Thesis 12- We must practice the grace of church discipline.
The Reformers wisely argued that there are three distinguishing characteristics of the true church. The church is that place where the gospel is rightly preached. It is that place where the sacraments are rightly administered. And it is the place where discipline is rightly practiced. Since the time of the Reformation the evangelical church has been rightly seeking to recognize, define and defend right preaching. Seminary students are trained in how to prepare and deliver faithful, God honoring sermons. Since the Reformation we have debated the meaning, the efficacy, and the object of the sacraments. But in the last fifty years or so, church discipline has fallen utterly by the wayside.
There are any number of explanations for why this is so. If we adopt a business model of the church, and we see parishioners as market-share, then discipline makes precious little sense. No one wants to drive customers away. Worse still, we have found that lawsuits are bad for business. Churches that practice discipline have and will found themselves embroiled in civil suits, often losing them.
The above are rather crass and unspiritual reasons for a failure to practice church discipline, which is why the evangelical church has come up with a more “reasonable” rationalization. Many churches gladly affirm that they do not practice church discipline, claiming to be “grace centered” churches. These churches believe that church discipline is unloving, unkind, and ungracious. They believe it to be counterproductive, and counter-gospel. And they are flat wrong.
Discipline is neither in the home nor in the church some grim, law-infused, mean-spirited exercise designed to harm those who receive it. It is instead an expression of tender care and love. The Bible itself says, “For whom the Lord loves He chastens” (). Church discipline is a powerful act and means of the grace of God, for both the recipient of the discipline, and the rest of the congregation. When we confront a brother with his sin, when we call him to repentance, when we remind him that those who refuse to repent for gross and heinous sin give evidence that they are outside the faith, we are proclaiming the gospel. We are giving the very warning of Jesus, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (). We speak the same warning to the entire congregation as well, reminding all that those who repent find forgiveness and peace with God, while those who refuse will face the judgment.
There is one other excuse evangelical churches use for their failure here. We reason that the excommunicated will simply move down the street to some other church, and thus it does no good. But Jesus said to Peter, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” We are called to live by faith, and not by sight. A rightly disciplined man may join the church down the street. But that doesn’t change his standing before God. When we use this argument we show our own unbelief, rather than the unbelief of those under discipline.
By treating them honorably. It should never surprise us when we discover a beloved pastor, a respected teacher, a living hero of our faith, has feet of clay. We, after all, like they, are descendants of clay footed people. Our elders have blind spots. Their youngers have blind spots. All God’s children have blind spots.
One blind spot common to elders is insisting that because they are elder they can’t be corrected by their youngers. A blind spot common to youngers is taking the occasion of the errors of their elders to really let them have it, to offer not just correction but a heaping helping of disdain. Such should not be. While it is likely always a good thing for a prophet to embrace a posture of weeping over a posture of thundering, how much more so when addressing a father in the faith?
We have, of late, witnessed through the magic of the internet, two profoundly influential evangelical leaders disappointing their legions of fans. One put his foot in his mouth to the delight of his younger, sharp-tongued acolytes. The other, also a decorated veteran of sundry theological battles is being accused of going soft, of adopting a strategy of appeasement to social justice warriors. My own counsel to myself has been to recognize my distance from these occasions, and to stay out of them both. While I know both of these gentlemen and have been blessed by them I recognize that both could be plenty guilty of what their critics are accusing them of. They may not be, but they could be. I’m not in a position to know.
What has astounded me, however, has been the almost gleeful “gotchas” from a veritable peanut gallery of young guns. I’ve watched, over the years, plenty of trolls build their platform on the back of the object of their fevered criticisms. But these youngsters are not bad guys. They are, by and large, sound guys. They’re just not mature guys, and it shows. They would do well to put down the mantle of Ham, and pick up the garment of Shem and Japheth.
Our spiritual fathers are not beyond being corrected. They need it, just like the rest of us. They should, however, be beyond being utterly shamed by those who call upon the name of the Jesus, the one who took on our shame. Our elders should be shown respect, even while being shown what may be the error of their ways. The pride of these spiritual children, however, may well put them beyond being called to correct. If they haven’t the humility to correct their fathers with tears, they probably ought not to be in the business of correcting anyone. If they cannot keep themselves from boldly thundering, they may find themselves caught in the whirlwind of their own pride. Gentleness is a fruit of the Spirit. Not one that will bring forth cheers and grow audiences. Which is how you know it comes from Him.
