About this sermon
The third mark of a true church is loving biblical discipline. Right after the parable of the lost sheep, Jesus lays out the steps for dealing with a brother who sins, from private rebuke to telling it to the church. Discipline aims to reclaim the straying believer, to keep the church pure, and to uphold the honor of Christ and the witness of his people.
Sermon transcript
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. This evening I complete a three-part mini-series on the marks of a true visible church. This evening we consider the mark of church discipline. And my passage, our passage for this evening is taken from the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 18, verses 15 through 20. I want to begin reading at verse 10 to kind of show the fuller context here. So let us hear God’s Holy Word, Matthew 18, beginning at verse 10, reading through verse 20, but our focus will be on verses 15 through 20. Dear friends, hear the inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word of God.
See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, Does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, You have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 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 collector.
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. You may be seated. Again, the title of my sermon this evening is The Marks of a True Church Discipline. The Mark of Discipline. And there is a sermon outline that has been made available. Church Discipline. Those sound like scary words, don’t they?
In the minds of many, those words would doubtless conjure up images of a medieval inquisition, or perhaps images of poor souls being thrust out of the church and unkindly shunned for even the smallest of offenses. Dear ones, it is admittedly a sad truth that throughout the church’s history, a great deal of harm has been done in the name of Christ by those who have misinterpreted, misapplied, or otherwise abused the Bible’s teachings on church discipline. And because of the church’s past and sometimes even present abuses of the practice of church discipline, there are some who would like to throw out the idea of church discipline altogether, one would suspect.
However, friends, the fact that the Bible’s teachings on church discipline have sometimes been abused and harshly applied is not a valid reason for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ to cease to practice a biblically-based, Christ-honoring, lovingly-applied form of church discipline. In fact, biblical church discipline is actually a very loving thing to do when it is done right. And it is a vital practice that the reformed theologians have historically identified as one of the biblical marks or characteristics of a true visible church of our Lord Jesus Christ. Along, of course, with the marks of the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s word and the right administration of the holy sacraments.
Now, why is this the case? Why is it the case that Reformed theologians have historically recognized not just the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments, but also church discipline as a mark, as marks of a true visible church? Well, I want you to think about that for just a minute. Let me give you a hypothetical situation.
Let us say that you have a local church where the Word of God is faithfully preached, at least in its basic fundamental integrity, and where the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution, at least, again, in their basic fundamental integrity. and at least formally and outwardly.
But let’s also say that this same church tolerates open heresy and scandalous sin amongst the membership and even amongst the leadership of the church. Friends, what would inevitably happen in such a church? Well, I guarantee you, beloved, sooner or later, the integrity of that church’s ministry of word and sacraments will be compromised, corrupted, and eventually destroyed if it should continue to permit open heresy and scandalous sin to go on unchecked. Eventually that heresy, eventually that immorality, whatever it might be, will spread like leaven throughout the whole congregation and the leadership, and that will impact sooner or later every aspect of the church’s life, including its preaching and its practices, including its ministry of word and sacraments. Of course, this is a sad tale that has been repeated numerous times in the history of the church.
This is the sad history of many of the so-called mainline or old-line denominations. Denominations that at one time had been faithful, gospel-preaching, Bible-believing denominations. But they began to compromise. They began to get squishy and allow for liberalism, theological liberalism, to have a place within the church. Over time, the leaven of that doctrinal corruption has permeated the whole lump, and it’s very, to the point where the faithful preaching of the gospel is, in some of these mainline churches, is almost non-existent today.
Well, friends, our Lord Jesus Christ addresses the issue of discipline in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening. In Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 through 20, our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who is the king and head of the church, reveals the process of discipline by which an offending brother is to be reclaimed for the kingdom and by which reconciliation in the church is to be obtained.
Now, it is important to recognize that Jesus here speaks of what we might call a private personal offense, an offense where one professing believer offends or sins against another professing believer. Jesus, in this particular passage, is not talking about public or well-known sins. If a sin is public, it can be dealt with. in a public manner. But this is a private personal sin that could become public if the offender is not brought to repentance.
