This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, March 13, 1994.
About this sermon
Paul’s ‘rod’ in 1 Corinthians 4:21 keeps love and discipline in separate categories. Real church discipline carries eschatological weight, since it anticipates a final judgment already at work. The same logic extends to how parents discipline their children.
Sermon transcript
This morning we are looking at 1 Corinthians 4, beginning at verse 14. We will be reading through the fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians. I give you attention to the word of God. I do not write these things to shame you. but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. I exert you therefore be imitators of me. For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church.
Now, some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the words of those who are arrogant, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in words, but in power. What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness?
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his wife’s father. And you have become arrogant. and have not mourned instead, in order that the one who has done this deed might be removed from your midst. For I on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled and I with you in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a wand to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
For boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote to 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 violer, 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.
Let’s pray together. Our Father, may we be a people concerned for the full effect of your word. Therefore, O God, we are asking that we would not be concerned merely for ourselves, but for one another. That your word would be beneficial to the entirety of this assembly. May this be our prayer.
And Lord, may your word also be most powerful in those congregations of your people where you are loved and where your word is revered. And bless them regardless of their denomination in that common stand in and under your word. May we sense by your spirit our unity with them for the sake of the gospel. May the ministry of this church and the ministry of those churches where you are loved and honored be most beneficial today.
We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. Now I believe, at least to my satisfaction, and I hope to yours as well, that we have established the fact that discipline within the Church is an absolute requisite for the true Church of Jesus Christ. It is my hope that we are beyond argument and debate on that point.
Now, you may recall what we laid out last week before you, and that’s from three texts. We cited an Old Testament text, 2 Chronicles 19, a Gospel text, Matthew 18, and we also cited our present text from 1 Corinthians. And we attempted, endeavored, to make plain in our citations of these texts that these texts do, in fact, support the fact that the presence of discipline within the assembly of God’s people is intimately tied to God’s presence within the assembly.
In other words, the loss of discipline to the Church is most serious, indeed, because of what it spells with respect to the presence of the Lord. Lose the discipline of the Church, and you lose the Lord in His Church. I hope then that we are all agreed that church discipline is essential to the identity and the well-being of the people of God.
It is not strange then that when you became a member, a communicant member of this particular congregation, You were asked this question, do you promise to submit in the Lord to the government of this church, and if you are found delinquent in doctrine or life, to heed its discipline? Now, that question is posed in the interests of this church continuing to be a true Church of Jesus Christ. And thus it is imperative that the authority within this Church take that question with utter seriousness in administering that question to you when you become a part of the congregation. But this question is also posed in the interest of your being a genuine Christian.
A hallmark of your profession being your willingness to submit to properly constituted biblical authority in the Church. and a testimony to the fact that you will indeed submit yourself to that authority throughout your stay in this congregation. To use the illustration of the home, no good home lacks Likewise, no good household of God lacks good discipline. Now, God has not left us without witness with regard to the matter of Church discipline and the general provisions that we ought to keep in mind as discipline would be administered in the Church. The Corinthian correspondence, both 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, provides us much information along these lines. This morning, we want to consider the seriousness with which the Apostle takes this matter of discipline within.
And I direct your attention to the last verse of the fourth chapter in 1 Corinthians, where Paul asks, Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness?” First of all, I want you to note that the seriousness with which Paul takes this whole matter is communicated by his use of the word rod. Now, of course, the rod, as Paul speaks of it here, is meant in a figurative sense.
Paul is not threatening to come to the Corinthian church to administer corporal punishment to the believers in that city. He wasn’t on his way to Corinth for the purpose of administering a slagging, for instance. Nor is he on his way to Corinth to officiate an execution, be it by hanging or by burning some heritage at the stake. Even though, as I’m sure you know full well, The Church eventually came to the position that it was proper for the Church and the Church’s authority to administer these kinds of punishments. That it was within the power of the Church to administer corporal punishment.
But no, Paul’s use of the word rob here in 1 Corinthians 4.21 is figurative, not literal. According to the testimony, then, that we have received from the New Testament, we are convinced that the literal rob of corporal punishment belongs to the world’s social institutions, not to the Church.
That the literal rod belongs to the world’s social institutions. The family, for instance, administering minimally a form of corporal punishment in the discipline of children. We think of spanking. The state administering a form of corporal punishment that leads even to the most extreme form in capital punishment.
