14  The Discipline of  God’s Children  (18:15-20)

And if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. And 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-gatherer. Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst. (18:15-20)

God’s desire for His children here on earth is purity of life. It is impossible to study Scripture attentively and not be overwhelmingly convinced that God seeks above all else for His people to be holy and that He is grieved by sin of any kind. Directly quoting God’s command to His Old Covenant people Israel, Peter wrote the same command to Christ’s church: “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16; cf. Lev. 11:44).

Because God is so concerned for the holiness of His people, they should be equally concerned. The church cannot preach and teach a message it does not live and have any integrity before God, or even before the world. Yet in many churches where there is no tolerance for sin in principle there is much tolerance for it in practice. And when preaching becomes separated from living, it becomes separated both from integrity and from spiritual and moral effectiveness. It promotes hypocrisy instead of holiness. Divorcing biblical teaching from daily living is compromise of the worst sort. It corrupts the church, grieves the Lord, and dishonors His Word and His name.

It is not surprising, therefore, that public discipline for sin is rare in the church today. Where there is little genuine desire for purity there will also be little desire to deal with impurity. The misinterpreted and misapplied statement of Jesus that we should not judge lest we be judged (Matt. 7:1) has been used to justify the tolerance of every sort of sin and false teaching. The ideas that every person’s privacy is essentially to be protected and that each is responsible only to himself have engulfed much of the church. Under the guise of false love and spurious humility that refuse to hold others to account, many Christians are as dedicated as some unbelievers to the unbiblical notion of “live and let live.” The church, however, is not nearly so careful not to gossip about someone’s sinning as it is not to confront it and call for it to stop.

The church has always had need for confronting the sins of its people. During its early days many foreign visitors to Palestine were converted to Christ and decided to stay in or near Jerusalem in order to enjoy the fellowship of believers there. A large number of native Jewish converts were ostracized from their families and lost their jobs because of their new-found faith. To help support those needy brothers and sisters, many of whom were virtually destitute, the believers who had property and possession sold them and gave the proceeds to the apostles, who “distributed to each, as any had need” (Acts 4:35). That practice was the spontaneous reaction of generous, Spirit-filled hearts to meet the practical needs of fellow Christians.

During that time, a couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of their property and pledged to God that they would give all the proceeds to the apostles for use in the church. Somewhere in the process, however, they decided to keep back a portion of the pledged money for themselves. In order not to appear less generous than their fellow believers, however, they falsely reported that they were giving the full amount. When the Lord revealed the duplicity to Peter, he first confronted the husband. “Ananias,” he asked, “’why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God.’ And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last.” Several hours later, Sapphira came to the apostles, not knowing what had happened to her husband. When Peter asked her if the property was sold for the price claimed by her husband, she confirmed his lie and suffered his fate. Not surprisingly, “great fear came upon the whole church, and upon all who heard of these things” (Acts 5:1-11).

The selfishness of Ananias and Sapphira was deplorable, but their great sin was in lying about what they had done, not only to the church but to God. In this particular case in the early church, God took discipline directly into His own hands and demonstrated before all how sin is to be dealt with by removing the offenders from the church and from the earth! The purity of the church not only was protected by making God’s people more fearful of sin but also by helping to keep out of the fellowship those who were not true believers (v. 13).

Even in apostolic times, such direct and severe divine intervention in chastening apparently was rare, although Paul reports that some of the Corinthian believers became weak, ill, and even died as the result of gross immorality and disregard for the sacredness of the Lord’s Table (1 Cor. 11:30; cf. 1 John 5:16-17). God has not changed His attitude about sin or about purity. He is every bit as much concerned for the holiness of His people today as He was when the church was born. Sin has to be dealt with or it will destroy both those who practice it and those who tolerate it. God may still act in supernatural ways to purge the church, but He has primarily given that responsibility to the church itself. The church must be “self-policing” with regard to sin. The horrendous scandals that have tarnished the church recently reflect the abysmal failure of believers to confront sinning leaders and followers. The world often has had to expose what the church tried to cover up.

The Lord has always disciplined His people, and He has always instructed His people to discipline themselves. Old Testament believers were told not to “reject the discipline of the Lord, or loathe His reproof, for whom the Lord loves He reproves, even as a father, the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:11-12). Just as human fathers discipline their children out of love in order to make them better, so God does with His children. Human parents know that instruction to their children without enforcement is futile. Children not only must be told what is right but must be led to do what is right, by correction, rebuke, and often punishment. “He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently” (Prov. 13:24). Contrary to much popular thinking, even among Christians, it is not love but indifference that causes parents to allow their children’s misbehavior to go uncorrected. “Discipline your son while there is hope,” the writer of Proverbs wisely advises (19:18; cf. 22:15; 23:13).