Craig James, former football star at SMU, was briefly a sportscaster with Fox Sports. After his convictions on the nature of marriage, the sin of sexual perversion became known to the network he was fired. Then he filed a complaint with the Texas Workforce Commission, with help from the Liberty Institute. I share Mr. James’ convictions, without shame or apology. They are nothing more nor less than what the Bible affirms on the issues at hand.
I am in turn frustrated and angry at the legal brutality of the homosexual lobby against people who share those same convictions. Arizona recently backed off from legislation that would have protected the liberty of photographers and bakers to refuse to lend their crafts to same sex pantomimes. As such the interwebs has been abuzz over the question of how Christians ought to respond to such challenges.
Most homosexual activists, I would guess, would take the position that bakers have an obligation to bake for whomever seeks their services. Most would in turn, I suspect, support the notion that Fox News has every right to fire a “homo-phobe” like Mr. James. Most Christians, on the other hand, I believe, would hold the view that the baker should be free to just say no, and that Fox News should be forced to give Mr. James his job back. If I’m correct in my guesses then we can conclude one thing- most people are more interested in protecting their own desires than they are in being consistent.
When we go to the state and ask it to make those who don’t like us play nice with us, do we not implicitly invite others to go the state when they believe we are not playing nice with them? When we ask the state to arbitrate interpersonal relations, we should not be surprised when the state determines it can determine how we must relate to others? Is the problem in these two instances simply that the Gay lobby has more power than the Christian lobby? Is our calling then to rally the Christian troops to wrest power from the Gay lobby? Or ought we perhaps turn the other cheek?
The Fox network has no more obligation to hire a man whose perspective, however biblical it is, offends a part of its audience than a baker who abhors racism has a duty to bake a cake for a Klan rally. To put it another way, the Fox network ought to be legally free to not hire people, even good people, they don’t agree with, and Christian bakers ought to be legally free not to bake for people, good or bad, whose events they find offensive.
I understand hypocrisy, self-contradiction among the heathen. They have no reason to pursue a consistent and coherent view of liberty. They have no reason to respect the liberties of others. Christians, however, are called to do unto others as we would have them do to us. We want to be free to determine with whom we will do business. Why then, even if others do the same to us, do we seek to take away that same liberty from others?
Jesus says we are blessed when we are persecuted for His name’s sake. He doesn’t call us to call in Uncle Sam to persecute those who persecute us. Instead He calls us to turn the other cheek. Perhaps if we selflessly affirm the liberty due to those who wrongly hate us we might one day be free from oppression from those who hate God.
The more honest question would be this one- why was it permissible for Cain (and Seth, and many more for that matter) to marry his sister? It is a more honest answer because we know there could be no other choice. We know also that God established, over time, differing standards of marital consanguinity. As late as Abraham we have a man married to his half sister. Why would God seem to adjust His law?
And that question is one He has not given us an answer for. We can, however, speculate a bit, so long as we remember that is what we are doing. Could it be that the law changed because the danger changed? We need to remember that our most ancient fathers did not live in exactly the same world we live in. These men lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. They may have lived in a time where there was no rain. They lived in a time when their bodies were just a few generations removed from the perfect, unfallen bodies of Adam and Eve. Is it just possible that those realities meant the dangers that come from a too close interbreeding were significantly less than they are in our own day?
It is important that we grasp both the continuity and discontinuity between that world and our own. Adam was a man, Eve and woman. Just like, after the fall, you and me. They were neither spiritual monsters nor spiritual heroes. But there is discontinuity as well. They didn’t have the accumulated damage that comes from sin, whether you tend to side more with nurture or with nature. The world was very much like our own, but it also had not suffered through the cumulative effects of centuries of curses on the ground, nor centuries of the destructive habits of sinful men.
We must grasp as well the distinction and the overlap between natural law and positive law. Natural law describes God’s law in terms of natural goals. Positive law is a specific application. God, for instance, in the Old Testament required his people to put up fences on their roofs. Is that law still with us? Yes and no. In terms of the goal, protecting people from danger (as roofs in those days were used as living spaces), the law still stands. The application of it, or the positive law version of it would be a requirement that we put a fence around an in-ground pool, lest someone could come upon it unaware, fall in it and drown.