Dear ones, it’s important for us to understand that what our Lord Jesus is teaching here, this is not merely good or pious advice that Jesus is giving to us, his church. No, dear ones, these are divine commands. These are imperatives. The process that Jesus outlines here is binding upon the Christian conscience. We are conscience bound to follow this procedure where the circumstances require it. To neglect or shun this disciplinary process is ultimately to shun and neglect the demands of Christ’s lordship over our lives as professing believers and over the visible church.
So with that in mind, as we turn our attention to our passage for this evening, notice that Matthew, in his gospel account here, records this passage right after having recorded the parable of the lost sheep. And one of the things that we learn in the parable of the lost sheep is the father heart of God that goes after lost and wandering sheep. Our heavenly father, is concerned to seek out his lost sheep. Christ, the good shepherd, is the one who seeks and saves that which is lost. And praise God, when we were lost sheep, Christ came after us. He went searching for us and he brought us on his shoulders back into the fold.
So it is in this context here where Matthew is recording our Lord’s teaching on on God’s concern to draw back and bring back into the fellowship of his church, his kingdom, those who are straying, that Jesus gives this instruction on how to deal with offenses in the church. And it’s interesting that Jesus gives such clear instruction here. It’s almost as if Jesus is expecting that there will be conflicts, personal conflicts, amongst the community of his disciples, amongst his church. Jesus knew that there would be because Jesus knows the heart of man, including the heart of believing man.
We are still sinners, though we are renewed and regenerated, saved by grace through faith, we are still works in progress as well. And sooner or later, in one way or another, there are offenses that arise in the church. And so we need to deal with those offenses and those sins that we inevitably will commit in one form or to one degree or another against each other. And so it is in that context that Jesus gives these instructions.
And I want you to notice here, first of all, beloved, the three purposes of what we might call remedial church discipline. This is my first point on the outline if you’re following along. The three purposes of remedial church discipline. Pastor Willauer, what are you talking about, remedial church discipline? When we talk about church discipline, there’s a number of aspects of church discipline that we can talk about. We can talk about, for example, preventative discipline. There’s basically, overall, two kinds of church discipline.
There is what we might call preventative church discipline. And believe it or not, this form of church discipline is actually taking place at this very moment. Did you realize that? Did you realize that you and I all are subject at this very moment? to preventative church discipline? Well, how is that so?
Through the preaching of God’s word. Beloved God, the Holy Spirit, through his word, disciples us. He disciplines us. The Holy Spirit, through the word, convicts us of sin, and through the gospel, awakens and implants faith and hope within our souls. God forms us and disciplines us through the primary means of his word.
Church discipline in its preventative aspect is exercised through such things as the faithful preaching and teaching of God’s word, through the fencing of the Lord’s table, which will also take place this evening, through membership instruction and catechesis of our covenant youth, instructing our covenant youth in the truths of God’s word and so forth. And by the way, this preventative aspect of discipline is one of the reasons why biblical church discipline is inevitably and inseparably connected to and intertwined with the faithful ministry of the word and the sacraments.
But then there is what we might call remedial church discipline. This is the aspect of discipline that our Lord is speaking of in our passage for tonight. He doesn’t use that terminology, but he’s talking about, again, what could be described as remedial church discipline. This form of church discipline is called remedial because it seeks to remedy something that has gone wrong in the life of a professing believer or in the life of the church. For the rest of my sermon, we’ll focus on this type of church discipline based on our passage for this evening. Now, I want you to notice, again, in our passage, as I said, that there are basically three purposes that our Lord Jesus outlines to this disciplinary process in the midst of explaining this process to us, his disciples.
What is the purpose of church discipline? Is the purpose of church discipline to shun and reject and cast out and crush those who don’t fall into line? No, the first aspect, the first purpose, if you will, of remedial church discipline that Jesus speaks of is the reclaiming of a straying believer.
Jesus says this in verse 15, if your brother If your brother sins against you, he’s talking about a brother in Christ, a fellow disciple. And I think by implication, this includes the sisters as well. If your brother or, by implication, sister sins against you, what do you do? You get on the phone and start the gossip chain? Is that what you’re to do? If your brother sins against you, no. It says, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, what is the result if he listens to you? If your brother who has sinned against you, notice there is sin here. We’re not just talking about something in your brother or sister that annoys you or gets under your skin, but you know, which you can overlook.