After quoting the proverb (3:11-12) mentioned above, the writer of Hebrews says,

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of Spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Heb. 12:7-11)

It is an illusion to think that the church can take a strong verbal stand against sin without enforcing that stand among its own members and at the same time expect them to conform to God’s standards of holiness. Physical children do not respond to that approach in discipline, and neither do spiritual children. Because of the remaining sinfulness of the flesh, Christians still have a strong bent toward disobedience. Without enforcement of its standards, holiness will never flourish. That is why discipline is so essential to the spiritual well-being of a church.

The foolish, pretentious, and sometimes immoral actions of a few highly visible figures in the evangelical church today have caused evangelicalism to become a byword among many liberal Christians and in the world at large. Such lack of integrity is often rightly depicted as the epitome of religious superficiality, self-indulgence, and hypocrisy.

It is with the church’s responsibility to keep itself pure that Jesus deals in Matthew 18:15-20. He is still teaching about the childlikeness of believers, illustrated by the young child He had called to Himself and set before the Twelve (v.2). He had declared that a person enters and is considered great in the kingdom by becoming like a little child (vv. 3-4) and that, once in the kingdom, believers are to be protected like little children (vv. 5-9) and cared for like little children (vv. 10-14). He now declares that they must also be disciplined like little children.

In verses 15-20 Jesus presents five elements involved in godly discipline of sinning believers: the person who receives discipline, the person who initiates it, the purpose of it, the process and place for it, and the authority for it.

THE PERSON WHO RECEIVES DISCIPLINE

And if your brother sins, (18:15a)

The person to be disciplined is a brother who sins. In this context, as in many other places in Scripture, brother refers to any fellow believer, whether male or female. The candidate for confrontational discipline is any Christian who sins. The implication is that it is a sin that continues in one’s life and is unconfessed.

The general, unqualified reference to your brother is absolutely inclusive, allowing for no exceptions. Every child of God, whether young or old, man or woman, educated or uneducated, wealthy or poor, leader or follower, is to be confronted when he or she sins.

Sins is from hamartan, which has the literal meaning of “missing the mark” and is the basic New Testament verb for sin, missing the mark of God’s standards. Just as the category of the sinner is inclusive, so is the category of sin. Any sin, by any believer, requires discipline from the church. All sin is an offense against God’s holiness and corrupts the holiness of His people. It mars a believer’s fellowship with God and his fellowship with other believers.

As reflected in the King James Version and several other translations, some of the most reliable ancient manuscripts of Matthew’s gospel add the phrase “against you” after sins, indicating an offense committed directly against a fellow Christian. Peter’s question in verse 21 regarding forgiveness of those who sin against us gives support to the inclusion of “against you,” as does the Lord’s teaching about rebuking and forgiving in Luke 17:3-4.

In either case, however, the basic responsibility is the same, because a person can be sinned against both directly and indirectly. If he is maligned, abused, deceived, cheated, or the like, the sin against him is direct and obvious. In such a case, the offending brother or sister is not only to be rebuked by the one who is offended but also forgiven if he repents. The one who is sinned against should approach the offender in a spirit of humility and meekness, and his motive for rebuke should be the restoration of the brother or sister to holiness. It should never come from a spirit of vindictiveness. He should manifest a spirit of love and forgiveness even while he is rebuking, and he should be deeply concerned about the spiritual damage being suffered by the brother who sinned and have a genuine desire for him to be restored to holiness and its consequent blessing.

Rebuke of a sinning brother should be undertaken as soon as the offense is known, in order to turn the sinning believer from his sin as soon as possible and also to help head off resentment and bitterness by the one offended. Those destructive emotions are also sins, and they tend to fester as long as a break in relationship remains unresolved. The longer sin continues, the more difficult it becomes to be forsaken by the sinner and to be forgiven by the one sinned against. God calls His children always to “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven” them (Eph. 4:32).

But in a broader sense, believers are sinned against by any sin committed by any other believer. Whenever a believer commits a sin, all other believers are indirectly sinned against. “A little leaven” does affect all (see 1 Cor. 5:6). That Jesus here included indirect offenses seems clear from the fact that He makes no mention of forgiveness. The focus is solely on repentance and restoration.