But the literal rod that belongs to the world’s social institutions, it does not belong to the Church. And this is why, you see, the Church has spoken as it has in more recent days with respect to the authority that it bears. We are told in good forms of government and in proper books of discipline that the Church’s authority is only ministerial and declarative, and wholly moral and spiritual. That is the realm of concern and interest, and the authority of the Church is effectual with regard to that realm. But even though this is the case, that does not mean that we can diminish the seriousness with which we take the Church’s discipline. Simply because the Church doesn’t have the power to administer corporal punishment does not mean that we can take the Church’s authority or its responsibility to administer discipline any less seriously. And that is why, you see, Paul uses the word robbed deliberately in order to communicate the seriousness with which he takes the whole matter of discipline. But Paul also communicates the seriousness of this whole matter in another way.
And he does so by stating his position very oddly. I don’t know whether you picked it up as you read that twenty-first verse of the fourth chapter or not. But you see what he does as the sentence or the question is completed. He sets the rod that he mentions there over against his love and his spirit of gentleness. He sets the rod over against his love and his spirit of gentleness.
Now, the reason why I say that this construction or this statement is odd is because We would think, would we not, that Paul always would approach the Corinthians with love and with a proper gentleness. Would we not? In fact, the very first verse that we read in our scripture reading this morning, verse 14 of that fourth chapter, finds Paul speaking of the Corinthians as his beloved children. And later, Paul will speak about the supremacy and the perpetual appropriateness of love in the glorious thirteenth chapter of this very letter, the love chapter.
But the situation at Corinth is so serious, and this whole matter of Church discipline is so serious, that Paul sets his own approach to Corinth in mutually exclusive terms, as if the rod excludes his love and his gentleness. It’s one or the other. That’s the way he framed the statement. It’s either the rod or it’s love and gentleness. Now, we might think that all Paul means by this is to contrast attitudes of severity and gentleness. with which he might address or approach this Corinthian congregation.
This would mean that we could read 1 Corinthians 4.21 along the lines of another text that speaks about discipline. I have in mind Hebrews 12, and specifically the 6th verse of that 12th chapter of Hebrews.
Hebrews 12 at that point, quoting Proverbs 3.12, for whom the Lord loves and disciplines and scourges every child, every son that he receives unto himself. But you note the call here in his formulation at the end of 1 Corinthians 4 has added specifically the word love.
It’s not the rod in contrast to gentleness, simply. It is the rod in contrast to love and gentleness. It is as if, then, as Paul formulates the statement, he sees these things as mutually exclusive. The rod is over here, love and gentleness is over here.
Now, you might well ask the question if there is any situation that you can think of in which discipline and love are set in such antithesis. Can you imagine any situation in which the rod and love are set in such antithetical categories? Is there such a situation? Is there such a situation where love acts? because the rod has intruded, where love ceases because discipline has commenced. Have you identified the situation? It’s the end of the world, friends. It’s the judgment.
You see, what’s informing Paul’s vocabulary here is his vision of the end of the world and how that comes to bear upon the matter of discipline within the Church. To point it out a little further, you see, as Paul speaks of his own coming to the Corinthians, you notice the prior verses? As Paul speaks about his own coming to the Corinthians, he is reading his own coming to the Corinthians against the background of the coming of Christ of the last days. That is his point of reference. That’s what he has in the background of his mind, speaking as he does. Paul speaks, therefore, as if his own coming to Corinth parallels the coming of Christ at the end of the world.
So we know that God is love, do we not? We are told that. But we also know that when God comes in Christ at the end of the world, that love which he is in himself, which he bears toward his faithful church, will stand in sharpest contrast to his wrath which he bears toward those who are disobedient.
And it is apparent, is it not, that those upon whom that wrath is visited are not aware of God’s love in their faith at all? They are aware of the administration of His rod and His anger. Those, then, upon whom the judgment comes, perceive nothing of God’s love in their faith. his dealings with them. They are the objects of his wrath and indignation.
Now, may I be bold to suggest that there is something of this very path that is always operative, let me underscore that, is always operative where good and true discipline is epitomized. This may not be something you want to think about at all, but let me force you to it on the authority of the Word of God. I am bold to suggest to you that this very pattern that you see working itself out here in Paul, in his language, is always present where good and true discipline is administered. For example, good and godly parental discipline always communicates the seriousness with which it must be taken in light of the end in view. You play out your role in discipline and you administer that discipline because you see the judgment coming. And you don’t want your children to come to a bad end. and we’re not talking here about them missing out on a good income someday. There is a sense then, a sense of and even a threat of finality, finality stamped upon good, proper discipline. And yes, although I am hesitant to say it, there is a sense of, a threat of, the mutually exclusive character of indignation and love that appears in the administration of any good and proper discipline.