I mean, after all, the Bible says love covers a multitude of sins. When it comes to, I mean, all sin is serious in the eyes of God, I understand that. But we recognize, and our confessional standards recognize, that there are degrees of sin. Some sins in our brothers and sisters can be overlooked, and we can be patient and recognize that, hey, it’s not my job, it’s not your job to be the Holy Spirit to our brother or sister in Christ who might be going astray in terms of minor sin. relatively speaking, minor sin. But when it comes to certain sins that are scandalous in nature and which cause real offense in the body of Christ, these sins need to be addressed.
And they need to be addressed by you, if you are the offendee. You and I have a responsibility to seek reconciliation. So the first purpose that is mentioned by our Lord is the reclaiming of the erring brother. It says, if he listens to you, you have gained your brother. You have restored the relationship. You are still on a brotherly trajectory with each other. At this particular point in the process, the sin is still a private matter, not involving the corporate church. So again, it is to be dealt with privately.
But what happens if the brother doesn’t listen to you? And I think the assumption here is to go to this brother repeatedly, not just once, but to try to plead with your brother over time. Verse 16 and 17 address that, and this gets into the second purpose of remedial discipline, which is to preserve the purity of the church. In verse 16 it says, but if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses, If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to whom? 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 collector.
As the Apostle Paul states in addressing a serious sin issue that existed, that was present in the first century church at Corinth, In 1 Corinthians 5, 6, Paul writes, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? The Corinthian church at that time was tolerating a serious sin of sexual immorality in its midst. And Paul confronts them and he says, don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? You can’t just let this go. This has to be addressed, in other words. And that is the implication here in this passage as this private personal sin starts to become more public.
In verse 17, we are told that a professing believer who persists in ignoring the biblical counsel and calls of the church to repent of something that is shown to be a sin is to be treated as a Gentile and a tax collector. Aha, we’re to shun this person, right? Remember the first century Jewish context in which Jesus is speaking here. When Jesus talks about treating someone as a Gentile and a tax collector, how were Gentiles and tax collectors viewed by the covenant people of God in the first century? They were viewed as those outside of the covenant community, as those who needed to be evangelized, proselytized, so that they could be brought into to the true and living God and into the covenant community.
So this is saying that such a one who refuses to repent after repeated calls to repentance is to be treated as someone who is not a Christian. He’s not behaving as a Christian. Christians will repent. The Holy Spirit dwells in us and the Holy Spirit won’t let you be comfortable with continuing in clear, unrepentant sin.
And so this is someone who is to be treated as an unbeliever who needs to be loved and evangelized. That’s the implication, not shunned and never talking to that person again. So the first purpose of remedial discipline, reclaim the straying believer. The second purpose, though, is to preserve the purity of the church. The church is not to tolerate in its midst those who are clearly impenitent in their sin over time. And the third purpose is to guard the honor of Christ.
This, I believe, is implied in verses 18 through 20, where Jesus talks about the keys of the kingdom. Verse 18, truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. That’s the language of exercising the keys of the kingdom. Verse 19, again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am, there am I among them. By the way, I know that verses 19 and 20 often get quoted with respect to prayer. And I think that’s a secondary application. Certainly, as we gather in corporate worship, Christ is present with us in a special way.
But in this particular context, Jesus is talking about the act of church discipline, where two or more are gathered in my name to exercise the keys of the kingdom. Now, verse 20 reminds us that Christ promises to be judicially present when two or more are gathered in his name for the purpose of exercising church discipline. This means, for example, that when ministers and elders gather as a court of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ for the purpose of exercising loving, biblical church discipline, which involves exercising the so-called keys of the kingdom, which is what verses 18 and 19 are talking about, Christ promises to back up in heaven those judicial decisions that they make, provided, of course, that those decisions are faithful to the teachings of God’s word. The exercise of the keys of the kingdom that is done illegitimately or unbiblically is not recognized by the Lord Jesus, of course.
And so when the Pope excommunicated Martin Luther in that papal bull, that excommunication did not take in heaven, I believe, because Luther was justified in his criticism of the church at that time. But dear ones, all of this clearly implies that Christ is zealous for the honor of his name in the church that bears his holy name. So the reason that church discipline is a mark of a true visible church is because church discipline is given as a gift of Christ to his church for the purpose of reclaiming, offending, or straying sheep and bringing them back to the fold, bringing them back to a relationship of integrity, a right relationship with Christ and with his church, and also guarding the honor and the purity of the church as well as the good name and reputation of Christ.
