church discipline

Practicing the Three R’s

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5 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. 6 For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, 7 so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. 8 So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. 9 For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. 10 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, 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. – 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 ESV

In these verses, Paul refers to an unnamed individual who had been a source of trouble in the church. Evidently, he had played an adversarial role, attempting to undermine or question Paul’s ministry or the validity of his apostleship. In doing so, he had caused Paul and the church pain  (lypeō – sadness or grief). This man’s disruptive presence had been a source of consternation and sorrow, and Paul concedes that it had been harder on the Corinthians than it had been on him.

Unlike their earlier response to the man who had been having an incestuous relationship with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5:1-2), in this case, they had chosen to deal with it. Even this had caused grief, because practicing tough love toward a fellow believer is never easy. In the case of the young man committing adultery with his stepmother, Paul had told them, “You should remove this man from your fellowship” (1 Corinthians 5:2 NLT). He went on to defend his recommendation, telling them, “You must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns.” (1 Corinthians 5:5 NLT).

Church discipline is neither fun nor easy, but the alternative can be devastating. Paul had warned the Corinthians of the danger of procrastinating about internal problems within the church. 

Don’t you realize that this sin is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old “yeast” by removing this wicked person from among you. Then you will be like a fresh batch of dough made without yeast, which is what you really are. – 1 Corinthians 5:6-7 NLT

Regarding the individual Paul refers to in this letter, the Corinthians had practiced church discipline, but now it was time to restore their brother in Christ. He gently, but firmly, reminds them, “Most of you opposed him, and that was punishment enough. Now, however, it is time to forgive and comfort him. Otherwise, he may be overcome by discouragement” (2 Corinthians 2:6-7 NLT).

The goal of church discipline should be the repentance, restoration, and reconciliation of the offending party. This man’s public ostracization by the church had made an impact on his life. Now, Paul wanted them to forgive and restore him so that he would not lose heart and perhaps fall into greater sin. Paul writes, “ I urge you now to reaffirm your love for him” (2 Corinthians 2:8 NLT).

According to Paul, the body of Christ has been given the ministry of reconciliation. It was the same ministry to which he had been called by Christ.

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” – 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 NLT

Helping restore lost individuals to a right relationship with God is our mission. However, it also includes restoring believers who, through persistent, unrepentant sin, have walked away from God and the body of Christ. Paul told the believers in Galatia:

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. – Galatians 6:1 NLT

It would be ungodly to practice church discipline on a fellow believer without pursuing the ultimate goal of their restoration. Removing an offending believer from your fellowship without intending to restore them one day is not what Paul had in mind.

One of the things we must always keep in mind is that Satan is always out to divide and conquer. Jesus said of him, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10a ESV). His intention is to attack those within the flock of God who are weak and vulnerable. He can’t take away their salvation, but he can steal their effectiveness and joy. He can kill their sense of contentment and destroy their unity with the body of Christ. Satan would much rather destroy the church from within than attack it from the outside. That is why we must be so concerned about sin within the camp.

Sin, like yeast, permeates and spreads. It can be like cancer, growing unobserved and undetected, silently infecting the entire body. So we must always be on the alert and willing to confront sin within the body of Christ. But along with confrontation, we must extend compassion and pursue restoration. And it all begins with forgiveness. This was a recurring theme for Paul:

…be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. – Ephesians 4:32 NLT

Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. – Colossians 3:13 NLT

May God, who gives this patience and encouragement, help you live in complete harmony with each other, as is fitting for followers of Christ Jesus. Then all of you can join together with one voice, giving praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory. – Romans 15:5-7 NLT

Paul knew that God longed for unity among His people. Christ prayed for it in His High Priestly Prayer.

“I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.

“I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me.” – John 17:20-23

Sin was and is an ever-present reality within the body of Christ, but forgiveness should be as well. Otherwise, we open ourselves to the evil schemes of Satan, who seeks to outwit us and destroy the unity Christ died to provide. That is why we need to practice the three R’s: Repentance, reconciliation, and restoration.

We are in this together. We are the body of Christ, the family of God, and our unity should be as important to us as it is to our heavenly Father.

