The Theology of the Church – Discipline Calls for Soft Hearts and Hard Heads

The Reformation taught that there were three marks of the Church: the pure preaching of the word; the right administration of the sacraments; and the faithful exercise of discipline.

“Excommunication and discipline…” When we hear these words we are apt to think of all sorts of nasty things that churches have done to all sorts of poor people.

In fact, the very fact that discipline mostly not practised today has a lot to do with how churches saw its practice as being an abuse of power. At best, it was seen as old-fashioned and unnecessary. At worst, it is seen as attempts to coerce and bully.

Soft Hearts…

There aren’t many people who would try and argue that church discipline and excommunication is strictly unbiblical but there are many who try to argue that we ought not practise it by appealing to notions of Christian love and forgiveness.

They argue something like this: sin cannot separate the believer from God (Romans 8:38-39), so why should we? Jesus showed mercy to sinners. In dealing with the woman caught in adultery, he challenged those who had no sin to cast the first stone (John 8). So how can we punish others? He told us to forgive “not seven times but seventy-seven times” (Matthew 18:21-22). Paul said that we should restore rather than reject the one caught in sin (Galatians 6:1). Love is “patient and kind”, “keeping no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

These attitudes and instincts are of course good, and even essential. Such reflexes at the heart level are entirely necessary for those who call themselves Christian. If we have truly felt the heinousness of our own sin, whether in thought, word or deed, how can we be so quick to pick up the first stone? Knowledge of God’s forgiveness towards us at the expense of his own son’s death needs to make us tremble at the thought of sitting in judgment against others.

We need soft hearts…

Hard heads…

But the question is, is the response of gentleness and mercy the only response that is ever right?

In the last article of these series I looked at the distinction between the visible and invisible church. While we’d love to be able to see the church from God’s perspective, the reality is that we must work with an imperfect view – the visible church. The visible church will sometimes miss some true believers and include those who do not really belong.

Now, just because the most important entity in question for Christian ministry is the invisible church (because faith is invisible), does that mean we just throw our hands in the air because it’s too hard to maintain the borders with the church?

While the Lord doesn’t expect us to be mind-readers and see what’s inside everyone’s heart, he does expect us to maintain borders around what can be seen.

The first way we maintain borders is of course through the proclaiming the gospel and admitting people into the church through a credible profession of faith and the sacrament of baptism. Baptised infants ought later to make a credible profession of faith before being counted as full communicants, including admission to the Lord’s table. We might call this way the entrance door of the visible church.

A second way we maintain borders is by keeping membership rolls, general pastoral care of the flock, admitting as members those who come to us already baptised (and who also have a credible profession of faith), and removing those from the roll who have moved to another church or who have otherwise chosen to leave the fellowship.

A third way that we maintain borders is by the faithful exercise of discipline. When a scandal occurs and the name of Christ is brought into disrepute, the church needs to take action so that Christ’s honour in the church may be protected and the sinner restored. The necessity of discipline can be seen in texts such as Matthew 18:15–20. 1 Corinthians 5:9–13 gives a tangible example of how this discipline was carried out in the first century church. While we are obviously “no better” than those who sin in such a visible way, the Lord calls the church to maintain its purity and integrity according to what is seen.

Are these methods supposed to be watertight in that their exercise will result in a pure church where the visible church aligns with the invisible? No. There is no way on this side of heaven by which we’ll get that, and probably any attempt to do so outside these provided for in the Bible will end in tears. We need accept that there will always be those whose faith we are not quite that sure about.  They may well end up being hypocrites. But maybe not … We must leave it up to God to make the final decision in these cases (Matthew 13:30).

But discipline on this side of heaven is supposed to help the church take care of the obvious weeds. Allowing unrepentant and flagrant sin to go visibly unchecked only encourages its multiplication. As the Apostle Paul says: “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6).

Obviously, discipline is not a business that any true Christian will relish being involved in. It goes against our Christian instincts in wanting to extend mercy. It goes against our instinct to exclude rather than include. Who are we? None of us truly any better.

But the call for the church to excise discipline requires both soft hearts and hard heads. There is a great need in the church for distinguishing minds. While we need mercy, there is also need for a severity that also comes from our great saviour.

Mercy and Severity

One Puritan said that most of the errors of ministry fall into either of two errors: that we are either too soft when we need to be hard, or we are too hard when we need to be soft.

This is a task that needs great amount of wisdom, of which, in and of ourselves we do not have. We need to lean heavily on the Holy Spirit, because this job is fraught with danger.

May the Lord help us to know the poverty of our own wisdom so that we will rightly rely on him. May we exercise mercy when we need to exercise mercy, and exercise severity when we need to exercise severity, to the glory of God.

– Bryan Kim