SECTION II. CHURCH DISCIPLINE
Matt. xviii. 15-20.
Having duly cautioned His hearers against
offending the little ones, Jesus proceeded (according to the account of His
words in the Gospel of Matthew) to tell them how to act when they were not the
givers, but the receivers or the judges, of offences. In this part of His
discourse He had in view the future rather than the present. Contemplating the
time when the kingdom--that is, the church--should be in actual existence as an
organized community, with the twelve exercising in it authority as apostles, He
gives directions for the exercise of discipline, in order to the purity and
wellbeing of the Christian brotherhood;[14.10] confers on the twelve
collectively what He had already granted to Peter singly--the power to bind and
loose, that is, to inflict and remove church censures;[14.11] and makes a most
encouraging promise of His own spiritual presence, and of prevailing power with
His heavenly Father in prayer, to all assembled in His name, and agreeing
together in the objects of their desires.[14.12] His aim throughout is to
insure beforehand that the community to be called after His name shall be
indeed a holy, loving, united society.
The rules here laid down for the guidance of the
apostles in dealing with offenders, though simple and plain, have given rise to
much debate among religious controversialist interested in the upholding of
diverse theories of church government.[14.13] Of these ecclesiastical disputes
we shall say nothing here; nor do we deem it needful to offer any expository
comments on our Lord's words, save a sentence of explanation on the phrase
employed by Him to describe the state of excommunication: "Let him" (that is,
the impenitent brother about to be cast out of the church) "be unto thee as an
heathen man and a publican." These words, luminous without doubt at the time
they were spoken, are not quite so clear to us now; but yet their meaning in
the main is sufficiently plain. The idea is, that the persistently impenitent
offender is to become at length to the person he has offended, and to the whole
church, one with whom is to be held no religious, and as little as possible
social fellowship. The religious aspect of excommunication is pointed at by the
expression "as an heathen man," and the social side of it is expressed in the
second clause of the sentence, "and a publican." Heathens were excluded from
the temple, and had no part in Jewish religious rites. Publicans were not
excluded from the temple, so far as we know; but they were regarded as social
pariahs by all Jews affecting patriotism and religious strictness. This
indiscriminate dislike of the whole class was not justifiable, nor is any
approval of it implied here. Jesus refers to it simply as a familiar matter of
fact, which conveniently and clearly conveyed His meaning to the effect: Let
the impenitent offender be to you what heathens are to all Jews by law--persons
with whom to hold no religious fellowship; and what publicans are to Pharisees
by inveterate prejudice--persons to be excluded from all but merely unavoidable
social intercourse."
Whatever obscurity may attach to the letter of
the rules for the management of discipline, there can be no doubt at all as to
the loving, holy spirit which pervades them.
The spirit of love appears in the conception of
the church which underlies these rules. The church is viewed as a commonwealth,
in which the concern of one is the concern of all, and vice versa. Hence Jesus
does not specify the class of offences He intends, whether private and personal
ones, or such as are of the nature of scandals, that is, offences against the
church as a whole. On His idea of a church such explanations were unnecessary,
because the distinction alluded to in great part ceases to exist. An offence
against the conscience of the whole community is an offence against each
individual member, because he is jealous for the honor of the body of
believers; and on the other hand, an offence which is in the first place
private and personal, becomes one in which all are concerned so soon as the
offended party has failed to bring His brother to confession and
reconciliation. A chronic alienation between two Christian brethren will be
regarded, in a church after Christ's mind, as a scandal not to be tolerated,
because fraught with deadly harm to the spiritual life of all.
Very congenial also to the spirit of charity is
the order of proceeding indicated in the directions given by Jesus. First,
strictly private dealing on the part of the offended with his offending brother
is prescribed; then, after such dealing has been fairly tried and has failed,
but not till then, third parties are to be brought in as witnesses and
assistants in the work of reconciliation; and finally, and only as a last
resource, the subject of quarrel is to be made public, and brought before the
whole church. This method of procedure is obviously most considerate as towards
the offender. It makes confession as easy to him as possible by sparing him the
shame of exposure. It is also a method which cannot be worked out without the
purest and holiest motives on the part of him who seeks redress. It leaves no
room for the reckless talkativeness of the scandalmonger, who loves to divulge
evil news, and speaks to everybody of a brother's faults rather than to the
brother himself. It puts a bridle on the passion of resentment, by compelling
the offended one to go through a patient course of dealing with his brother
before he arrive at the sad issue at which anger jumps at once, viz. total
estrangement. It gives no encouragement to the officious and over-zealous, who
make themselves busy in ferreting out offences; for the way of such is not to
begin with the offender, and then go to the church, but to go direct to the
church with severe charges, based probably on hearsay information gained by
dishonorable means.
Characteristic of the loving spirit of Jesus, the
Head of the church, is the horror with which He contemplates, and would have
His disciples contemplate, the possibility of any one, once a brother, becoming
to his brethren as a heathen or a publican. This appears in His insisting that
no expedient shall be left untried to avert the sad catastrophe. How unlike in
this respect is His mind to that of the world, which can with perfect
equanimity allow vast multitudes of fellow-men to be what heathens were to
Jews, and publicans to Pharisees--persons excluded from all kindly communion!