Beloved, Christ our Savior disciplined us as sinners. He did so by his law and gospel, and he continues to do so. In the law, Christ disciplines us by confronting us with our sin, showing us that we are incapable of saving ourselves, and driving us outside of ourselves to Christ. And in the gospel, Christ forgives us as he brings us to faith in himself as Lord and Savior, as the one who was crucified for the forgiveness of our sins and raised again from the dead for our justification. And so Christ has disciplined us sinners by confronting our sins and by his grace bringing us to repentance. And he calls us as a church to be a community of such discipline, loving discipline. Has Christ graciously brought you to repentance through his law and gospel? Jesus Christ is the only way for sinners to be saved. Come to him today by his grace and you will be saved.
And so we’ve considered the purposes of biblical church discipline, but next let us consider the process of remedial church discipline that Christ outlines for his church. This is the second point in your outline, the process of remedial church discipline that Christ outlines for his church.
And we’ll focus especially We’ll go back and focus especially on verses 15 through 17. Now the first two steps are informal in nature and therefore they are to be followed by any member of the church who believes that they have been sinned against, seriously sinned against, by a brother or sister in Christ. The last two steps should involve the organized church and the officers of the church so that these can be called the formal steps of church discipline.
But let’s look at step one. And step one, again, going back to verse 15, is to go personally to your brother who has offended you and seek reconciliation. Again, look at verse 15. If your brother sins against you, Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
That’s awkward, isn’t it? Who of us likes to do that? Raise your hand if you like confrontation. Okay, well even if you do like it, I imagine you’re not gonna raise your hand. But the fact is that that’s actually, that’s a dangerous thing if you enjoy confrontation. Most people don’t enjoy confrontation.
Most of us would much rather kind of sweep problems under the rug and not address them, because having to confront an erring or sinning brother or sister in love, prayerfully, gently, but firmly and directly, that’s awkward. But Jesus calls us to put on our courage and to do the right thing. That doesn’t mean that you go in all guns blazing if you feel that you need to confront a brother or sister, if you feel you’ve been sinned against in such a way or to such a degree that you can’t just overlook it. If you feel it’s a serious sin that needs to be confronted, then obviously you need to pray about it, you need to maybe think through what you would say to that brother or sister, and maybe arrange to meet them in a non-threatening setting, like getting together for coffee or lunch or something. But nevertheless, we need to take up our responsibility and be willing, when the circumstances call for it, to confront that brother or sister who has sinned against us.
Now, I want you to keep your finger here in Matthew 18, and I want you to turn back to Matthew 5. Matthew chapter 5, in the midst of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, in verses 23 and 24, where Jesus kind of gives us the other side of this picture of offense here. In verse, in Matthew 5, 23 and 24, Jesus speaks of a situation where you’ve done the offending, where you’re the offender.
You’ve offended against someone. Maybe you don’t realize it at first, but then you suddenly realize it. What should you do in those circumstances? Well, it says this. Again, in verse 23 and 24. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.
Now, I believe there’s a little bit of hyperbole here. If I’m in the midst of preaching and I suddenly remember, oh, that’s right, I offended brother or sister so-and-so, does that mean I need to say, okay, folks, hold on a second, I need to go make a phone call, be reconciled.
I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying, but the point he’s making is that reconciliation and being at peace with one another in the body of Christ is so important. In a sense, it’s even more important than worship. Here, Jesus, in this Matthew 5 passage, tells us that we are responsible to seek reconciliation with those whom we have offended. And that makes sense to most of us, right?
You wrong someone, and you come to realize that you’ve wronged someone. We realize, oh yeah, I need to go make that right. But what about if someone sins against you? The natural sinful reaction when we’ve been sinned against, when you’ve been sinned against, is to say, oh, they need to come to me first. They did the wrong.
