We who claim to be vitally concerned about the restoration, need to be concerned about the restoration of all things pertaining to the church. There is hypocrisy in restoring the truth on the terms of admission into the church but neglecting the truth of the terms for leaving the fellowship of the church. Especially is this so when there are more verses in the New Testament having to do with church discipline than with baptism. The Lord will hold us to account for failures in this area (cf. Rev. 2:14 etc.). Time would fail us to cover the whole spectrum of church discipline in this article, but I want to address a number of fallacies that abound, which impinge on an understanding of the subject.
If someone, as it were, disfellowships himself, is he disfellowshipped? Yes. If someone withdraws their fellowship is it withdrawn? Of course. Should we recognize that such has happened? Of course, otherwise we call them liars. Does a brother or sister in Christ have the right to withdraw his or her fellowship because he or she has chosen to walk disorderly? It may be the most honest thing that some people ever do. Should we expect to walk outside the light and expect to be in fellowship with those who are walking in the light? Can someone be out of fellowship with God but in fellowship with his brethren? You can have a situation where a person may seek such, but is it possible? Obviously not. Is not our fellowship with one another based on walking in the light of His word ((1 John 1:1-7)? Many want to be in fellowship with the Lord, with the church, go to Heaven, but not walk in the light. They want it all. We love a good deal. If you go to town looking for a particular object and you find it in a store for $50 and then you hear you can get it in another store as a free give-away, which one will you get? If one can get fellowship at the cost of repentance in one place, or with no repentance in another place, which one will the human choose?
We are children of God and we cannot change history. We are not revisionists. We don’t seek to change the Biblical record of the life of Christ and neither do we want to do it of our own lives. We must hold ourselves responsible for the choices we make. At any given time those who have been born again are either faithful or unfaithful children of God (I cannot change my DNA – I can change my name, renounce my parents, live contrary to their standards, but my DNA would prove I am still the boy that was born to Lillian Coker in the Mater Hospital, Rockhampton, 19th Nov, 1949). And I am still the youth that was born again in Rockhampton, December 1965. I could renounce God right now and walk away from Christ but that wouldn’t change those pre-mentioned facts. I could deny it, and say that I didn’t know what I was doing and a whole lot of other escapist palava, but those things can no more be changed than an ancient Jew could deny his circumcision. That is why those walking disorderly who return to faithfulness do not have to be baptised again – just repent – because they have already become children of God (2 Cor. 2:7,8).
We are the army of God and we are soldiers (Eph. 6; 2 Cor. 10:3-5). We could desert Christ right now but that wouldn’t free us. It’s a commitment for life (Rev. 2:10). When a soldier deserts the army the M.P.’s come after him – they don’t say “Well, he doesn’t want to be a soldier anymore so we will let him go as free as a bird. We’ll even let him eat at the Officer’s Mess if he likes”. The fact that he doesn’t want to be a soldier anymore is not in dispute, and the fact he doesn’t want to hang around with his batallion anymore doesn’t change the fact that desertion is a heinous crime with severe consequences. In the Services of many countries it is punishable by death. When a Christian soldier walks out on Christ it is desertion in the face of the enemy. It is not a light thing – it is failure in everything we stand for – if we are to discipline the one who commits adultery (1 Cor. 5), the false teacher (Rom. 16:17), those who walk disorderly (2 Thess. 3:14), what are we to do with the one who ceases to worship God, ceases to work, ceases to give, destroys morale, and a thousand other sins? We do not just let them go and pretend that he or she is no longer a soldier, anymore than the army does its deserters. And do we think that such behaviour is less of a leavening influence than adultery or false teaching? They are to be disciplined and the appropriate discipline for the unrepentant is by being disfellowshipped.