Father, unity does not mean universality. As members of the body of Christ, we are not all the same. We come from different backgrounds, have differing talents and abilities, and we have each been given a different gift by the Holy Spirit for the mutual edification of the church. But we all share a common struggle with indwelling sin; we can’t escape it. Some are more spiritually mature than others. There are those who are weak and more susceptible to sin. And while You have called us to confront sin when we see it, we should never do so without pursuing their repentance and reconciliation. You never said it would be easy, but as Paul makes clear, reconciliation is a non-negotiable necessity. Peter said that judgment begins in the house of God (1 Peter 1:17), but it must be accompanied by restorative love and a desire for spiritual healing. Show us how to practice tough love with the heart of Christ, and never out of judgmentalism or prideful arrogance. Amen

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Restoration, Not Revenge

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15 “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.”

21 Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.” –  Matthew 18:15-22 ESV

Jesus has just finished talking about the danger of causing another believer to stumble in his walk by demeaning or devaluing them. Pride has no place in the family of God. There is no reason for any follower of Christ to consider themselves to be better than anyone else. And the disciples would soon learn that all are equal at the foot of the cross. We are sinners saved by grace, “not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9 ESV). And the humility that accompanies our faith in Christ should prevent us from looking down on other believers and setting ourselves up as somehow superior and of greater value in the kingdom.

But that humility will also lead us to lovingly forgive those who sin against us, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we end up on the receiving end of someone else’s pride and arrogance, we are to approach them in humility, not anger, exposing their sin but with the goal of restoring the relationship.

One of the greatest sins we can commit against another believer is to cause them to stumble in their walk or stray from the path on which God has placed them. And if you should find yourself the victim of this kind of sin, Jesus encourages you to seek restoration, not revenge. The goal is not the exposure of the other person’s fault, but the healing of the relationship. And Jesus makes it clear that if you humbly and lovingly approach them and they repent, you will have “gained a brother.”

But, if they refuse to admit their culpability and confess their pride, you are to involve others in the fellowship who can speak to the matter from first-hand experience. Once again, the objective should be to lead them to conviction that results in restoration. This is not about making the other person feel bad. It’s not about exposing their faults before others, but about humbly seeking God’s best for them.

But if the one who has sinned against you remains unconvicted and refuses to repent, you are to bring the matter before the ekklēsia, a Greek word that eventually came to refer to the local body of believers or the local church. But at this point in Jesus’ relationship with His disciples, He had provided them with no insight or teaching regarding the coming church. So, more than likely, Jesus was referring to an assembly of believers who had been called together for an announcement. The disciples probably assumed He was talking about their own close-knit group.

Finally, Jesus told them that if the person remained stubbornly unrepentant, they were to “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17 ESV). In other words, they were to exclude this individual from fellowship. If he or she remained unrepentant, they were to be unwelcome by those in the ekklēsia – the small circle of friends who had become privy to the sin. This individual would have forfeited their right to fellowship because they had refused to accept responsibility for their sin. Had they followed the advice of the apostle John, they could have been restored to fellowship and received forgiveness.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1 John 1:9 ESV

Again, the objective behind all of this is restoration, not merely punishment. Our motivation in confronting the guilty party is to be love. As the apostle Peter taught:

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. – 1 Peter 4:8 ESV

In our loving confrontation of the brother or sister who has sinned against us, we are to understand that our treatment of them, when done in humility and out of love, carries weight. When the time comes for a decision to be made regarding the proper discipline of the guilty party, it should be made prayerfully and carefully. We are to see our decision as bearing the full weight of God’s authority. Jesus repeated the same words He used when speaking to Peter back in chapter 16.

“I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  – Matthew 16:19 ESV

The decision made by the local assembly would carry the same weight as if it had been made by God Himself. The binding and loosing have to do with the outward treatment of the one who has sinned against his brother or sister in Christ.

Verses 19-20, while often used as a proof text for corporate prayer, really has much more to do with the issue of one believer who has sinned against another. When the proper steps have been taken and the sinning individual has been confronted one-on-one and then with two or three witnesses, the next step is discipline. And we are to seek God’s will in the matter. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Jesus does not provide a singular prescription for discipline. We are to seek the will of God and then pronounce judgment in the name of God – fully trusting that He is intimately involved in the matter.

Finally, Peter has to get his two-cents in, following up Jesus’ words with a question that he hopes will shed light on the whole discussion. He appears to have a hard time with the idea of forgiving someone who has sinned against him. So, he asked Jesus how many times he was expected to forgive. He was looking for a limit. Surely, this would not be some undetermined number requiring unending forgiveness. But Jesus blew holes in Peter’s theory, by saying, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:22 ESV). The number was not the issue. It was the motivation of the heart. Jesus wanted Peter to know that the kind of forgiveness He was talking about had no time limit or date of expiration. It is the very same kind of forgiveness we have received from God.