While our passage for today gives us instructions on how to handle a situation where you believe someone else in the church has offended you, nonetheless, you too have a responsibility. The point here is that whether you are the offender or the offended, the offendee, if you will, Both the offender and the offendee have a responsibility in the body of Christ to seek to be at peace with one another. I’m reminded of what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, I believe it’s Romans chapter 12, where he says, insofar as it depends upon you, be at peace with all men. But anyways, getting back to our passage, if this step doesn’t work, if you’ve gone to your brother or sister and tried to reason with them, and perhaps over time tried to reason with them and they don’t repent, what do you do next? Well, step two is to take one or two witnesses along with you to act as impartial mediators.
Look at verse 16. It says this. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” Now, this is legal language. This harkens back to what God had commanded Israel back in Deuteronomy chapter 19, verse 15. If you look at Deuteronomy 19, verse 15, we read these words.
A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. That was a requirement in the civil theocracy under the Old Covenant, and that is a requirement in the church courts as well. Every fact should be established by two or three witnesses.
And by the way, this does not mean that if the brother or sister who has offended you If they’re not listening to you, that you find a couple of your friends who will sympathize with you and your side and go and gang up on that person. That’s not what this means. This is talking about two or three people who can be impartial witnesses. Because maybe you’re taking offense when you don’t need to take offense. That’s why it’s important to have impartiality here.
But if this step doesn’t work, what’s the third step? The third step is to tell it to the church. Again, verse 17, 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 collector. Again, friends, notice we are to tell the church, not the world.
We are to keep this as in-house as possible. Now, since in our Presbyterian system, in our system of biblical Presbyterianism, the ministers and elders are representatives of the church, I believe the implication here is that this matter ought to be brought to the session first. And it would seem that the reason why the church, through its session, and the session can inform the rest of the congregation when it gets to this level, it would seem that the reasons why the church should be informed at this point is so that the congregation can be well-informed enough not to gossip about the individual, but to pray for the sinning brother that he or she might be restored, and also to help in counseling him or her to repentance, and can avoid spiritual fellowship with the individual in question.
But what happens if we get to that point in the process and still the sinning brother or sister is recalcitrant, is hardened, isn’t listening to counsel or heeds to repentance? Well, step four is to put him outside the church. In other words, treat him as someone who is not behaving or acting like a Christian. Treat him or her as someone who needs to be evangelized, not shunned, but evangelized, earnestly evangelized. You see, up to this point in the process, the offending person is to be viewed and treated as an erring brother or sister in Christ.
But if this individual persists in refusing to heed repeated calls to repentance given over a lengthy period of time, then that person is to be excommunicated from the church and treated as an unbeliever, not out of a spirit of vengeance or anger, but out of love to help wake that person up to their spiritual danger.
Beloved, it is truly a grievous and heartbreaking thing when a faithful church has to excommunicate one of its own members. And thankfully, I haven’t had to deal with this much over the course of my ministry. But many, many years ago, in the first church I served, there was a situation in our church where a woman in the congregation, a member of the church, was cheating on her husband. And it was discovered. and she refused to repent and we had to excommunicate her. It was a very grievous thing. The good news, by the way, I mean, the bad news was that the marriage broke up and, you know, this was a very sad thing in the life of our church. But eventually, this woman who had been excommunicated was brought to repentance and was restored to Christ and his church.
So we rejoice in that. And that’s the goal of excommunication. It was a grievous process, but it bore spiritual fruit in the end. But friends, excommunication should always be an absolute last resort. Again, the goal of a biblical excommunication is to impress upon the offender just what serious spiritual danger he or she is in, and to bring that offender to repentance and restoration to Christ and Christ’s church.
And how are we to treat those prodigal sons and daughters of the covenant who come back How did the father in the parable of the prodigal son treat the prodigal son when he returned from the pig slop? You know, you remember the story. The son has this speech that he’s prepared. I’m not worthy to be your son. Let me be one of your servants. How did the father in that case treat the prodigal son who returned home? Did he say, oh, it’s you. Okay, I guess I’ll let you stay with my servants, but don’t ever come into the house again. No. He went, he saw his son returning in the distance and he ran out to him and embraced him and threw a party.
And that’s how the church should respond to excommunicated individuals who repent and return to the church. We, brothers and sisters, are to be welcoming to any prodigal son or daughter of the covenant who returns to Christ and his church. Beloved, Christ has reconciled us sinners to himself by his grace, and he calls us as a church to be a community of reconciliation. By God’s grace, let us seek to resolve conflict in the church biblically, lovingly, consistently, always aiming for restoration and reconciliation.
