We have seen that etymologically the word “discipline” is related to the Latin words disco (“to learn”) and disciplina (“learning”), having to do with education. And we have seen that discipline may be defined as the functions of a school that promote and maintain conditions of learning together with those that root out all hindrances to it.
You will have noticed in that definition two parts: (1) positively, functions that promote and maintain conditions of learning, and (2) negatively, functions that root out all hindrances to the conditions of learning. The prime condition of learning with which discipline is involved is the righteousness that leads to peace. Where there is righteousness (good order, in conformity with God’s requirements and truth), there is peace; where there is peace, learning can take place. And when discipline is intact, God’s name is honored, His church grows, and offenders against God and His righteousness are reclaimed in repentance. That is what discipline is all about.
But too often discipline is thought of only in a remedial sense; its promotional and preventive aspects are unrecognized or ignored. The remedial side of discipline, like the proverbial squeaky wheel, gets all the grease. Parents have a tendency only to complain when a child does wrong; they tend to forget to compliment when a child does well. It is easier to complain than to compliment because you must think to do the latter; occasions for complaint call attention to themselves. So too is it with discipline. We do not tend to think about the discipline of good order in faith and practice, in individual lives, or in the life of the corporate body, because good discipline is unobtrusive; instead, we focus on the sensational—the cases of discipline where dramatic, sinful events occur and excommunication or putting out of the church may take place.1 But that is a mistake. And it is the purpose of this chapter to call attention to the positive effects of good order, peace, and purity in the church as they promote the glory of God.
Discipline is, therefore, a two-edged sword that has a preventive side and a corrective side. But both prevention and correction have to do with doctrine and with life. Preventive discipline involves teaching truth in such a way that it promotes godliness. It means “teaching to observe.” It is concerned not merely with facts, but rather with facts transformed into life and ministry. When Christians are fed a regular diet of truth from the Scriptures in such a way that they grow by it, there will be far less need for remedial discipline in a church. Those matters in which one finds himself straying from the path will be met by the individual himself or, informally and early on, through the help of other brothers and sisters in the body, and formal church discipline will be largely unnecessary. That ought to be the characteristic and ordinary way in which discipline functions in the everyday life of a church.
But even in the best of the apostolic churches, there were times when discipline had to be carried further. The church had to become involved, excommunication and cutting the bonds of fellowship had to take place, and it was even necessary to put people out of the church (cf. Revelation 2:2).
Crabb’s Synonyms2 —an invaluable work for discerning earlier usages of English words and, consequently, earlier modes of English life and thought that are exhibited by them—shows that in former times the word discipline carried a more positive connotation; good order and prevention were its uppermost concern. Rather than comprising it, or for that matter, being confused with it, discipline was clearly distinguished from correction, a term that was used to refer to the removal of evils that had actualized, It was only later that correction was caught up in the English word discipline.
In more recent times, of course, the preventive side has almost entirely given way to the corrective. The history of the facts is recorded in the gradual evolution of the words involved. Today, say the words “church discipline” and you will get responses that have wholly to do with correction. There will be no thought of good order, good doctrine, and smoothly functioning church life. In most minds today, discipline means “the way you get rid of troublemakers.”
I have taken the time to emphasize this fact because, until we are able to restore the two-sided, biblical emphasis, we shall go on thinking wrongly and, as a result, acting wrongly about discipline. There will be no wholesale change in practice until there is a wholesale change in concept. And even if corrective discipline alone were restored, it would do much harm because that would lead to its early elimination, as it did in the recent past when the emphasis on correction overshadowed the emphasis on prevention.3
What must be reestablished is the full biblical concept of discipline, both preventive and remedial; not merely the one or the other. When either the remedial or corrective side is discussed, its positive aspects—promoting the glory of God, the welfare of the church, and the reclamation of the offender—likewise should be noted. In all its aspects, discipline must be seen as a blessing; it is a privilege of all believers that the church does wrong to withhold from them. Even in its corrective measures, discipline must be shown to be the privilege that it is—the privilege, when necessary, of having the informal care and concern of other members of the body and the care of Christ Himself working formally through the officers of His church, to bring a straying member back into the ways of truth and righteousness.
But it is always difficult to maintain the preventive and positive emphasis when discussing discipline for the very reason already mentioned: the sensational calls attention to itself and tends to crowd out the ordinary, which does not. Yet that in itself is good reason for talking all the more about preventive discipline. Perhaps a more frequent use of the word from the pulpit and in general conversation, when speaking of good order and true belief, would help.4 Surely we should ever keep before us, and before the minds of the members of our congregations, the fact that the more preventive discipline there is, the less corrective discipline there needs to be.
Preventive discipline, the promotion of good order and true belief, is both the formal responsibility of the leadership of the church—such as the elders, the pastor-teacher, and the deacons—and the informal responsibility of all of the members of the church. Ephesians 4:11-12 makes that clear. The leadership exists to build up the members in their faith and to help them discover, develop, and deploy their gifts for mutual ministry among themselves, so that the whole body builds itself up into the stature of Christ.
All the “one anothering” passages (e.g., Hebrews 10:24-25; Colossians 3:16), in which believers are exhorted to assist one another in various ways according to their gifts and their loving concern for each other, stress the informal aspects of positive, preventive discipline. It is good order, for instance, to love and do fine deeds; and it is informal preventive discipline for believers to “stimulate one another” to love and do fine deeds (Hebrews 10:24). It is good order when believers regularly attend the meetings of the body; it is good informal discipline when they encourage others to faithful attendance (Hebrews 10:25). These are concrete examples of preventive, positive discipline. But the encouragement of one believer by another to good works does not make the headlines the way that the excommunication of a gay song-leader does.
While I should like to spend much time discussing the various ways in which good order may be promoted and maintained among God’s people, it would take a book in itself to do so, and the book would have to concern itself with the common interchanges that ought to be going on in any local school of Christ all the time. In other words, all that believers, formally and informally, ought to be doing to promote such faith and practice is a part of positive, preventive discipline. It is both impossible and inappropriate here to attempt to detail such activity.
The important thing, then, is to keep in mind that although in this book the emphasis is on the remedial or corrective side of church discipline—and rightly ought to be, since that is where most of the help and instruction are needed at this point in time—nevertheless, in the actual practice of the local church, the emphasis ought to be on the positive, preventive side.
1 Excommunication and putting out of the church are not one and the same thing, as we shall have occasion to see infra. For now, simply note the distinction and accept that my words in this place are not redundant.
2 George Crabb, English Synonyms. (New York: Harper Brothers, 1891), p. 275.
3 Part of the problem lies in the tact that during this period all the stress was placed on formal discipline nearly to the exclusion of the informal discipline that individual members of the body are taught in Scripture to practice among themselves.
4 Paul made a point of commending the Colossian church, saying “I am . . . delighted to see your good order . . .” (Colossians 2:5). The word here is taxis, in 1 Thessalonians 5:14; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-7, 11, Paul condemns those who live an “unstructured” or “disorderly” (ataktos) life.