Some years ago a man in our church told me he had invited an attorney friend of his to attend the church. But when he told the friend the church’s name, the friend said, “I’d never go there. That’s where the most crooked attorney in Los Angeles attends.” That man’s sin indirectly affected everyone in our congregation and tarnished the whole cause of Christ.

Every sin by a believer stains the entire fellowship of believers. Whether it is slander, stealing, gossip, sexual immorality, dishonesty, doctrinal error, lack of submission, cruelty, blasphemy, profanity, drunkenness, or anything else, every sin not dealt with by the offending child of God must be dealt with by the church.

THE PERSON WHO INITIATES DISCIPLINE

go and reprove him in private; (18:15b)

The understood subjects of go and reprove are indicated by the plural pronouns “you” and “your” (vv. 15-16). Jesus was giving general instruction to His followers, and therefore this category is also inclusive. The person responsible for initiating discipline is any believer who is aware of another believer’s sin. Discipline is not simply the responsibility of church officials but of every member.

Reprove is from elench, which has the root meaning of bringing to light or exposing. The Greek verb is in the aorist imperative, suggesting that the brother is to be shown his sin in such a way that he cannot escape recognizing it for what it is.

The first confrontation of a sinning brother must be in private, one on one. If the erring person confesses and repents, no further discipline is necessary and no one else need ever be brought into the matter. The more a person’s sin is known and discussed by others, no matter how well-meaning they may be, the easier it is for him to become resentful and the harder it may be for repentance and restoration. When he is corrected in private, and in a spirit of humility and love, his change of heart is much more likely. And if he does repent, a unique and marvelous bond of intimacy is established between the two believers, indicated by the phrase you have gained your brother.

When Peter was intimidated by the Judaizers in Antioch and began to separate himself from Gentile believers, Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11). Peter admitted his sin and repented, and years later he wrote of his “beloved brother Paul” (2 Pet. 3:15). Their deepened friendship no doubt was due in no small measure to Paul’s caring enough to rebuke his fellow apostle and turn him back to the purity of the gospel of grace.

A Christian who is not deeply concerned about bringing a fellow Christian back from his sin needs spiritual help himself. Smug indifference, not to mention self-righteous contempt, has no part in the life of a spiritual Christian, nor do sentimentality or cowardice that hide behind false humility. The spiritual Christian neither condemns nor justifies a sinning brother. His concern is for the holiness and blessing of the offending brother, the purity and integrity of the church, and the honor and glory of God.

At least three things are necessary for effectively undertaking the private first step of confronting a fellow Christian about sin. First is the obvious requirement of willingness to go and reprove the sinning brother in private. If he does not listen, we must then be willing to take one or two more believers with us and confront him again (v. 16). And if he still refuses to listen, we must be willing to report his impenitence to the whole church (v. 17).

God does not mock His children by demanding of them anything which, by His power, He does not enable them to do. No Christian, therefore, has an excuse for not initiating church discipline when it is necessary, because God will provide the necessary wisdom, insight, and boldness when a sincere desire is present.

Not every believer is given the gift of preaching or teaching or evangelism or helps. But every believer is given the command to go and reprove a brother or sister who is sinning. That is part of God’s work, and it is a ministry as surely as any other. In our day it is a much-needed and much-neglected ministry. The absence of it may well be the most severe and debilitating problem in the church of this century. All believers are called in this way to be ministers of holiness, helping guard the purity and integrity of Christ’s Body. When they minister discipline in a spirit of love, gentleness, and humility, they can be effective weapons in God’s hands for purifying the church and restoring His fallen children.

The Lord commanded Israel, “You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the Lord. You shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart.” But, the Lord went on to say, “you may surely reprove your neighbor” (Lev. 19:16-17). Unwillingness to reprove a sinning believer is a form of hatred of him, not loving him enough to warn him of his spiritual danger. Not to reprove a sinning brother can do him more harm than slandering him. Terrible as it is, slander affects primarily the other person’s reputation and his feelings. Failing to help him confront and confess his sin, however, contributes to his spiritual downfall. The person who claims to be too loving to rebuke his brother or sister in Christ is simply deceived. He is not too loving but too uncaring. The loving Christian, like the loving heavenly Father and loving earthly fathers, desires the proper discipline of those he loves (see Heb. 12:5-11).

