In the Old Testament, God called Abraham and his descendants to be his special people. However, God's holy presence with this people required a special holiness on their part.1 "The Lord said to Moses, 'Speak to the entire assembly of the house of Israel and say to them: "Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy."'"2 Their holiness should reflect his own. God continued to preserve this witness for himself to the nations through the establishment of the covenant at Mount Sinai—detailed in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—and into the time of the writing prophets.
During the centuries between Moses and Ezra, Israel existed as a testimony of God's faithfulness to his promises to Abraham. Individuals are excluded from the community by means of the Levitical code if their lives became too polluted. Gordon Wenham summarized the purpose of the Levitical code: "The unclean and the holy are two states which must never come in contact with each other."3 An individual is temporarily excluded from God's people for a number of different actions.4 For other more serious sins, capital punishment was required,5 as was a divine severing from the Abrahamic promises (e.g., being "cut off" from God's people).6 It is an honor to belong to God's people, and membership has both obligations and privileges.
Ultimately, the nation's sins became too great for God to tolerate, so he judged the whole nation. First, the nation was divided. Then, after more centuries of disobedience, the northern tribes fell to Assyria, and later the southern tribes fell to Babylon. If his people would not live distinctly from the nations—if instead they adopt the immorality and idolatry of those nations—then his people would be dispersed among them. God would not allow them to continue forever bearing his name in vain. In Ezekiel, God summarized the history of his faithfulness despite the people's unfaithfulness: "The people of Israel rebelled against me in the desert. They did not follow my decrees but rejected my laws—although the man who obeys them will live by them. . . . So I said I would pour out my wrath on them and destroy them in the desert. But for the sake of my name I did what would keep it from being profaned in the eyes of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out."7
In the New Testament, the church is also to exercise discipline because an expectation of holiness remains on God's people. "As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written, 'Be holy, because I am holy.'"8 The church was founded by Christ, and its success is promised and ensured by him.9 He commits to form holiness in his people through his Spirit.
Christ's Spirit uses the local body of believers to form and maintain the special holiness of God's people, in part through the exercise of church discipline. The writer to the Hebrews reminded young Christians about the importance of discipline in the Christian life.10 Part of that discipline occurs through the interaction of the people, as one member of Christ's body cares for another. So Paul wrote to the Galatians, "Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."11 He also warned the Thessalonians to
keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. . . . If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.12
And to Titus, Paul instructed, "Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him.13
Matthew 18
This concept of church discipline, which can culminate in exclusion from the church, originated in the teaching of Christ himself. In Matthew 18, Jesus taught on the nature of following him, instructing about love which seeks the lost and mercy toward others. In the same context he also explained what should be done when one of his followers sins against another.
If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that "every matter may be established by the testimony 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, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.14
Christ gave three steps for confronting someone who both claims to be his follower and yet refuses to repent of sin—first private confrontation, then small group confrontation, and finally congregational confrontation. While these steps may be more suggestive than exhaustive, the desired outcome at each stage of confrontation is the same: the disciple's repentance.15 However, should the one sinning even refuse to listen to the church, then he should be treated as "a pagan or a tax collector." He has demonstrated that he does not belong in the church because he is not characterized by holy repentance.
Discipline is inextricably bound up with the church Jesus envisioned. But that discipline should not occur alone. Rather, it should occur as one part of a larger commitment by the entire church to pray and work for one another's formation in Christ. A rejection of such fashioning must be met by the lamentable rejection from the community which is defined by it.
1 Corinthians 5
Perhaps the most cited text on the practice of excommunication or church discipline is 1 Corinthians 5. In this passage Paul specifically directs the entire congregation to "expel the wicked man from among you" (v. 13). Paul took these words from Deuteronomy, where the Lord instructed his people through Moses to expel those who worshipped other gods, who gave a false witness, and who practiced premarital sex, adultery, or certain kinds of slavery.16 In ancient Israel such exclusion might have been carried out through capital punishment. Paul, in his exhortation to the Corinthian congregation, simply meant that the offender should be expelled from his community, similar to Jesus' command in Matt 18:17 for the unrepentant sinner to be treated as a pagan or a tax collector. Though the offender claimed to be a Christian, his claim held no credence given his evident lack of repentance. Such judging inside the church is actually a part of the work of the church, said Paul: "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?"17 "Yes" is the answer Paul assumed to this second rhetorical question.
The nature of the exclusion Paul enjoined is excommunication, which typically means excluding the parties in question from communion (the Lord's Supper). In essence, this is a removal from church membership. While other disciplinary situations might call for a gradual approach, with something like a warning followed by a temporary suspension from certain privileges of membership, Paul contemplated no such middle steps in 1 Corinthians 5. The crime was heinous and public, and the church's response needed to be equally public and decisive.18 Hence, Paul took excommunication in this circumstance beyond a mere denial of the Lord's Supper to the unrepentant. He wrote, "I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat."19 He reacted strongly because the sinner's unrepentant life contrasted so starkly with his claim to be a Christian. As long as the church allowed him to remain in membership, it affirmed this claim and simultaneously provided the world with a deeply distorted picture of what a Christian is. The original sin belonged to the sinning couple. But the sin which drew Paul's ire and sharp tone was the inaction of the congregation. Their failure to act was potentially disastrous to their gospel witness and amounted to neglect of the gospel, which in itself is a serious sin. Church discipline done correctly might bring a sinner to repentance, but it will always faithfully represent the gospel to the surrounding community.20
Finally, church discipline should be practiced in order to bring sinners to repentance, a warning to other church members, health to the whole congregation, a distinct corporate witness to the world, and, ultimately, glory to God, as his people display his character of holy love.21
1 Exod 33:14–16.
2 Lev 19:1–2; see 11:44–45; 20:26.
3 Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 19–20.
4 See Leviticus 11–15, 18.
5 Lev 17:10; 20:3–5.
6 E.g., Exod 30:38; Lev 7:20–21; Num 15:30–31.
7 Ezek 20:13–14.
8 1 Pet 1:14–16 (quoting Lev 11:44–45; 19:2; 20:7).
9 Matt 16:17–19.
10 Heb 12:1–14.
11 Gal 6:1–2.
12 2 Thess 3:6,14–15; cf. 1 Tim 1:20; 5:19–20.
13 Titus 3:10.
14 Matt 18:15–17.
15 E.g., "Hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord" (1 Cor 5:5).
16 Deut 17:7; 19:19; 22:21,24; 24:7.
17 1 Cor 5:12.
18 Traditionally Christians have made a distinction between public and private offenses. Public offenses were addressed with Paul's counsel in 1 Corinthians 5, in which no private rebukes preceded the public one. Private offenses were addressed with Jesus' words in Matthew 18, in which a series of private appeals are made before being brought to public attention. For more on this distinction, see P. H. Mell and Eleazer Savage (among others) in their teaching reprinted in Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life, ed. Mark Dever (Washington, DC: Center for Church Reform, 2001), 422–26, 485–86, 520. Cf. Jonathan Leeman, Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 3.
19 1 Cor 5:11.
20 "Beware of an ambition for mere numbers: a small body of well-instructed, earnest disciples is worth far more to the cause of Christ than a heterogeneous multitude undistinguished in spirit and life from the world" (H. Harvey, The Pastor: His Duties and Qualifications [Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1879], 66).
21 See Matt 5:16; 1 Pet 2:12.