It’s a bit like the bird-flesh God gave Israel: “You want flesh?”, “You shall have it – more than you want!” “You want no fellowship? You will have no fellowship!” You cannot pretend you want fellowship when you don’t want to be in the fellowship. Hymenaesus and Alexander had made shipwreck of the faith, and they were delivered unto Satan (cf. 1 Cor. 5:5) to learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim. 1:19,20). We don’t know what they said to blaspheme, but it is evident they had given up on Christ their Lord. People withdraw their fellowship because they want to be in control, and so they can pretend, as least to themselves, that they are in the right and justified, but it is the Lord and His faithful brethren who are given the control. Similarly in the workforce, many men when asked “We’re you fired?”, will reply, “No, I resigned:” whether it is true or not for this same illusion of control. Similarly a young man is told, “I hear your girlfriend dropped you”, and his predictable reply is “Nah, I dropped her”. Games people play.
It is obviously apparent that when one deserts the family of God, the social aspect of “keeping no company” is aided and abeted by the disobedient one’s action in deserting, but that doesn’t address all aspects in the issue of fellowship. Fellowship is more than social, being a spiritual relationship that reflects itself in a social component (1 John 1:1-7). However it is greater than the social component. The withdrawal of the social component is to demonstrate the severing of the spiritual relationship. The Bible puts sin and alienation together. The problem of sin is not just theological it is also relational. A breach of man’s relationship with God entails a breach in all other relationships. The alienation of evil is theological, between man and God. It is sociological, between man and other men; psychological, between man and himself; and ecological, between man and nature. (Oz Guinness).
The withdrawal of the social component is not “in theory” – by that I mean that we continue on business as usual and have normal social intercourse with those no longer in fellowship. When Paul gave instruction in 1 Cor. 5:9-11 he said we are to dis-fellowship disobedient members of the church. He further says that if we were to dis-fellowship the sinners of the world as well as the sinners in the church we would have to leave the world. What does that tell us? Simply this: that “to have no company with” really means what it says. To have no company with the world we would have to leave the world. There must be a separation. There must be a cessation of normal social intercourse. There are no big words in “have no company with”. The biggest is “company”, but it’s not difficult. When we say “we’re having company over tonight” we know that just means we’re having people over to have normal social fellowship and in most cases, a meal together. So Paul uses both expressions; “not to keep company” and “not to eat with” in v.11. These are synonyms. Some have suggested that “not to eat with” has reference to the Lord’s Supper. That is wrong on two counts: first, (as we said) “not to keep company with” is used interchangeably with “not to eat with”. If you didn’t have company with someone you wouldn’t eat with them, so effectively these refer to the same action. Second, if we can keep company with the fornicators of this world (v.10), which we can, does that mean we will eat the Lord’s Supper with them? No, it means the normal meal, for in the overwhelming majority of cases the fornicators of this world wouldn’t be at a worship service anyway.
We have an Adversary whom we are not to sell short (1 Pet. 5:8). Satan is prepared to give up ten yards now in order to gain a hundred yards later. This is a commonly-used ploy (cf. The attack on Ai – Josh.8). We are not to be ignorant of his devices, Paul says. Note that it is the examples of individuals who smoke and yet don’t get lung cancer that people use to justify their own habit (remember the ad on T.V. “My pop smoked all his life; lived to be 80; I’m 40″). Why do the wicked prosper? (cf. Ps. 73:13,14) It creates the impression that “honesty is not the best policy”. If God allowed Satan to deprive and afflict in the case of Job, isn’t it also possible that God would allow Satan to use material blessings and good health to try whatever he wanted to try? For example, a poor man might cling to the Lord having no material security, and Satan might believe that if that same poor man was blessed with material blessings he might forget the Lord and so not object if the Lord blessed him with material things.
We see the one who becomes prosperous through dishonesty and ungodliness but if we are discerning we note how this ultimately traps many other people in the same actions and attitudes but they don’t prosper. How many have tried to ape Kerry or James Packer through gambling? Satan is perfectly willing to let someone win the pools or lottery or even build an empire on gambling because he knows that will enslave many to gambling. If no one ever one, no won would gamble.
Or the parent who says they never disciplined their child and the child turned out alright, becomes the vanguard of a movement that ends up with a generation of rebellious children. The Christian who marries a non-Christian and the non-Christian becomes a Christian becomes an encouragement for others (who operate on the premise, “I know a case that worked out”).