In the eyes of much of the world and even in the eyes of many immature believers, such action is considered unloving. But discipline given in the right way expresses the deepest kind of love, love that refuses to do nothing to rescue a brother from unrepentant sin and its consequences. Love that winks at sin or that is more concerned for superficial calm in the church than for its spiritual purity is not God’s kind of love. Love that tolerates sin is not love at all but worldly and selfish sentimentality.

To preach love apart from God’s holiness is to teach something other than God’s love. No awakening or revival of the church has ever occurred apart from strong preaching of God’s holiness and the corresponding call for believers to forsake sin and return to the Lord’s standards of purity and righteousness. No church that tolerates known sin in its membership will have spiritual growth or effective evangelism. In spite of that truth, however, such tolerance is standard in the church today—at all levels.

History has seen excesses in preaching what is commonly known as hell fire and damnation, but that is not the church’s danger today. Beginning in the nineteenth century, there has been a drift away from forceful preaching of the holiness of God and His demand for holiness in men. Even in many evangelical churches and organizations emphasis has shifted to the almost exclusive preaching of God’s love, with little, if any, reference to His wrath and judgment.

Commenting on the contemporary church, Richard Lovelace writes:

The whole church was . . . avoiding the biblical portrait of the sovereign and holy God who was angry with the wicked every day and whose anger remains upon those who will not receive His Son. Walling off this image into an unvisited corner of its consciousness, the church substituted a new god who was the projection of grandmotherly kindness mixed with the gentleness and winsomeness of a Jesus who hardly needed to die for our sins. Many American congregations were, in effect, paying their ministers to protect them from the real God. . . . It is partially responsible not only for the general spiritual collapse of the church in this century but also for a great deal of [evangelistic] weakness; for in a world in which the sovereign and holy God regularly employs plagues, famines, wars, disease, and death as instruments to punish sin and bring mankind to repentance, the idolatrous image of God as pure benevolence cannot really be believed, let alone feared and worshiped in the manner prescribed by both the Old Testament and New Testament. (Dynamics of Spiritual Life [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1979], pp. 83-84)

Belief in a God who is all love and no wrath, all grace and no justice, all forgiveness and no condemnation is idolatry (worship of a false god invented by men), and it inevitably leads to universalism—which, of course, is what many liberal churches have been preaching for generations. Salvation becomes meaningless, because sin that God overlooks does not need to be forgiven. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross becomes a travesty, because He gave His life for no redemptive purpose. Not only that, but it becomes apologetically impossible to explain the common question about why a loving God allows pain, suffering, disease, and tragedy. Removing God’s holy hatred of sin emasculates the gospel and hinders rather than helps evangelism.

Profoundly aware of the danger of mistaking emotional stimulation for spiritual awakening, in his Treatise on Religious Affections Jonathan Edwards observed:

Fallen human nature is fertile ground for a fleshly religiosity which is impiously “spiritual” but ultimately rooted in self-love. High emotional experiences, effusive religious talk, and even praising God and experiencing love for God and man can be self-centered and self-motivated. In contrast to this, experiences of renewal which are genuinely from the Holy Spirit are God-centered in character and based on worship, an appreciation of God’s worth and grandeur divorced from self-interest. Such genuine experiences create humility in the convert rather than pride and issue in a new creation and a new spirit of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness, and mercy. They leave the believer hungering and thirsting for righteousness instead of satiated with self-congratulation.

True evangelism and revival have nothing to do with building self-esteem, self-acceptance, and feeling good about oneself. They have nothing to do with gaining health, wealth, and fleshly happiness. They have much to do with acknowledging one’s sinfulness, unworthiness, weakness, and helplessness and much to do with humble gratitude for God’s infinite patience, mercy, and grace.

Richard Lovelace again observes that “most congregations of professing Christians today are saturated with a kind of dead goodness and ethical respectability, which has its motivational roots in the flesh rather than in the Holy Spirit. Surface righteousness does not spring from faith and the spiritual renewing action but from religious pride and conditioned conformity to tradition as a form of godliness which denies it power.” He describes such religion as “counterfeit piety.”

Over and over in the gospels Jesus proclaimed that He came to earth solely to do the will of His heavenly Father (see, e.g., John 5:19, 30; 6:38; 7:16). And the will of the Father can be reduced to the declaration quoted at the beginning of this chapter: “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16; cf. Lev. 11:44). Above all, God wants His people to be holy.

Speaking to believers, James wrote, “Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you” (James 4:8-10). It is God’s will that His people be holy, and the purpose of discipline is to promote holiness by purging and purifying the church. The Word, the Spirit, and God’s people join in working for the purity of the church. Believers act in Christ’s behalf when, with humility and according to scriptural guidelines, they discipline fellow members who persist in sin.

