Church Discipline - 2. What? (Discipleship)

You'll see Tried to provide a few things written out to help folks follow along. So this is week two of this little mini series on church discipline, what, why, when, and how. So these first three weeks we're gonna be talking about what is church discipline. So what is it? Then we're gonna talk about why church discipline. So what is the purpose of church discipline? Then we'll talk about when, and what I mean by that is what kind of sin would result in church discipline? When is it called for? And then lastly, we'll talk about how. So what is the process the Bible lays out for church discipline? Now last week, we listed a bunch of passages that talk about church discipline in some way. And one of the goals there was just to kind of get your minds churning about, well, what all does the Bible say about this? And maybe to kind of help us see, there's actually a lot of passages that mention it. I think we listed off at least 13 of them. I think I have most of them listed on your sheet there. So you can look through those if you weren't here last week, and just meditate on those things. But as we went through them, A few of the observations that I think are very clear as you just read those passages. Number one, not everyone who claims to be a Christian really is one. The Bible makes that very clear in a lot of places. Number two, sometimes people in the church need to be corrected, rebuked, and even silenced. All of those terms are used. And then number three, sometimes people need to be put out of the church altogether. avoided, separated from, and treated as heathen or tax collectors. And so we kind of noted last week, well, you know, some of those things can at first sound to at least some of us in our culture as maybe judgmental or unloving. And we kind of wonder how does that fit with everything else the Bible says. And so I hope this study is going to help bring some clarity to that and help us understand how this is actually good and right and all fits together. Also last week I provided a definition of church discipline that's printed there on your sheet, but it's church discipline is when the church confronts a member in his sin and if he refuses to repent ceases to regard him as a Christian. So that's the working definition that I hope to progressively bring clarity to as we work our way through this study. And then finally, last week I mentioned that there's these at least two foundations that I think help bring some greater clarity to that definition and to what church discipline is and how it kind of fits with everything else the Bible talks about. And those are discipleship and church membership. So today, I want us to think about church discipline in relation to discipleship. And specifically, how do discipline and discipleship mutually inform one another? How do they fit together? And so we're going to look at that in terms of etymology, and then conceptually, and then biblically. So I know those are kind of big words. I couldn't think of something simpler to organize my thoughts, so I'm just going to go with that. But I wrote them down for you, so you don't have to spell etymologically. So first off, in terms of etymology, I just want to point out that disciple and discipline are actually very similar words. If you just think about it, they share a lot of letters, and they actually do both come from the Latin word, discipulus. which means a follower, a pupil, or a trainee. So I think we really could have just as easily been called disciplinees of Jesus as disciples. They're very interrelated words. And as I hope to make clear as we work through today, discipleship is all about being disciplined to follow Jesus. So just right from the get-go, do you think of yourself as a disciplinee of Jesus? Discipleship and discipline, they are highly overlapping and interrelated ideas. Now, importantly, because you can go astray with etymology if you just sort of assume things are the same because they share a root. Well, that's not always true. But secondly, let's think conceptually. And I kind of want to help us see that discipline and discipleship actually conceptually interrelate quite a bit too. And I think this conceptual overlap becomes obvious when you realize that discipline is both corrective and formative. So those are key words to write down, corrective and formative. Now formative discipline is like training. So, if you're a basketball player and you want to become a better basketball player, well, you should probably be practicing your shooting and your dribbling, you know, every day. Maybe shoot a hundred free throws. Maybe run sprints to get in shape. This is formative discipline. This is training yourself to grow and improve as a basketball player. Well, a Christian would do things like read the Bible. Memorize scripture and pray, you know, and of course we call that those things spiritual disciplines, right? These are forming us. They're, you know, forming us or shaping us into a mold. They're intended to help us to grow to be more like Christ. So that's formative discipline. Well, then there's corrective discipline. And corrective discipline is still oriented to that formational goal, but it adds the element of someone else's correction. And so this could be very gentle, you know, the basketball player shooting free throws. Well, he might do it while his coach is watching to sort of correct his form. It's still, there's a correctional element, but it's a very gentle thing. He's inviting it, it's helping him improve his technique. And this