The Process of Discipline
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 9 March 2014
Let us continue our study of Matthew 18:15-17, “Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ 17 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.”
As I shared with you last week, this is a passage that deals with discipline among God's people. Now the word discipline is not a negative word. It is a positive word, it is a word about training. So when we talk about discipline in the church, we are talking about bringing people into line with God's standard. We are children and all children need to be disciplined and basically they're disciplined two ways. By what we call positive enforcement and by negative enforcement.
Now positive enforcement simply says if you do this there will be a reward. And the Scriptures have told us that if we spare the rod, we hate the child. And so there is also that kind of re-enforcement that says if you don't do this, here are the consequences. Now we find the same thing is true in God's family. There is positive affirmation in the Bible where God says if you do, I'll bless you. And then there's that negative re-enforcement that comes along if you rebel there will be chastening.
The neglect of dealing with sin not only allows the person sinning to drift away further and further, but it sets a standard that allows others to walk in the same path of sin feeling no consequence will be forthcoming. But where we act against sin we not only pull the person sinning back, but we re-establish the right kind of model of virtue. In the Old Testament when God set out to punish a few, the others are afraid they too will be punished. And so there has then to be discipline.
Now there are several elements of discipline that we have covered last week of this text. First is the place of discipline. And notice verse 17, it is in the ekklesia, the church. It does not have a specific meaning here, not the Baptist church or the Presbyterian church or any other denomination, but any assembly of God's redeemed people. Wherever God's redeemed people come together there we have to be dealing with sin.
Secondly, the purpose of discipline is to gain back your brother or sister. The intention of discipline is not to put people out, but to keep people holy. When a person goes into sin and disobedience to God, they are lost to the fellowship. And it is that we wish to gain them back and the word there is a commercial word. It has to do with losing a treasure and wanting to recover it, and being sad about the loss of something valueable.
Thirdly, we noted last week the person in discipline. Now it's clear who the person is, it's you and me. It's an individual thing. There is no spiritual police, there is no particular search and seizure committee. We should all be involved in going out to seek one another to restore one another to gain back the sinning brother who's drifted away from the community of God's people.
But there are some prerequisites. First you have to be willing to go. Jesus is saying you go and you tell him. And that indicates that you need a responding will to do that. Secondly, there must be a zeal for God. And we need that kind of response so that when God is dishonored, we feel the pain. And the third thing is personal holiness. You can't go, as Jesus said in Matthew 7, to take a splinter out of somebody else's eye if you yourself have a two by four in your own.
We all need to become people of holiness. Well, that takes me to a new point tonight, the provocation in discipline. How do you know when to do this? How do you know when to approach someone? Notice again in verse 15, “if your brother sins against you.” So now the question is, what constitutes a sin that needs discipline? What's the answer? All of them, that's why the text is general.
You know, there are minor sins and major sins. But sin is sin and it is the antithesis of the utter holiness of God. And any sin puts a stain on the fellowship, it spoils the communion. And so any sin ought to be corrected. If any member of the Christian fellowship sins in violating God's standard, the process immediately goes into action. That is God's desire.
And it should be immediate. The issue is holiness, any sin. Now look further at this text. You'll notice it says "If your brother sins against you." The comparative passage in Luke 17:3 says, “Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”
So if a person does not sin against you, you are not responsible. But there are two ways you can be sinned against, direct and indirect. The direct way that you might be sinned against would be if somebody punched you in the nose because they were mad at you, or if somebody stole from you, or somebody deceived you or somebody abused you or someone slandered you or someone raped you, etc, etc.
And the text says if such a person sins against you, go and tell him. Why? In order to gain your brother. It isn't that you go and retaliate. That's not it. When you get sinned against, deceived against, slandered, abused, whatever the sin is, and this is a brother in the Christian church family, you go and tell him the sin and get him to confess and repent that you may gain him back as a brother or gain them back as a sister in Jesus Christ.
But our tendency is if somebody wounds us or sins against us or commits an act of disobedience to God which affects us directly, we put them on our grudge list. And we let bitterness cultivate in our hearts and resentment and anger. And Jesus said, if you get sinned against, go and gain your brother back with an attitude of forgiveness. That is what it says in Luke's passage. Go to him, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him.
But what if someone sins against us indirectly? Now listen carefully, any sin in the assembly of God's people is against any of God's people, because it stains all of us. Paul said it twice in 1 Corinthians 5 and in Galatians 5, "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." You can't isolate sin, it influences everybody. That's why the Israelites had to take unleavened bread out of Egypt so nothing old could influence them.
Now that brings us to point five, the process in discipline. How do you go about it? Four steps, are clearly outlined. Step one, verse 15, "Go and tell him his sin between you and him alone." Show it to him so there is no escaping it. Take the time and the effort that is needed. It's difficult with the people you know, because they know you and when you go and start talking about their sin, they may have something to say to you about your sin.
There will be a marvelous union of two souls knit together, if you go in the right attitude. Here's the right attitude in Galatians 6:1, “Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted.” Go in humility realizing that it could be you that could have been tempted. And then it says you go bearing his burden and fulfilling the law of Christ. And what is the law of Christ? It's the royal law of love.