Nay, may we not say, how unlike the mind of Jesus in this matter to that of
many even in the church, who treat brethren in the same outward fellowship with
most perfect indifference, and have become so habituated to the evil practice,
that they regard it without compunction as a quite natural and right state of
things!
Such heartless indifferentism implies a very
different ideal of the church from that cherished by its Founder. Men who do
not regard ecclesiastical fellowship as imposing any obligation to love their
Christian brethren, think, consciously or unconsciously, of the church as if it
were a hotel, where all kinds of people meet for a short space, sit down
together at the same table, then part, neither knowing nor caring any thing
about each other; while, in truth, it is rather a family, whose members are all
brethren, bound to love each other with pure heart fervently. Of course this
hotel theory involves as a necessary consequence the disuse of discipline. For,
strange as the idea may seem to many, the law of love is the basis of church
discipline. It is because I am bound to take every member of the church to my
arms as a brother, that I am not only entitled, but bound, to be earnestly
concerned about his behavior. If a brother in Christ, according to
ecclesiastical standing, may say to me, "You must love me with all your heart,"
I am entitled to say in reply, "I acknowledge the obligation in the abstract,
but I demand of you in turn that you shall be such that I can love you as a
Christian, however weak and imperfect; and I feel it to be both my right and my
duty to do all I can to make you worthy of such brotherly regard, by plain
dealing with you anent your offences. I am willing to love you, but I cannot, I
dare not, be on friendly terms with your sins; and if you refuse to part with
these, and virtually require me to be a partaker in them by connivance, then
our brotherhood is at an end, and I am free from my obligations." To such a
language and such a style of thought the patron of the hotel theory of church
fellowship is an utter stranger. Disclaiming the obligation to love his
brethren, he at the same time renounces the right to insist on Christian virtue
as an indispensable attribute of church membership, and declines to trouble
himself about the behavior of any member, except in so far as it may affect
himself personally. All may think and act as they please--be infidels or
believers, sons of God or sons of Belial: it is all one to him.
Holy severity finds a place in these directions,
as well as tender, considerate love. Jesus solemnly sanctions the
excommunication of an impenitent offender. "Let him," saith He, with the tone
of a judge pronouncing sentence of death, "be unto thee as an heathen man and a
publican." Then, to invest church censures righteously administered with all
possible solemnity and authority, He proceeds to declare that they carry with
them eternal consequences; adding in His most emphatic manner the awful
words--awful both to the sinner cast out and to those who are responsible for
his ejection: "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall
be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in
heaven." The words may be regarded in one sense as a caution to ecclesiastical
rulers to beware how they use a power of so tremendous a character; but they
also plainly show that Christ desired His church on earth, as nearly as
possible, to resemble the church in heaven: to be holy in her membership, and
not an indiscriminate congregation of righteous and unrighteous men, of
believers and infidels, of Christians and reprobates; and for that end
committed the power of the keys to those who bear office in His house,
authorizing them to deliver over to Satan's thrall the proud, stubborn sinner
who refuses to be corrected, and to give satisfaction to the aggrieved
consciences of his brethren.
Such rigor, pitiless in appearance, is really
merciful to all parties. It is merciful to the faithful members of the church,
because it removes from their midst a mortifying limb, whose presence imperils
the life of the whole body. Scandalous open sin cannot be tolerated in any
society without general demoralization ensuing; least of all in the church,
which is a society whose very raison d '[Otilde]tre is the culture of Christian
virtue. But the apparently pitiless rigor is mercy even towards the unfaithful
who are the subjects thereof. For to keep scandalous offenders inside the
communion of the church is to do your best to damn their souls, and to exclude
them ultimately from heaven. On the other hand, to deliver them over to Satan
may be, and it is to be hoped will be, but giving them a foretaste of hell now
that they may be saved from hell-fire forever. It was in this hope that Paul
insisted on the excommunication of the incestuous person from the Corinthian
church, that by the castigation of his fleshly sin "his spirit might be saved
in the day of the Lord Jesus." It is this hope which comforts those on whom the
disagreeable task of enforcing church censures falls in the discharge of their
painful duty. They can cast forth evil-doers from the communion of saints with
less hesitation, when they know that as "publicans and sinners" the
excommunicated are nearer the kingdom of God than they were as church members,
and when they consider that they are still permitted to seek the good of the
ungodly, as Christ sought the good of all the outcasts of His day; that it is
still in their power to pray for them, and to preach to them, as they stand in
the outer court of the Gentiles, though they may not put into their unholy
hands the symbols of the Saviour's body and blood.