would be similar like in Bible study, when we do it with other Christians. Well, now we have the opportunity to be corrected by someone else when I'm sort of misinterpreting the verse. I'm not reading it correctly and someone else can point out, well, did you notice this? And that helps correct and form my interpretation. It could be sort of like asking for advice, Maybe you turn to, you know, a more mature Christian and say, well, what do you think I should do in this situation? And, well, they may give you some mild correction of, well, you really shouldn't do that. I don't think that would be, you know, good for your family or good for this reason or that reason. You know, you should do this. So there's gentle correction. Then there could be maybe a little bit firmer. You know, so a basketball coach, if his team is sort of slacking off, might, you know, give them some, you know, talking to, might yell at the team. This could be another believer sort of confronting you a bit to say, you know, I really think you are a bit short with this person. You know, and maybe you should have a conversation, check in with them. You know, it's a, you know, it's not, a super serious thing, but it's being corrected. And then you can get to a more serious kind of correction. And this would usually carry some threat of consequence. So if you're a basketball player, the coach might make you run wind sprints because you were late to practice. Or he might even say, if you miss practice again, you're off the team. There's correction. And that is usually sort of what we have in mind when we think of church discipline. In one sense, church discipline is just everything we do together as a church. It's all about forming one another. But usually when we say church discipline, if you go back to my definition, church discipline is when the church confronts a member in his sin and if he refuses to repent, ceases to regard him as a Christian. So this isn't just, I think you were a little bit short with that person. where it's a bit subjective, it's not crystal clear, but I'm just trying to sort of maybe help you out and based on my opinion, this is like you can point to the Bible and say, Jesus says this and you're doing that. And in that case, if the person is, you know, stubbornly refusing to repent, well then eventually that would lead in that person, you know, we would cease to regard him as a Christian. If the whole church is saying, this is sin, Jesus says this, you're doing that, and they say, I'm not going to listen to Jesus, well then, that's when church discipline would be called for. Now in light of this, if we understand discipline sort of as both formative and corrective, you know, I like to think of discipline sort of like a pyramid. And so the base of the pyramid is the formative discipline. And then the very top of the pyramid would be, you know, corrective church discipline. And then maybe the middle is sort of that more mild correction. And I think that picture is helpful because, you know, if you have church discipline, if you just have the tip of the pyramid and you don't have the base, you know, church discipline is going to seem harsh. If a church doesn't set expectations, if a church isn't preaching the word, if a church isn't having any personal discipleship and personal conversations, well then church discipline is just going to feel like it comes out of left field. It's going to seem strange, it's going to seem out of sync. You know, you could imagine that, you know, back to the basketball analogy, imagine a coach that he doesn't make any of the team rules clear, you know, he doesn't have any conversations with the players along the way and then just out of nowhere, it's like, bam, he's kicked someone off the team. It would seem harsh because the whole base of the pyramid is missing. On the other hand, You know, if you don't have the top of the pyramid and you just have formative discipline and sort of that milder correction, well, I think that's going to be weak if, you know, corrective church discipline isn't even a possibility. You know, how can a basketball coach instill the right culture in the team if everyone knows that at the end of the day, no matter what you do, He's never really going to do anything about it. You know, it's just all bark, no bite. You know, all the admonishing and encouraging of one another in the church is going to seem empty and not very serious. If we're constantly saying, this is what you need to do. And then we never willing to take a stand and say, this is not Christian behavior. If we don't have church discipline, then the formative discipline is going to tend to be weak. So I think we need to hold formative and corrective discipline together. We need the complete pyramid. And I think the more we realize that discipline is that complete pyramid, that it includes corrective and formative, then the more we realize that the concept of discipline and the concept of discipleship are actually very, very intertwined. We start to see that, oh, well, a big, a holistic picture of discipline just, that just goes hand in hand with what discipleship's all about. And so this brings us to the third kind of way I wanna look at this, and that's biblically. And I hope this is just gonna kind of tie that together and help us see this in scripture. And I wanna start with this question. What is a disciple of Jesus? Robert. Someone that follows Jesus and obeys his commandments. Yeah, great. Somebody who follows Jesus and obeys his commands, good. I think it's a great definition. Anyone want to add to that or another way of saying it? David? I said a person who imitates Jesus by continually purging sin and pursuing righteousness. Great. Jacob? Someone who believes and does all that the Bible teaches. Okay, excellent. And where do we see this in the Bible? Any key verses that we could point to? Robert? