The Grace of Church Discipline
Demonstrating our love for God's people in the pursuit of their holiness
Just as rock band Bon Jovi in 1986 sang, “You give love a bad name,” so the church in many ways has given discipline a bad name. Whether through poor teaching or practice (or both), church discipline is loathed in many quarters of evangelicalism such that one of God’s great means of grace for his people is neglected. This reality should grieve a pastor’s heart for he knows the neglect of church discipline leaves the church in a most vulnerable state.
Of course, church discipline has not always been out-of-favor in Protestant church history. Take, for example, the clear words of the Belgic Confession of Faith (1561), Article 29:
The true church can be recognized if it has the following marks:
The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel; it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them; it practices church discipline for correcting faults.
In short, it governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it and holding Jesus Christ as the only Head.
When I teach on this in my pastoral ministry class at Southern Seminary it never fails to surprise at least some of my students to know that church discipline in part of our rich confessional history. Indeed, true churches are marked by the faithful practice of “church discipline for correcting faults.” So what went wrong?
UNFAITHFUL SHEPHERDS
There is no denying that poor leadership at the highest levels in some evangelical churches has caused a bad perception of church discipline. When leaders abuse their authority, betray the trust of church members, or fumble the administration of something as important as church discipline, there is a justifiable negative reaction to it. I’ve heard credible stories among my students, for example, of churches moving far too quickly to the excommunication of church members. There wasn’t the necessary patient, loving pursuit of the person found in sin in the hope of securing repentance. Rather, there was a rush to judgment and an all-too-eager desire to see the person removed from membership. The message communicated was not, “We love you in Christ and long for your freedom from this sin” but, “We are disgusted with your sin and ashamed of you, and don’t want you a part of this fellowship any longer.” When this happens the damage to people and a right understanding of the gospel is incalculable.
FROM HOLINESS TO HEALTH
Not only have unfaithful shepherds caused the neglect of church discipline, but our unique cultural moment has contributed as well. The church today is trying to grow up in a world that doesn’t see “sins” that need to be corrected, but “emotions” that need therapy. In our day, there is a “mental health crisis” not a “sin crisis” and this worldly thinking has been infused into the church.
The warnings began in the mid 1990s with Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (1996) followed by David Wells’s Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (1999). Then, in the early 2000s, sociologist Christian Smith began to document the shift among teenagers in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005) and then as they became young adults in Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults (2009). The currents moving toward a therapeutic way of thinking with an emphasis on mental and emotional health have only gained momentum. Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (2024) and Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024) are two important books that help us understand what’s been happening to our nation’s youth in recent decades even if the solutions offered fall short of a much needed biblical-theological remedy.
In our more conservative evangelical churches, the worldly thinking of ‘health’ and ‘well-being’ isn’t always obvious. It may be subtle and come in a way that at first blush seems biblical and, therefore, helpful. Take, for example, the popularity of 9Marks Ministries and its emphasis on “healthy” churches. The first edition of Mark Dever’s Nine Marks of a Healthy Church was published in 2000 followed by a second edition (2004), third edition (2013), and now in its fourth edition (2021). As a professor at the largest conservative Protestant seminary in the world, I can attest to the profound influence of 9Marks among my students in their way of thinking about the church: primarily in terms of health.
But is this the most biblical way to think about the church as the people of God? Does the Bible emphasize health or holiness?
When health is emphasized over holiness we should not be surprised if the faithful practice of church discipline is marginalized or altogether neglected. After all, church discipline is God’s gift of grace to the church for her holiness. Consider why God disciplines his children in Hebrews 12:3–11:
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. [4] In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. [5] And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. [6] For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” [7] It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? [8] If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. [9] Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? [10] For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. [11] For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
We are disciplined not that we may share in God’s health, but “that we may share in his holiness” (v. 10). This is why the author of Hebrews adds this exhortation, “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (12:14; italics added). Not the mere healthy but the holy “will see the Lord.”
This, of course, is a very Pauline way of thinking about the church. Consider the way the apostle understands marriage—specifically the way husbands are to love their wives—as a reflection of God’s design for the church:
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.1
Paul envisions a church presented to Christ not in great health, but in utter holiness—indeed, “in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy.” This makes complete sense as the church is the assembly of the redeemed, those who are chosen “in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Ephesians 1:4). Chosen not for mere health, but for the beauty of holiness.
In all of this the apostolic witness is one. We see it as the Apostle Peter reminds his readers that in Christ they are part of God’s holy congregation: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). James commends true religion as being holy or “unstained from the world” (James 1:27). And John reminds believers that the pursuit of holiness is what children of God do: “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2–3). Indeed, the majestic vision of John for eternity is one of God’s people assembled in holiness, giving glory to God:
Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.2
Health language doesn’t come close to the transcendent picture John gives of the church. John doesn’t envision a merely healthy Bride or healthy city coming down out of heaven. But like Paul in Ephesians 5, John sees the consummation of the church as “having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.” This is breathtaking language as we behold the church presented in the splendor not of health, but of holiness.
Language matters as it conveys meaning and, in this case, the meaning of church discipline is more accurately communicated with an emphasis on the biblical language of holiness—God’s great design for his church.3
This brief essay on church discipline is not offered as a comprehensive explanation on what it is and how to most faithfully practice it in the local church. The more narrow goal has been to help shift the language around church discipline and why it’s vital that we emphasize it in our biblical ecclesiology: church discipline is for the glory of God as displayed in his people increasingly walking in the freedom and beauty of holiness. With this ultimate end in view pastors can help bring the grace of church discipline from the margins of church life to its necessary center.
Ephesians 5:25–27
Revelation 21:9–11
To be clear and charitable, Nine Marks of a Healthy Church includes church discipline as one of its marks. The point I'm making here is that “health” language isn’t as biblical and, therefore, helpful as “holiness” language in accomplishing the very goal 9Marks Ministries is aiming for, namely, the more faithful practice of church discipline in local churches. Perhaps a fifth edition is needed: Nine Marks of a Holy Church.