A second requirement for effective discipline is zeal. When Jesus came to Jerusalem for the Passover and found merchants in the Temple exploiting the people and desecrating God’s house by selling animals and changing money, “He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the moneychangers, and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, ‘Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a house of merchandise’” (John 2:13-16). Jesus’ holy zeal for the purity of His Father’s house would not allow Him to stand by and watch it being desecrated. Willingness to confront sin in the church is manifested in righteous zeal to uphold God’s name and holiness and in a corresponding unwillingness for them to be stained and dishonored.

A third requirement for effective discipline is personal purity. A believer who is not concerned about his own purity will have no obedient willingness or righteous zeal to help protect the purity of the church. Nor can he be effectively used by the Lord in helping others deal with their sin if he is unwilling to deal with his own. His concern about other Christians’ sins might be strong, but it will be judgmental and censorious, not humble and loving. To such believers the Lord says, “Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matt. 7:3-5).

When a church sincerely and humbly moves out to enforce holiness and purity within its membership, by virtue of that very movement it is in the process of self-purification, because believers who genuinely desire the purity of the church will first confront sin in their own lives and determine for the Lord to bring purity there. Christians can become ministers of holiness only as they themselves are holy

THE PURPOSE OF DISCIPLINE

if he listens to you, you have won your brother. (18:15c)

The purpose of discipline is the spiritual restoration of fallen members and the consequent strengthening of the church and glorifying of the Lord. When a sinning brother is rebuked and he turns from his sin and is forgiven, he is won back to fellowship with the Body and with its head, Jesus Christ.

The goal of discipline is not to throw people out of the church or to feed the self-righteous pride of those who administer the discipline. It is to bring the sinning brother back. “He who is wise wins souls,” the writer of Proverbs declared (11:30). Paul admonishes Christians, “If a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Gal. 6:1). “My brethren, if any among you strays from the truth, and one turns him back,” James says, “let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death, and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:19-20). In some cases, as in that of the James passage, you may be confronting a professing Christian who is not even saved. Enacting discipline has often, in my experience, led to the admission by the sinner that he had never been saved and then to his desire for true conversion.

Won is from kerdain, which was originally a term of commerce referring to financial gain or profit. Here it refers to the gaining back of something of value that is lost, namely, an erring brother. As Jesus had just taught in the parable of the lost sheep, God highly values every one of His children, and when one of them goes astray He will not rest until the lost child is found and returned to the fold. It is not His will “that one of these little ones perish” (v. 14). Nor should it be the will of Christians that even one of their brothers or sisters in the faith perishes. When they are lost to the fellowship, a valuable treasure is lost, and, like our heavenly Father, we should not be content until they are restored. Every person who has become one with the great Shepherd should himself reflect that Shepherd’s heart.

When a church member falls into sin, the fellowship as a whole and each of the other members individually suffers loss, because no individual believer in the Body is reproducible. Each believer is a unique individual and is uniquely gifted. People go to great lengths to regain material wealth that is lost. To how much greater lengths should Christians go to regain a spiritual treasure more valuable than any earthly possession?

Churches as well as individual Christians are tempted to say of a sinning brother, in effect if not in words, “We have no business getting involved. It’s his life, his decision, and his responsibility. He’s accountable to God, and what he is and does is only between him and the Lord.” That attitude may sound loving and spiritual on the surface, but it does not square with Scripture. It reflects ungodly indifference, not loving concern for the brother who has fallen.

THE PROCESS AND THE PLACE FOR DISCIPLINE

But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. And 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-gatherer. (18:16-17)

As already noted, the process of discipline begins with an individual believer going privately to a sinning brother and rebuking him (v. 15). The three subsequent steps are mentioned in verses 16-17.

If a sinning brother does not listen to the one who has rebuked him privately, the next step in the discipline process is to take one or two more believers along, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. This basic procedure for confirming facts in a dispute or in an allegation of wrongdoing had been set forth by Moses (Deut. 19:15) and was therefore familiar to every Jew To guard against a person’s being slanderously or spitefully accused of a sin, crime, or other offense he did not commit, the Mosaic law required that at least two or three witnesses must corroborate any charge brought against someone. That was an important protection against the false accusation of an innocent person.