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. Great. Ian? In John 8, Jesus says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. get to this abiding in His Word, that's what a true disciple is. Great. Well, Matthew 7, along with James, where he was just talking about a person who hears the Word and who does the Word, Jesus gives, of course, the wise man illustration, and the foolish man building his house on the sand, the wise man building his house on the rock, and of course, James reaffirms that a hearer is like someone who looks in a mirror and forgets immediately what they look like. They don't really know who they are, whereas a doer of the Word is someone who's established and stable and firm for Christ. Yeah, good. Great, yeah, these are great, great examples. You know, Jacob basically said what I was going to say, but all of these are good. The definition I came up with would be, a disciple of Jesus is someone committed to believing and obeying whatever Jesus says. So a disciple of Jesus is someone committed to believing and obeying whatever Jesus says. And as was pointed out, there's a lot of verses we could look at. I think Matthew 28, 19, and 20, the Great Commission, I think says this very well. Jesus says, make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. So a disciple, discipleship is about teaching people to obey everything Jesus commanded. Birch? Well, you know, it really, at the core of it all, it's about love. It's about, you know, if you love me, you have to obey my command. Yeah. So if you can go further than just obeying, but just really truly loving. Yeah, right. Yeah, and of course the greatest of the commandments is to love the Lord with all our heart and the second is like it, to love our neighbors ourselves. So obeying means loving and loving means obeying. They go absolutely together. Good. And so just one other thing to make clear. When we say discipleship is being committed to believing and obeying whatever Jesus says, well, The only way that we know what Jesus says is in Scripture. We don't have any words of Jesus that are not in the Bible, right? The Bible tells us what Jesus says, and it's not just the red letters in the Bible. It's not like we believe that's what we obey, and then what Paul says, or other parts of the Bible. 2 Timothy 3.16 says, all scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable or useful for teaching, for reproving, for correcting, and for training in righteousness. And by the way, when you think of teaching, reproving, correcting, training in righteousness, that sounds a lot like formative and corrective discipline. Right? It's the whole Bible. So a disciple of Jesus is someone committed to believing, obeying the Bible, whatever the Bible says. That's what being a disciple is. Now, being a disciple doesn't mean that we always perfectly believe and obey Christ. That's the whole reason we need teaching. That's why Jesus tells us in Matthew 18 that we're going to have to forgive if our brother sins against us again and again. We need to forgive them again and again. We don't always perfectly obey. That's why discipleship's a process. Our whole life we are constantly going to be stumbling. We're constantly going to be going off the path. And we need to get back on the path so that we can follow Christ. But what discipleship means is that we are committed to believing and obeying Christ in all things. It means that we have submitted ourselves to Jesus's lordship in such a way that we understand that there's nowhere where we can say to him, no. I'm not gonna believe what you're telling me, I'm not gonna obey what you're commanding me." You know, even if we say, well, I'm gonna be obedient to Jesus in everything except this one way, that's unacceptable for discipleship. I mean, you could be the most faithful church member, you could read the Bible, you could pray, you could evangelize, I mean, you could go down the list and do all those things, but if you say, When it comes to faithfulness to my spouse, I'm just not gonna listen to Christ. And I'm gonna choose an affair. And I'm not gonna repent. Like that one thing, it means you're not a disciple because you're not committed to believing and obeying whatever Jesus says. And so we have to understand that discipleship demands this complete allegiance to Christ. And yes, we fall short. Yes, it's a process. Yes, we're stumbling, but there's that commitment. And a disciple knows that even if I fall into unrepentant sin, it can only be temporary. I have to repent. Even if I go astray, well, yes, sometimes we're just wrong. We're ignorant, and we don't realize we're sinning. But when it becomes clear, we have to repent. At the end of the day, His Lordship is absolute. and we must follow Him. And I think when we understand that that's really what discipleship is, it's not just praying a prayer, it's not just walking the aisle, it's not just a checklist of I do certain Christian things and then I'm just sort of content because I'm not that bad. When we realize that, then the reason for discipline in the Christian life is obvious. I mean, the Christian life is all about learning to put sin to death and fighting to bring our lives into fuller submission to Jesus' Lordship. Every