Church Discipline

Hi Wilma,

I know I told you I wouldn’t contact you unless you asked. But as I read through your last note, it is very clear that you haven’t understood some things. Please know I’m not asking you anything about your behavior. I’m not counseling you.

I just thought it would be good to write and let try to be more specific about our relationship.

Because you are married to Wilbur, you are a member of his family. When your parents gave you away to him, you took your wedding vows, and you consummated your marriage by giving yourself to him sexually, you became covenantally linked to him. This is why you took his name. You and he are one (Gen. 2:24).

This is why our churches have household membership rather than individual membership.

This is also why you cannot be released from membership in Christ Church, nor can you just walk away and declare yourself to be a non-member. You are a member of a household membership. As long as Wilbur’s household is a member household, you are a member of the church with him.

As far as discipline goes, the church is responsible before God to help people who are members walk with God in a way that brings honor and glory to him. The Bible says that the wife is the glory of her husband (1 Cor. 11:7). It also says that the church is the bride of Christ (Eph. 5:23-33). This means that if the church is not doing what she has been called to do, she is not bringing glory to Christ. Instead, she is making him ugly in the sight of all. And historically speaking a church that does not practice church discipline is not a church at all.

This means that it is the leaders’ responsibility to help the people in their churches to walk with God. If they are having difficulty doing that God requires the church to exercise various things called discipline. The discipline is meant to help the people be free in Christ by helping them overcome the enslavement of the sin they find themselves in.

The final excommunication stage is both a disciplinary action and a cleansing action. It is disciplinary because it still seeks to restore the person, who is struggling with sin, to come to repentance and to joy in Christ. So, the church hands the person over to Satan so that they will be terrified by the ugliness of the specter of Hell and turn back to Christ.

It is cleansing because it tells everyone, including the one being disciplined, that they are not a Christian and they and their ugly sinfulness are being removed from the presence of God.

It is a very sad situation. But there is hope. God always holds his hands out to a stumbling sinner. He sent Jesus to die in their place because he loves them.

We love you too and are praying for you.