the first six chapters this week.  In chapter five, Paul deals with a report he has received that indicates that a man “has his father’s wife” within the Corinthian church.  Paul rebukes the people within the church for not dealing with the situation and issues a judgement for them to “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”(NASV)

The topic in chapter 5 sparked some really good discussion because Paul’s action seems very harsh, and we do not have much contact or experience with church discipline today. In today’s world, we are taught to accept and “love” people in bad situations so Paul’s command to remove the man appears very mean spirited. Also, in today’s world the sentence of kicking the man out does not have much teeth when such a man has hundreds of options of churches to choose from. If you drive down Franklin Road here from Nashville down to Franklin you would see what I am talking about.

There are a couple things to know about the situation in the passage.  One, this situation is obviously a very grievous one.  Next, the people in the church seem to be accepting or ignoring the situation. The man in question is allegedly a believer so he needs to be treated as such. The main thing to learn from chapter 5 is that it is correct to deal with terrible situations like this very harshly. Paul explicitly writes that our judgements are only to fall on fellow believers and not those who are of the world. Essentially, if a fellow believer falls into sinful behavior that he/she will not repent of then we should deal with it promptly and decisively. All of this is done for the good of the church and the fallen man/woman. Think of disciplining a child where you discipline them so that they may grow up and learn to be good.

This sort of discipline brings up some tough questions.  What type of sin is worthy of such discipline, and who is it proper to discipline?  I won’t go into that discussion here, but I did have some thoughts since our discussion earlier this week.  As I stated earlier, church discipline does not have much teeth and therefore does not happen much today because of the number of options in churches.  I believe, however, that understanding how to discipline people within the church will become more and more important as people learn to “be the church” in their life and away from a church campus. 

Think about it.  If we learn to live out our faith in our communities then we are going to run into some issues with people.  The last time I checked, this still is a fallen world; therefore, people will do fallen things.  As we do church in small group Bible studies and fellowship in social gatherings we will run into people doing bad things.  Dealing with such problems correctly will become more and more important. 

Paul established a principle that it is proper discipline fellow believers for unrepentant behavior.  But, what sins rise to the level of such discipline?  How long do you wait until proceeding with some level of discipline?  Who is it proper to discipline?  Do you only discipline those who are within your circle of influence or is it proper to discipline any other professing believer?  Obviously this requires wise discernment on what, who, when, and how.  I know people err both on not acting and acting too quickly.

Dealing with people is not easy.  Living out your faith is not easy.  To any of us who are leaders or intend to be leaders, conflict resolution and discipline is something that we need to take seriously.  We need to equip the body to deal with difficult situations like this.  Trying to be the fruit in a fallen world is not easy, but that is what we are all called to do.  The more we ask people to live out their faith outside the friendly confines of a church campus the more equipping and training they will need to be effective.

Sinful behavior is not ending any time soon(I think); therefore, we are certainly going to have to deal with it.  Deciding which situation and/or behavior that should or should not be disciplined is a tough touchy decision.  The truth is that it will be a sin not to discipline when you should, and a sin to discipline when you shouldn’t.  What is the solution?  I don’t know for sure, but I know this is something that we have to work on.