Have you wondered, you parents, why it is impossible for you to convey to your child simultaneously your severe displeasure at their attitudes and actions, and your love for them as persons? They certainly can’t see it. It should not be a mystery to any of you children, then, as to why you have such a difficulty perceiving your parents’ love for you when they are administering discipline to you. There is something about the rod. There is something about discipline inherently. that in the nature of the case, case sets before you an antithesis between that love and love and gentleness. Now it’s not that you don’t love your children, your parents.
Of course you do. You who are godly, You who are sensitive to the word of God, of course you do. And I would dare say that children in whom the spirit of God is at work to subdue their nature’s depravity know that too. They know, yes, ultimately, that you love them. same pertains with regard to the Corinthians in their church, to which Paul writes. They know also that Paul loves them.
However, the discipline that he has in view of which he speaks bears the imprint of the seriousness of that wrath that ultimately comes if one’s attitudes, if one’s behavior, is not corrected. The discipline administered by Paul, in view by him, bears the imprint of the seriousness of that wrath. that ultimately comes when love and gentleness do, in fact, give way to absolute justice and divine retribution.
You keep thinking like this, you keep living like this, you are going to be damned. You turn from your ways, your mind changing, your behavior corrected. According to the Word of God, you live. Let me add at this point, if you a parent administer discipline that rejects or is devoid of that appropriate stamp of seriousness, that rejects or is devoid of the imprint that communicates to your child the fact that love can end. It’s possible that your love can end for them.
That it can cease, as it indeed does in God’s case. then no child of yours will take your discipline seriously. That is the price you will pay. They simply will not take you seriously. If you are not convinced of the seriousness of this discipline, they will not take you seriously.
Do we need evidence? Are you reading the papers? Are you watching the news? We are reaping the whirlwinds. We are witnessing the consequences of a number of generations of children, by and large raised in the new philosophy. in which discipline was a matter about which parents were made to feel guilty. It is a contradiction of my love. We are witnessing the consequences of a number of generations of children raised in a new in which behavior and attitude modification were to be achieved through exercises in stroking a child’s depraved ego and building his or her vanity. We are witnessing the consequences of a number of generations of children raised in a new that has actually decided that it is more appropriate to bribe your children into a proper attitude and a right behavior. I have witnessed it, have you not also? A parent actually giving their child money to behave, paying them to be good, It is a most tragic case of which I have been recently made aware. A dear Christian couple whom I love dearly.
I first witnessed them trying to cope with 80 or 90 young people at a summer camp where they were leaders. They were miserable failures. The young people never took them seriously because they never viewed the discipline that they were there to administer seriously. And therefore, breaking the rules became a game, a wonderful entertainment in which both these adults and these children engaged throughout the course of the week. Today this couple’s oldest daughter, only a few years married, is going through a divorce and their oldest son is in jail. And who knows what their ends will be with respect to the faith. This couple is increasingly the rule, not the exception.
So that we not be self-righteous, we all may be visited with similar tragedies simply because we have not been alert to the contaminations of our age, and we have failed to recognize the importance and seriousness of discipline, as in the family, so in the Church. If in the family, how much more so in the church?
Now in conclusion, lest you think I’m off the mark in this message, I want to remind you of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was also a son under discipline for our sakes. At the moment in which the rod of his father came upon him as he bore our sins upon the cross, he uttered those horrifying words that have within them the impress of the absolute character of divine judgment and irrevocable wrath. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
But so glorious is this son, that not only is he capable of bearing God’s wrath for us, he presently lives, that we who have been disobedient children all might truly take in him, enter into that discipline that was perfectly effectual in him, and lose not to the exclusion from God’s love. of God’s spirit of judgment, but into his eternal embrace.
Our dear God, we know that your love is set as a banner even over the discipline of your children, even over our discipline. Yet, Lord, we also realize that the discipline that you administer to us comes to us with all seriousness. We are praying, our Father, that we would see the imprint of the last day in the discipline that is administered to us so that we might fear, so that we might flee the wrath to come. But Father, we are also asking of you that you would bless us in our various stations in life helping us especially in our families as we parents seek to do what is right before you. Help us, our God, that we would realize that, yes, there is this stamp of your judgment even in the discipline that we are called upon to bring to bear within our families. We pray, our Father, above all, that we would look to Jesus Christ, our Savior, and understand more perfectly the matters of your love and your wrath as we view him.
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