The apostle Paul would later explain it in terms that each of us can readily understand.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:32 ESV

Again, the issue is restoration, not revenge. Our goal is to be reconciliation with our brother or sister in Christ and their ultimate restoration to a right relationship with God. For the disciples, all of this sounded so far-fetched and impossible. It made no sense. But Jesus was raising the bar, just as He has done all along the way in His interactions with these men. He was enlightening them to the reality of life in the kingdom. It would not be as they expected. There would be no place for pride. There would be no room for vengeance. The kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate would be comprised of humility, unity, and love.

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT)
Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG)Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

The 3 R’s.

/ kdmiller55 / Leave a comment

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 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 that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. – 2 Corinthians 2:5-11 ESV

In these verses Paul refers to an unnamed individual who had been a source of trouble in the church. Evidently, he had played an adversarial role, attempting in some way to undermine or question Paul’s ministry or the validity of his apostleship. And he had caused Paul and the church pain – (lypeō – sadness or grief). This man’s disruptive presence had been a source of consternation and sorrow, and it Paul concedes that is had been harder on the Corinthians than it had been on him.

Unlike their earlier response to the man who had been having an incestuous relationship with his stepmother (1 Corinthians 5:1-2), here they had chosen to deal with it. Even this had resulted in grief. Practicing tough love on a fellow believers is never easy. In the case of the young man committing adultery with his stepmother, Paul had told them, “Let him who has done this be removed from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:2 ESV). He went on to defend his recommendation, telling them, “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 5:5 ESV). Church discipline is neither fun or easy. But the alternative can be devastating, as Paul told the Corinthians.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. – 1 Corinthians 5:6-7 ESV

In regards to the individual Paul refers to in this second letter, the Corinthians had practiced church discipline, but now it was time to restore their brother in Christ. He gently, but firmly reminds them, “Most of you opposed him, and that was punishment enough. Now, however, it is time to forgive and comfort him. Otherwise he may be overcome by discouragement” (2 Corinthians 2:6-7 NLT). The goal of church discipline should be the offending party’s repentance, restoration and reconciliation. This man had been publicly ostracized by the body of Christ, and it had made an impact on his life. Paul wanted them to forgive and restore him so that he would not lose heart and perhaps fall into greater sin. So Paul tells them, “ I urge you now to reaffirm your love for him” (2 Corinthians 2:8 NLT).

According to Paul, the body of Christ has been given the ministry of reconciliation. It was the same ministry to which he had been called by Christ.

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” – 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 NLT

Helping restore lost individuals to a right relationship with God is our mission. But it also includes restoring believers who have walked away from God and the body of Christ through persistent sin. Paul told the believers in Galatia: “Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself” (Galatians 6:1 NLT). Practicing church discipline on a fellow believer without the ultimate goal being their restoration is ungodly. Removing an offending believer from your fellowship without intending to one day restore them is not what God had in mind.

One of the things we must always keep in mind is that Satan, our enemy, is always out to divide and conquer. Jesus said of him, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10a ESV). His intention is to steal those from the flock of God who are weak and vulnerable. He can’t take away their salvation, but he can steal their effectiveness and joy. He can kill their sense of contentment and destroy their unity with the body of Christ. Satan would much rather destroy the church from within, rather than attacking it from the outside. That is why we must be so concerned about sin within the camp. Sin, like yeast, permeates and spreads. It can be like a cancer, growing undetected, under the surface, silently infecting the entire body. So we must always be on the alert and willing to confront sin within the body of Christ. But along with confrontation must come compassion and restoration. Forgiveness is essential. This was a recurring theme for Paul:

…be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. – Ephesians 4:32 NLT

Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. – Colossians 3:13 NLT

May God, who gives this patience and encouragement, help you live in complete harmony with each other, as is fitting for followers of Christ Jesus. Then all of you can join together with one voice, giving praise and glory to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory. – Romans 15:5-7 NLT

Paul knew that God longed for unity among His people. Sin was and is an ever-present reality, but forgiveness should be as well. Otherwise, we open ourselves up to the evil scheme of Satan, who seeks to outwit us and destroy the unity Christ died to provide. That is why we need to practice the three R’s: Repentance, reconciliation and restoration. We are in this together. We are the body of Christ, the family of God. Our unity should be as important to us as it is to our heavenly Father.