In the context of Jesus’ instruction here, however, if the testimony of the two or three witnesses becomes necessary, it is not only to confirm that the sin was committed but, in addition, to confirm that the sinning believer was properly rebuked and that he has or has not repented. It should be hoped that the one or two who are brought along to confront the sinner will not have to become public witnesses against him before the rest of the church but that their added rebuke will be sufficient to induce a change of heart in the offending brother that the initial rebuke did not cause.

The guards against abuse and unjust accusation in discipline are to protect church leaders as well as other believers. “Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses,” Paul charged Timothy. But “those who continue in sin, rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also may be fearful of sinning” (1 Tim. 5:19-20).

If the second stage of the discipline process fails to bring repentance, if he does not listen to the two or three, then they are to tell it to the church. The first rebuke is to be completely private and the second semi-private, but the third is to be public, before the church. The brother or sister is to be brought before the whole congregation to be further rebuked and encouraged to repent. The whole church is responsible to call that person back to holiness.

It has been the custom in our church, upon enacting this third step, to clearly indicate to the congregation that they are to pursue the person aggressively and plead with him to repent before the fourth step becomes necessary. That crucial and potent procedure often draws the sinner to repentance and obedience.

This great passage also indicates that the place for discipline is within the church. (church) is here used in its basic, nontechnical meaning of a congregation or assembly. In secular Greek literature it was used of town meetings, local gatherings of citizens called together by their rulers to hear official announcements or witness government ceremonies. In the context of Jesus’ teaching at this point in His ministry, church refers to any group of redeemed people who assemble in His name (v. 20).

Some commentators maintain that Jesus was referring to the Jewish synagogue, which also has the root meaning of assembly or congregation. But Jesus always used another term (sunagg) when referring to a synagogue, which, in any case, would never have gathered in His name. And although He frequently taught in synagogues and called the worshipers there to believe in Him, His purpose was not to revise or reform the synagogue but to establish His own ekklsia, the church.

No organizational structure is mentioned or intimated here. The reference is not to a committee, board, or other group of leaders, but to the entire body. There is no higher court beyond the local congregation in which discipline is to be administered. No bishop, cardinal, synod, conference, or council has the responsibility for discipline. To delegate discipline to an individual or group beyond the local church is to go beyond the Word of God. Whether a local church is composed of a handful of believers or of several thousand members, whether it is a highly organized urban congregation or an informal group of five or six believers on a remote mission field, that is where, and only where, discipline is to be administered.

Even less justified is taking church discipline or grievances to a secular court for resolution. Paul strongly indicted Corinthian Christians who did that. “Does any one of you,” he wrote, “when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more, matters of this life?” (1 Cor. 6:1-3).

The fourth and final step in church discipline is ostracism. If a sinning believer refuses to listen even to the church, he is to be ostracized from the fellowship. Let him be to you, Jesus said, as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer. Both were seen as despised outcasts.

A non-Jew who worshiped the true God and who became identified with Judaism was commonly called a God-fearer (cf. Acts 10:1, 22), whereas the term Gentile was primarily used of non-Jews who held to their traditional paganism. Such a Gentile had no part in the covenant, worship, or social life of Jews. Because he was a traitor to his own people, however, a tax-gatherer was in many ways more despised than Gentiles. He was not an outcast by birth but by choice.

Jesus was not appealing to Jewish prejudice. He came to save all men, and among His most ardent and faithful followers were former tax-gatherers such as Matthew and Zaccheus and Gentiles such as the centurion who asked Him to heal his paralyzed servant. Jesus’ point was that a believer who persists in impenitence is to be put out of the church and treated as an unbelieving, unrepentant outsider.

When a man in the Corinthian church refused to forsake an incestuous relationship with his stepmother, Paul commanded that he be removed from their midst (1 Cor. 5:1-2). Tolerance of his sin had reached the point of arrogance. Although none of the other members apparently engaged in that particular immorality, their perverted sense of liberty led them to defend the man’s right to continue in the sin. “In the name of our Lord Jesus,” Paul went on to say, “when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?” (vv. 4-6). That man’s evil influence, described by Paul as leaven, had corrupted the moral sensitivity of the entire church.

Persistently unrepentant believers are to be totally ostracized from the fellowship of the church. They are no longer to know the blessedness of the church’s company and encouragement. Because they willingly reject the standards of the gospel, they make shipwreck of their faith. When Hymenaeus and Alexander would not forsake their profane use of the Lord’s name, Paul “delivered [them] over to Satan, so that they may be taught not to blaspheme” (1 Tim. 1:20). Such people are to be given the choice of repenting and staying with God’s people or of holding on to their sin and being given over to the world and the devil.