We won’t do so perfectly because we are still sinners on the way, but it should be our goal and intention to follow our Lord’s instructions in such passages as this and other passages of God’s word that have relevance to the practice of church discipline. So in closing, my friends, We considered tonight church discipline as a mark of the true church. Why, again, is church discipline a mark of a true visible church of the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, first of all, beloved, faithful church discipline holds church members accountable to the demands of Christ’s Lordship. As those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we are to live under our Savior’s Lordship.
And we need accountability. I need accountability. I am so thankful, brothers and sisters, that I am a biblical Presbyterian, because I know that as a minister of the gospel, I’m accountable to my brothers in Presbytery. And if I start to really wander astray, if I start to preach heresy, or if I fall into scandalous sin, I know that my Presbytery will hold me to account. And I’m thankful for that, because I’m a sinner and I need accountability, and I’m grateful for the accountability provided in the church. And so that’s one of the reasons that it is a mark of the true church, because we all need accountability and Christ’s body is to be an accountable body.
Faithful discipline is also a sign of Christ’s love for his church and of church members’ Christian love for one another as brothers and sisters in the family of God. if I may offer an illustration from my own personal life. And it’s actually, it’s not directly an illustration of church discipline, but it’s an illustration of a brother in Christ confronting me when I needed to be confronted.
There was a time back the summer after my junior year of college, I was renting an apartment with two other friends from college that summer in the college town where I was attending school and working on campus and all of that. And so it was the first time in my life when I had responsibility to chip in to pay the monthly rent for this apartment. But surprise, surprise, as a college student, I found myself struggling financially. And there was one month when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to contribute my part for the rent that month. And I was very embarrassed about that.
Now, one of my apartment mates was a fellow Christian, a gentleman named Bill. And Bill and I were both active in our college Christian fellowship. And I was about to make a very foolish financial decision, a financial decision that would have hurt me personally, as well as would have been a poor testimony to my faith. And my friend Bill found out about this foolish decision, this foolish financial decision that I was about to make. And I remember, I still remember to this day, he came into the apartment and he looked at me, almost eyes glazing, and he said, Jeff, you can’t do that.
What are you thinking? He let me have it, but he didn’t let me have it to denigrate me or to beat me down or make me feel foolish. The thing that really bothered him is that I was too proud to admit to him that I needed help, that I couldn’t meet my obligation that much in a month, and I was too proud to come to him and say, hey, can you help me out a little bit this month? I was too proud to do that. And he was hurt by that. And he took me to task for that to such an extent that it actually brought tears to my eyes. Tears because I realized that I’d hurt my friend.
And I’m so thankful because I realized then this is a true friend. He cares about me. He’s not just concerned to make sure that I pay my fair share of the rent. He cares about me as a brother in Christ. And he saw that I was about to make a stupid decision And he saw that I needed to be brought back to the right path. And he did that. I thank God for Bill and what he did that day. Now that again, that’s not church discipline as such. But that’s the kind of thing that Jesus, I believe, is talking about in this passage. A brother who has sinned against you, and you care about that person. You want to see them walking in the right path.
Faithful discipline is a sign of Christ’s love for his church, and of church members’ Christian love for one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. And faithful, loving discipline also helps the church to maintain the integrity of its gospel witness before a watching world. Brothers and sisters, I don’t have to tell you, if you’ve read the news, if you’re aware of what’s going on in the Christian world in recent decades, many examples can be given of how various churches have given Christ a black eye by tolerating scandalous sin amongst its clergy and amongst its membership. And so the world, we wonder why the world doesn’t take us seriously.
These things ought not to be so beloved. Let us as a church seek to maintain the honor of Christ and the witness of the church by being faithful in the exercise of loving, Christ-centered, biblically-based discipline for the glory of God and for the good of each other’s souls.
Amen. Let us pray. Lord and Father in heaven, We do thank you and praise you, God, that you in Christ discipline us out of love. And we thank you, Heavenly Father, that you’ve called us to be a community of disciples who hold one another accountable out of love for one another, and especially out of love for you, our Lord. And so be with us, oh God, as a church. Help us to be faithful in our preaching, in our practice, and in our discipline. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
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