So if you know about a sin towards you, you go one on one. It doesn't ever need to get beyond that. If you go to that person without saying anything to anybody else and you go by yourself to confront that sin, in love and humility, and if that person repents, you will have a bond of intimacy that nothing would be able to break. That is how secrecy in the body of Christ is protected.
Galatians 2 is an illustration of this. Peter sinned in separating himself from the assembly of God's people to stick with some legalizers when he was Antioch. In Galatians 2:11 Paul says, "I withstood him face to face, because he was to blame." Did Peter respond? Yes, he responded so much that in 2 Peter 3:15 he calls Paul "our beloved brother Paul." How did they get such a love bond? Probably because Paul was willing to confront him with his sin, he loved him enough so that there was born a bond of intimacy.
But what if he refuses to hear? Then you go to step two in verse 16, "But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ The Jewish people knew very well that God had established that law in Deuteronomy 19:15, "That all things were to be confirmed by the mouth of two or three witnesses." This was for protection, so that no one was passing on slanderous information about anybody which was unconfirmed.
Now this begins to put the pressure on. You take a couple of people with the same objective in mind, you want to gain back your brother. And the idea is to show him his sin so that he or she really understands it so there might be genuine confession and genuine repentance and restoration. This is the second attack in the battle for this drifting brother or sister.
Now why have one or two more people? In order that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. These are not one or two people who saw the sin or who knew about the sin. They are witnesses of the confrontation who can later come back and confirm the words that were spoken there. It is really as much a protection for the one being approached as it is for the one approaching. So God wants confirmation of either the repentance or the impenitence by the mouth of two or three witnesses.
What happens if they don't want to listen to the two or three who come? Verse 17, “And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.” Sometimes the church leaders gives this information through groups, we may say it at a Communion Service. Sometimes it may be said at a class or a fellowship or a Bible study, but the statement is this; our brother is lost to us, tell it to the church for what purpose? Restoration is always the purpose of discipline.
So many times in the life of a church, people just drift away and I have examined my heart over the last years and many people that I know drifted away into sin and I have lost them, because I didn't follow up on step one or having gone step one I said they're not going to repent. And maybe went to step two but then just let it go. I felt that I failed them because I didn't pursue them. And I failed the Lord in that."
Now is there an example in the New Testament of this? Do we see any third stage discipline? Look at 2 Corinthians 2:5, “But if anyone has caused grief (because of sin), he has not grieved me, but all of you to some extent—not to be too severe. 6 This punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man.” In other words, apparently almost the whole church said this guy is in sin. And so the church knew and they went after the guy and he repented.
And so verse 7-8 says, "on the contrary, on the other hand, you rather should forgive him," which assumes that he has repented in response to the whole church coming after him. "And then comfort him, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with over much sorrow. 8 Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him." Now here's the case where the whole church knew and went after him and the guy repented and now that he has responded, don't let him stay out there. You embrace him again and you forgive him and you love him.
So what if they don't respond? Look at verse 17 again. "But if he neglect to hear the church," and that phrase is between each step. It's after step one, it's after step two, and it's after step three. If he doesn't hear the whole church. Then it says, step four, "Let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector." A heathen was somebody outside the covenant and an outcast. It wasn't that they didn't want to include him, as an outcast he was outside the church.
But the tax collector in many ways might even be worse of. He was not only an outcast by sin, he was an outcast by choice. He had defected to the enemy. And so when you talk about a heathen man and a tax collector in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, the people would have understood him to be speaking of those outside the fellowship. But that does not mean you should not care about those people. Matthew who wrote this passage was himself a tax collector. And Jesus has always been wanting to save tax collectors and other sinners.
What happens when the whole process is unproductive? God says put them out of the fellowship. Don't let them have the blessings and the benefits. 1 Corinthians 5 makes this clear. In the Corinthian church was a man who had a sexual relationship with his father's wife, a form of incest that is abominable to God. And instead of being brokenhearted over the incest, Paul says, "you're puffed up and you haven't mourned."
So he says in verse 4-5, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 5 deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Put him out of the fellowship if he lives in continued sin. You turn them out delivering him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be redeemed in the end.
In 1 Timothy 1:20 Paul says, "I took Hymenaeus and Alexander and turned them over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme." They needed to learn, they couldn't do that in the church. When you put someone out, the sanctifying graces of God's assembly are no longer there and then they begin to realize how much it really meant to them. But if a person can have the people of God surround him and be accepted and have his sin too, they may continue and not repent from their sin.
2 Thessalonians 3:6, "We command you brethren in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you withdraw yourselves from every brother that walks disorderly and not after the tradition in which he received of us." The word withdraw means to avoid. You don't let them in your fellowship. You don't let them in your assembly. We're talking about sinning members of the family.
When we put a person out, we don't treat them like a brother, we treat them like an outcast, we put them out. But how do you treat him now? You need to always call them back. 2 Thessalonians 3:15 says, "Count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." And so there's a sense in which you never really let him go, admonish him, come back, get your life right, confess your sin and repent of your sin. God will restore you if you repent.
This process will bring us closer to each other, this will give us courage to get involved in the life of our brother or sister. And this will teach us what real love means, how we can learn to put this in practice in our church. Often times we feel slighted or hurt and how wonderful it is to first of all for that brother or sister to be willing to listen and then to realize what they have done wrong maybe without realizing it but also how wonderful is it then to have a stronger bond once you have forgiven each other, Amen? Let us pray.