Mark Dever on Church Discipline

Today's article extract comes from Mark Dever on Church discipline:

'God's motive in disciplining us is His love for us (v6).
• We know intuitively as parents that love is not always lenient - love doesn't always
let. If I let my daughter touch a hot stove repeatedly without disciplining her, I am not
loving her enough to keep her from burning herself. My discipline, or lack thereof,
reflects on the quality and extent of my love for her.
• In the same way, if God lets us continue to commit the same sin with impunity, He is
not loving us enough to teach us the importance of avoiding the burn of sin.
• It follows that if a church member sees his brother sinning continually and says or
does nothing, that lack of discipline reflects poorly on the quality and extent of the
member's love for his brother.

• If God did not discipline us, we would have reason to question whether or not He
even claims us as His own children (vv7-8).
• Just because I have my own children doesn't mean I am responsible for disciplining
the children of others. Indeed, outside a classroom setting, we all discipline our own
children in ways that we would never presume to discipline other children.
• If God didn't discipline us, He would be treating us as someone else's children, not His own.
• Discipline is therefore an ironically comforting token of membership in God's family.

• God disciplines us for our own good, so that we may share His holiness and yield the fruit of righteousness (vv10-11).
• God's loving discipline has separation from sin (holiness) and conformity to God's
standard (righteousness) as the proper ends in view.
• So as we think about and experience God's discipline and church discipline, we do
well to remind ourselves that God's ultimate goals in disciplining us are the positive
goals of cultivating holiness and righteousness in us - our growth is His goal.

God wants us to discipline each other lovingly, for our good.
Matt 18:15-17 - If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed. 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.

• It is a sign of love to show someone a fault.
• If my son is playing ball in a busy street, it shows no love for him whatsoever to allow
him to keep playing in such danger. If I love him, I will warn him seriously. And if
necessary, I will punish him appropriately.
• In the same way, if I really love someone and see a spiritual fault in them, I'll notify
them of their wrong. If I talk to others in deprecating ways about that fault, I reveal
the falsity or shallowness of my supposed affection.
• The result of telling someone their wrong is potential repentance and obedience.
The result of talking behind someone's back about their wrong is a multiplication of
sin - the continued sin of my friend, and now my own sin of not loving him enough to
confront, or even showing disaffection for him by spreading gossip or slander.

• It is a sign of concern for another's good to show them a fault in order to win them back.
• My motive in taking my son aside should be to stop him from exposing himself to
further danger, not to punish him just for punishment's sake or to show him who's
boss.
• The same principle holds true in the church. Our motive in taking someone aside to
show him his fault should be to lead him to repentance, not to lord it over him. It
should be for the brother's good - for the integrity of his verbal profession, for the
reputation of his character, and for the reformation of his ways.

• It is a sign of love and concern to show godly persistence through a person's denial.
• If I see my son continuing to play in the street after I've already disciplined him for it, I
wouldn't be much of a father if I just gave up on him and went back inside, or acted
as if he should learn the hard way.
• In the same way, we are not good brothers and sisters to each other when we
abdicate our responsibility to confront sin at the first sign of resistance on the part of
the offender. We do our loving duty, and show our loving concern, by prevailing
upon the offender with other Christians in private conversation.

• It is a sign of love, concern, and holiness to break fellowship in order to regain a
brother from unrepentant sin.
• Here, among other places, is where the analogy breaks down. Few of us can
imagine kicking our son out of the house for playing in the street.
• Yet when we break fellowship with a brother over his sin, we communicate to him the
gravity of his unrepentant attitude, the extreme danger of his situation, and the
questionable nature of his verbal profession.
• Conversely, if we refuse to break fellowship with a brother because of unrepentant
sin in his life, we communicate the false notion that it is OK for him to call himself a
Christian while nursing unrepentant sin in his heart. In doing this, we actually help
pave the way for his own self-deception regarding his spiritual state.
• The least loving thing we can do is to allow one another to continue in unrepentant
sin under the fatal delusion that belief without repentance will save (cf. James 2:14-
26).