The final step in discipline is not optional. Let him be translates a present imperative and is therefore a command. Paul gave a similar command to the Thessalonians: “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep aloof from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6). A few verses later he says, “If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that man and do not associate with him, so that he may be put to shame” (v. 14).

When a church has done everything it can, but without success, to bring a sinning member back to purity of life, that brother is to be left to his sin and his shame. If he is truly a Christian, God will not cast Him away, but He may have to allow him to sink still deeper before he becomes desperate enough to turn from his evil.

As Paul explained to the Corinthian church, separation from a sinning believer is to be more radical than separation from sinful unbelievers.

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. (1 Cor. 5:9-13)

But putting an unrepentant member out the fellowship is not the end of the discipline process. It should not end until the brother has either repented or died. As far as the welfare of the church is concerned, the purpose of putting the brother out is to protect the purity of the fellowship and to give a testimony of righteousness to the watching world. But as far as the welfare of the brother himself is concerned, the purpose of the ostracism is not to punish but to awaken, and it must therefore be done in humble love and never in a spirit of self-righteous superiority. “Do not regard him as an enemy,” Paul says, “but admonish him as a brother” (2 Thess. 3:15).

Not to have fellowship or even social contact with the unrepentant brother does not exclude all contact. When there is opportunity to admonish him and try to call him back, the opportunity should be taken. In fact, such opportunities should be sought. But the contact should be for the purpose of admonishment and no other.

The fourth step in the discipline process is therefore to put out and to call back—to keep the sinning brother out of fellowship until he repents, but also to keep calling him back in the hope that he will.

Administering discipline is never the prerogative of a single person in a church, no matter what his position or qualifications. One of the early churches had such a self-appointed disciplinarian named Diotrephes, whom John described as one “who loves to be first.” “For this reason, if I come,” the apostle said, “I will call attention to his deeds which he does, unjustly accusing us with wicked words; and not satisfied with this, neither does he himself receive the brethren, and he forbids those who desire to do so, and puts them out of the church” (3 John 9-10). Autocratic self-righteousness has no part in Christ’s plan for His church and can never be successful in purifying it. Only the local body of believers has the right to put a member out of its fellowship, and that only after the first three steps of discipline have failed.

A man was apparently put out of the church at Corinth after having caused great sorrow to Paul and the others there because of his sin. But “sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority,” Paul said, “so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, lest somehow such a one be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him” (2 Cor. 2:5-8). When a believer repents, he is to be welcomed back into the fellowship and not held at arm’s length as a second-class member. He is to be forgiven and embraced, just as the Savior forgave and embraced the prodigal Peter when he returned from his disobedience (John 21:15-22).

THE AUTHORITY FOR DISCIPLINE

Truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst. (18:18-20)

To emphasize the absolute trustworthiness of what He was about to say, Jesus declared, “Truly I say to you.” That phrase, which the Lord often used, should always be noted with special care, because it introduces a teaching of unusual importance.

The work of discipline should be undertaken with the greatest care. Done in the wrong way or in the wrong spirit it can do great damage by fostering self-righteousness and legalism, just as discipline not done at all causes great damage by allowing sin’s influence to spread like leaven.

Jesus’ promises in verses 18 and 19 have suffered serious misinterpretation throughout the history of the church, the most extreme being the Roman Catholic doctrine that the church has the divine authority to forgive sin. Many charismatics use these promises—along with others, such as those of Matthew 7:7 and 21:22—to claim from God every imaginable blessing and privilege just for the asking.

But in light of the context of what Jesus had just said, in the light of common rabbinical expressions of that day, and in light of the grammatical construction of the text, it is clear that He was not teaching that God’s power can be bent to men’s will. He was not saying that men can force heaven to do things. Quite to the contrary, His promise was that when His people bend their wills to His, He will endorse and empower their act of obedience. (See comments on Matthew 16:19, in chapter 4 of this volume.)

Jesus was here continuing His instruction about church discipline. He was not speaking about petitioning God for special blessings or privileges, and even less was He teaching that the church or any of its leaders has power to absolve the sins of its members. He was declaring that the church has a divine mandate to discipline its members when they refuse to repent.

The rabbis sometimes spoke of a principle or action as being bound in heaven or loosed in heaven to indicate, respectively, that it was forbidden or permitted in light of God’s revealed Word. A Jew of that day would have understood that Jesus did not mean that men could bend heaven’s will to their own but that God (here called heaven, a common Jewish substitute for God’s covenant name, Yahweh, or Jehovah) had an expressed principle with which the church must conform.