aspect of discipleship, it needs discipline, both formative and corrective. And then this also makes the need for church discipline obvious because if discipleship is about believing, being committed to believe and obeying whatever Jesus says, well then you really can tell, at least in large measure, whether someone is following Christ or not. You know, I think we live in a world where a lot of times we think, well, discipleship, it's really just a matter of the heart. But if discipleship is actually about Believing obeying whatever Jesus says and this is something we can all read we can all see There really are times where you know, we can tell this is not What Jesus commanded, you know adultery I give that as an example like we can say that this is in direct disobedience to scripture and if you are not committed to believing obeying Christ Well, then you're not living as a disciple of Christ. And so if we see what discipleship is all about, well, it makes clear why there would be such a thing as church discipline, because it's not just discipleship isn't a private secret matter of the heart alone. There is a substantial outward and visible element to it. just like Jesus' word is outward and visible. And that's part of what makes church discipline possible and necessary. Now, of course we'll talk more about the purposes of church discipline in a couple weeks, but I also just want to point out here that this is a reminder of why church discipline As we think about it in relation to discipleship itself, it's a reminder why church discipline is not only for the good of the person who's being disciplined, it's also for our good. Because church discipline is a reminder that discipleship, Christian discipleship, is about being committed to believe and obeying whatever Jesus says. And a person being disciplined is someone who that's just not the case for. And I think that should remind and challenge us, well, am I committed? I mean, am I remembering what discipleship is all about? Am I, as a disciple of Jesus, committed to following Him, to trusting Him, to obeying Him in every way? And when I stumble, when I fall, I get up and follow. There is such grace, and she is so patient with us. But we are followers of Christ. And church discipline reminds us of that. All right, well, I just want to close there, but also open up for any questions. We have a few minutes to discuss. So any questions about anything I've shared, or just about this topic? Yep? What is etymology? So etymology, it's like, basically, where do words come from? So yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Faith. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think The examples we have are almost all kind of local, like First Church and First Corinthians. I think Jesus has a local church context in mind in Matthew 18. But it also assumes that as local churches, we're all on the same team. We should all be working together. So if Brother Bob gets excommunicated from Charlottesville community and then he wants to come down here, well, I'm gonna be in touch with Kyle Like, what's going on? And we would not let him join this church unless there was some sort of reconciliation there. I mean, we're going to sort of stand with them, unless we think it's a church that has totally botched the situation or something. But in general, we want to stand together as different local churches and say, hey, if there's an issue, for your own good, we want to see this worked out. Answer her. I'm just thinking, like, what if their trip isn't doing it the right way? And you see this brother that we care for. Yeah. When is it a, like, relationship form? Like, you go to a brother, and it's more of, like, a one-on-one situation, and it doesn't get the leadership involved because their leadership isn't, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Would it be the case that maybe someone's at another church, and the church is not disciplining them, but you really feel like there's an issue? Yeah, so in 2 John, it mentions someone teaching different doctrine if they come to your house. So hypothetically, the Mormon or the Jehovah's Witness, like, well, we've never excommunicated that person, but we understand that this person is not teaching these things, and so functionally we would treat them very similar to someone who's excommunicated, in the sense that you think you're a Christian, but there's an issue here. So I think it would be somewhat situational, but yeah, that's a good question. All right, well, we're at time, so we will pick up, and next week we're gonna talk about church membership, and how that relates to church discipline. But let me close this in prayer for tonight. Father, we know that you have called us to follow Christ, to be utterly committed to believing and obeying Him, to bowing before His Lordship. We pray that you would help us to do that more faithfully. We pray that wherever we are relaxed and complacent and content in sin, that you would stir up in us holy desires for holiness. And God, I pray that even as we do that, we would not slide into trusting in our works, that we would not forget the gospel of grace, but we would hold firmly to the fact that Christ is our Savior who suffered and died so that we might be freely forgiven and that you call us to follow Christ because you love us and it's for our good. I pray that we would hold firmly to that. Lord, please give us fuller and fuller understanding in this and help us to be faithful as a church in this area. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.