And you know, Satan is perfectly willing for a Christian he has in his clutches to return to the Lord because therein lies the possibility of a great victory. In what way? There are churches that won’t discipline because they know of an unruly member who wasn’t disciplined yet who returned to faithfulness and they know of some who were disciplined and who did not return to the Lord and so they buy the line and disobey God. They say discipline doesn’t work. To say that is to contradict God. And who knows what will happen to such congregations down the line when they do not practice discipline? We do what God says – we trust in Him and don’t lean upon our own understanding (Prov. 3:5,6), temporary appearances notwithstanding!
We don’t read into specific examples something that is not there. Because a wicked father like Amon produces a good son like Josiah, or a good father like Hezekiah produces a rotten son like Manasseh doesn’t mean that we forsake Prov. 22:6, Eph.6:4 etc. We are heading for heartache and pain when we think our wisdom is greater than God’s. We don’t know the result of a sin – we are just not smart enough – David didn’t have a clue that on the night he looked too long at beautiful Bathsheeba bathing that it was going to lead to adultery, murder, a dead child and that 3000 years later people in Australia would still talk about it! Nor do we know the end of correct action. Hear the conclusion of the matter – fear God and keep His commandments.
The second area we will look at concerns the question “Is church discipline too hard?” Some have observed that “it seems like punishment!” as if that was a dirty word and concept. Yes, it is punishment, according to inspired writ (2 Cor. 2:6). It’s punishment the Lord prescribes when His children will not obey His word. But is it too hard? I’m always a bit wary about questions relating to hardness. The common tendency is for people to put something in the “too hard” basket and then feel justified in not complying. Better not to think in such terms – know that the commandments of the Lord are not grievous (1 John 5:3). Hardness is such a relative thing, rather than an absolute thing. For example, the physical sciences have a hardness scale: so if diamond is 10, then glass is 7 and so on. Yet we talk about hard butter and soft butter, but hard butter wouldn’t even make it to 1 on the hardness scale.
So is church discipline hard? Hard compared to what? We could say it is not as pleasant as enjoying fellowship, but is it hard? All I know is that anything else will prove to be harder, if not now, certainly later. That is another device of the Devil. He makes things look easier and more attractive to kid us into thinking this way. The way of the transgressor is hard says the Lord (Prov. 13:15), so why do people transgress? Because the Devil makes it look easy.
Is discipline hard? We need to reflect on our father Abraham. God came to Abraham one day and asked him to sacrifice his son. You want to talk about hard? Go talk to Abraham, don’t talk to me. All He asks us to do is withdraw fellowship in the hope that it may provoke repentance. The practice of church discipline will no more guarantee repentance than the preaching of the gospel will guarantee a sinner will repent and be baptised. God respects free will. That’s a given in any discussion.
And who are we? We are people who are of the faith of Abraham (Rom. 4:12,16). If Abraham could travel three days to Mt. Moriah, build an altar, bind his son and raise a knife to slay hiim, we can practice church discipline. If we can’t, I can’t see how we can say we are of the faith of Abraham. And we have no right to call church discipline “hard”.
To be sure, God has made it easy for us because every father knows the difficulties in deciding fair punishment (Heb. 12:9,10). You fathers (and mothers) know what he is talking about – the child misbehaves and we have to make a judgement: “Does this deserve a hiding, a withdrawal of privileges, or a grounding, and if so, for how long?” We don’t have to wrestle with judgements about what is fair punishment for one who walks from the light into darkness. God has told us. Whom the Lord loves He disciplines.. Any doctrine that says God does not discipline His wayward children must be wrong. It is no good us saying, “well I thought fellowshipping the disobedient would work better”, or “I thought God was a bit unfair” etc. God will ask us on Judgement Day why we did not believe Him. “Behold, I thought” will not cut it, even as we note with Naaman the leper (2 Kings 5:11).
Trust God and be not afraid.