The laws of consanguinity (how close a relation one is permitted to marry) are positive law reflecting natural law. The natural goal is to not pass along genetic flaws shared by close relatives. How far distance needs to be would impact the positive law. Cain and Seth didn’t sin in marrying their sisters, nor Abraham in marrying his half-sister, not because God was more easy-going that long ago, but because the danger was so much less that it would be in our day.
All of which ought to remind us that God’s law is given for our good, for our blessing. Which is why we should not just obey it, but give thanks for it.
There’s no accounting for taste. Or to put it another way, the taste has reasons that reason knows not of. We like what we like, and we don’t like having to explain it. Which is why postmodernism fits us so well. Here it’s not just flavors of ice cream, but all of goodness, truth and beauty that gets reduced down to a matter of taste. And no one has to defend their tastes, for we can all be right. What makes less sense, however, is why, if there are indeed no standards, our tastes tend to follow patterns. If taste is simply random, then it seems there ought to be as many folks who prefer the sound of fingernails on chalkboards (sorry for those of you who get the sensation at the mere mention of the act) as there are folks who prefer the Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Check out the sales figures on I-tunes- it just isn’t so. One would think that the Uniform Commercial Code would sell as many copies as Tolkien. But it doesn’t happen.
We aren’t the products of chance, else our choice in products would come out like chance. Instead we are what we are, and what we are is rebels. That we prefer Pachelbel to fingernails is a reflection of our Maker, evidence that we are, even in our rebellion, made in His image. That we don’t much care for the Pentateuch shows that though we bear His image, we are in rebellion against Him.
Since Peter Jackson got ahold of them all the world has gone gaga over The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Tolkien has given us another land, a land filled both with bucolic villages, and with epic battles, with fidelity and with treachery, maidens and a mysterious hero who is heir to the throne. It stirs the hearts not only of children, but of men.
Which is why it is so puzzling that we, both within and without the church, are more enamored with the four books of Tolkien than the five books of Moses. What does Tolkien have that Moses has not? Here we find not a bucolic village, but better still, an edenic garden. Here we find betrayal on an immeasurable scale, and fidelity to the infinite degree. Here we have wicked tyrants who are brought down low, slavery and freedom, miracles and talking beasts and bushes, dragons and damsels, and in the shadows, the promise of an heir.
The difference in our taste then isn’t in what Moses left out that Tolkien put in. Instead it is found in what Moses put in, and Tolkien left out. We turn up our noses at the Pentateuch not because of the adventure therein, but the law. It isn’t the parts that read like titanic battles, but the parts that read like the Uniform Commercial Code. The problem with the Pentateuch to our postmodern ears isn’t the story, but the law. Tolkien, to be sure, gave us characters who were driven by law, enemies that acted lawlessly. But for all his attention to detail in creating his “alternate universe,” for all the language, music and aracania, there is no law.
Moses, on the other hand, not only gives us the great commandment, but he opens it up for us, twice, giving us the ten commandments both in Exodus and Deuteronomy. But just as the sin stones fill out the meaning of the great commandment, so does the rest of the law fill out the ten. We are told by Moses exactly how many sheep must be returned for one stolen sheep, for proper restitution, and how many goats must be returned in like manner when a goat is stolen. We are told what to do with a bull that gores a man, and what to do with a bull that has simply wandered off the farm. We are given instructions on how to sacrifice a bull, and how to build the grate on which he will burn. And no one could be interested in that.
Except David, a man after God’s own heart. “Oh how I love your law” David cries, “It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97.) Psalm 119 in fact is the longest chapter in all the Bible, and is nothing more than an extended poem praising the law of God.
There is not only a connection between this psalm and the Pentateuch, but a connection between our love of story, and David’s love of law. The glory of the story isn’t found in the high drama, but in the high Dramatist. The glory of the story is the glory of the Father. The great purpose of the Pentateuch is that we would more clearly behold the glory of God. What we have missed is that the same is true of His law. Yes the law shows us our need for Christ. Yes it restrains the heathen. And yes it shows us how to please our Father. But we long to please our Father because of His glory, and the law shows us that glory. It is lovely for precisely the same reason that Pachelbel’s Canon is lovely, because it shows forth the glory of God.
Such is the purpose of all that is true, all that is good, and all that is beautiful. It all exists to show us God. May we by His grace, and for His glory, learn to see His grace in revealing His glory, in giving us His law.