Such considerations, indeed, would go far to
reconcile those who are sincerely concerned for the spiritual character of the
church, and for the safety of individual souls, to very considerable reductions
of communion rolls. There cannot be a doubt that, if church discipline were
upheld with the efficiency and vigor contemplated by Christ, such reductions
would take place on an extensive scale. It is indeed true that the purging
process might be carried to excess, and with very injurious effects. Tares
might be mistaken for wheat, and wheat for tares. The church might be turned
into a society of Pharisees, thanking God that they were not as other men, or
as the poor publicans who stood without, hearing and praying, but not
communicating; while among those outside the communion rails might be not only
the unworthy, but many timid ones who dared not come nigh, but, like the
publican of the parable, could only stand afar off, crying, "God be merciful to
me, a sinner," yet all the while were justified rather than the others. A
system tending to bring about such results is one extreme to be avoided. But
there is another yet more pernicious extreme still more sedulously to be
shunned: a careless laxity, which allows sheep and goats to be huddled together
in one fold, the goats being thereby encouraged to deem themselves sheep, and
deprived of the greatest benefit they can enjoy--the privilege of being spoken
to plainly as "unconverted sinners."
Such unseemly mixtures of the godly and the
godless are too common phenomena in these days. And the reason is not far to
seek. It is not indifference to morality, for that is not generally a
characteristic of the church in our time. It is the desire to multiply members.
The various religious bodies value members still more than morality or
high-toned Christian virtue, and they fear lest by discipline they may lose one
or two names from their communion roll. The fear is not without justification.
Fugitives from discipline are always sure of an open door and a hearty welcome
in some quarter. This is one of the many curses entailed upon us by that
greatest of all scandals, religious division. One who has become, or is in
danger of becoming, as a heathen man and a publican to one ecclesiastical body,
has a good chance of becoming a saint or an angel in another. Rival churches
play at cross purposes, one loosing when another binds; so doing their utmost
to make all spiritual sentences null and void, both in earth and heaven, and to
rob religion of all dignity and authority. Well may libertines pray that the
divisions of the church may continue, for while these last they fare well! Far
otherwise did it fare with the like of them in the days when the church was
catholic and one; when sinners repenting worked their way, in the slow course
of years, from the locus lugentium outside the sanctuary, through the locus
audientium and the locus substratorum to the locus fidelium: in that painful
manner learning what an evil and a bitter thing it is to depart from the living
God.[14.14
The promise made to consent in prayer[14.15]
comes in appropriately in a discourse delivered to disciples who had been
disputing who should be the greatest. In this connection the promise means: "So
long as ye are divided by dissensions and jealousies, ye shall be impotent
alike with men and with God; in your ecclesiastical procedure as church rulers,
and in your supplications at the throne of grace. But if ye be united in mind
and heart, ye shall have power with God, and shall prevail: my Father will
grant your requests, and I myself will be in the midst of you."
It is not necessary to assume any very close
connection between this promise and the subject of which Jesus had been
speaking just before. In this familiar discourse transition is made from one
topic to another in an easy conversational manner, care being taken only that
all that is said shall be relevant to the general subject in hand. The meeting,
supposed to be convened in Christ's name, need not therefore be one of church
officers assembled for the transaction of ecclesiastical business: it may be a
meeting, in a church or in a cottage, purely for the purposes of worship. The
promise avails for all persons, all subjects of prayer, all places, and all
times; for all truly Christian assemblies great and small.
The promise avails for the smallest number that
can make a meeting--even for two or three. This minimum number is condescended
on for the purpose of expressing in the strongest possible manner the
importance of brotherly concord. Jesus gives us to understand that two agreed
are better, stronger, than twelve or a thousand divided by enmities and
ambitious passions. "The Lord, when He would commend unanimity and peace to His
disciples, said, ' If two of you shall agree on earth,' etc., to show that most
is granted not to the multitude, but to the concord of the supplicants."[14.16]
It is an obvious inference, that if by agreement even two be strong, then a
multitude really united in mind would be proportionally stronger. For we must
not fancy that God has any partiality for a little meeting, or that there is
any virtue in a small number. Little strait sects are apt to fall into this
mistake, and to imagine that Christ had them specially in His eye when He said
two or three, and that the kind of agreement by which they are
distinguished--agreement in whim and crotchet--is what He desiderated.
Ridiculous caricature of the Lord's meaning! The agreement He requires of His
disciples is not entire unanimity in opinion, but consent of mind and heart in
the ends they aim at, and in unselfish devotion to these ends. When He spake of
two or three, He did not contemplate, as the desirable state of things, the
body of His church split up into innumerable fragments by religious
opinionativeness, each fragment in proportion to its minuteness imagining
itself sure of His presence and blessing. He did not wish His church to consist
of a collection of clubs having no intercommunion with each other, any more
than He desired it to be a monster hotel, receiving and harboring all comers,
no questions being asked. He made the promise now under consideration, not to
stimulate sectarianism, but to encourage the cultivation of virtues which have
ever been too rare on earth--brotherly-kindness, meekness, charity. The thing
He values, in a word, is not paucity of numbers, due to the want of charity,
but union of hearts in lowly love among the greatest number possible.
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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