The grammatical construction in the passage also clarifies its meaning. As in Matthew 16:19, shall be bound and shall be loosed translate future perfect passives and are more accurately rendered “will have been bound” and “will have been loosed.” The idea is not that God is compelled to conform to the church’s decisions but that, when the church follows Christ’s pattern for discipline, it conforms its decisions to what God has already done and thereby receives heaven’s approval and authority.

Perfect passives are also used in John 20:23 in regard to forgiving or retaining sins. Believers have authority to declare that sins are either forgiven or not forgiven when that declaration is based on the teaching of God’s Word. If a person has received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the church can tell him with perfect confidence that his sins are loosed, that is, forgiven, because he has met God’s condition for forgiveness, namely, trust in His Son. If, on the other hand, a person refuses to receive Christ as Savior and acknowledge Him as Lord, the church can tell him with equal confidence that his sins are bound, that is, not forgiven, because he has not met God’s condition for forgiveness.

Some years ago a man told me he believed he was going to heaven because he was following the religious system prescribed by a popular cult. Because the bizarre beliefs of that group were utterly contrary to the gospel, I told him that he was lost, was still in his sins, and could not possibly be destined for heaven. On the basis of his own confession matched against God’s Word, the man could not have been saved. To tell him that he was still bound in his sins was not to judge his heart supernaturally nor sovereignly condemn him but simply to affirm what God’s own Word clearly says about him and about every person who hopes to come to God by any other path than trust in His Son.

Obviously, this is a serious ministry in the church and one that may be approached with great reluctance. “Who are we to do such work?” we ask. “What authority do we have for such strong dealings with fellow believers? We’re sinful, too.” But when the church administers discipline according to the pattern of Matthew 18:15-17, it can have perfect confidence that it acts in the authority and power of heaven, as promised in verses 18-20.

The Lord gives no command without giving the necessary power and authority to obey it. In these three climaxing verses in Jesus’ instruction about church discipline we learn that, when the Lord’s people sincerely seek to purify His church in His way, they have the energy, approval, and authority both of the Father and of the Son.

Jesus first assures His people that the Father acts with them when they work to purify the church: Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth (referring back to the two witnesses of v. 16) about anything that they may ask (in seeking the purity of the church) it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. When the church acts in God’s behalf and in accordance with His Word in matters dealing with sin, He acts in their behalf by confirming and empowering their faithful decisions and actions.

Agree is from sumphne, which literally means to sound together and is the term from which we get symphony. If even two of Jesus’ followers are in agreement with each other that a sinning believer has either repented or refused to repent, they can be sure they are also in agreement with the Father who is in heaven.

As already mentioned, to interpret this verse as promising believers a blank check for anything they might agree to ask God for not only does not fit the context of church discipline but does violence to the rest of Scripture. Such an interpretation is tantamount to magic, in which God is automatically bound to grant the most foolish or sinful request, simply because two of His children conspire to ask Him for it. The idea flies in the face of God’s sovereignty and completely undercuts the countless scriptural commands for believers’ obedient submission to His will.

Jesus also assures His people that He Himself acts with them when they work to purify the church: For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst. Not only does the Father confirm discipline when it is administered according to His Word, but the Son adds His own divine confirmation.

This verse is also frequently misinterpreted, though not with such serious error as in the misinterpretations of the two previous verses. To use this statement to claim the Lord’s presence at a small worship service or prayer meeting does not fit the context of church discipline and is superfluous. Christ is always present with His people, even with a lone believer totally separated from fellow Christians by prison walls or by hundreds of miles.

The context demands that the two or three are witnesses in the process of discipline. To ask or to do anything in God’s name is not to utter His name but to ask and to work according to His divine will and character. For the witnesses to have gathered in His name is therefore for them to have faithfully performed their work of verifying the repentance or impenitence of a sinning brother or sister on the Lord’s behalf. When the church gathers in the Lord’s name and for His cause and glory, it must be engaged in self-purifying ministry under His power and authority, and with His heavenly confirmation and partnership.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian of rather liberal persuasion who was caught in the terrors of Nazi Germany, wrote a book entitled Life Together. In it he gives some profound insights into the need for restoring a sinning brother to the fellowship of the church.

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession, the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16).

Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin. It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God and the cross of Jesus Christ. . . . The sin concealed separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham; the sin confessed has helped him define true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ. ([New York: Harper & Row, 1954], 112-13)