Southwood Presbyterian Church

Q&A: How can a church practice ‘discipline’ and claim to be ‘grace-oriented’?

Monday, January 17, 2011

Question: If Southwood is so ‘grace-oriented’ and you (Jean) always say it’s ‘okay that we’re NOT okay’ then how come people get ‘disciplined’ by the church for not living as ‘holy’ as others think they should? I think it’s hypocrisy. Ya’ll say you believe in grace, so how can you still ‘judge’ people and tell them that the way they are living is wrong?

Answer: First things first- we do believe in grace and you might find this confusing, but it is precisely BECAUSE OF that understanding of grace that we believe in church discipline. Scripture tells us that ‘God kindness was meant to lead us to repentance’ (Romans 2:4) and that ‘God disciplines those whom He loves’ (Proverbs 3:12). These two passages are very instructive for us.

First, we learn the reason for Grace i.e. God’s patience, forbearance and kindness in Romans 2:4 is that they are all meant to ‘lead us’ to repentance. God’s kindness is not shown to his children to endorse ‘extra years’ of sin, debauchery and licentiousness in the Far Country (Luke 15). To the contrary, they are shown to His children to LEAD US to repentance (turning from our sin TO Christ). Our sin sent Jesus to the cross. He didn’t go to the cross to allow us to be sent back from that cross to feast on the very sin which put him there. Tim Keller says that the reason we must preach the deep grace of God is because it is ONLY true grace which is more attractive than our sin. Only the love of God is more alluring that the tantalizing morsels of sin which we so dearly love. We MUST preach true grace if we ever hope to see our hearts warmed away from sin! So the first reason we preach the patience, kindness and GRACE of God is so that when the law exposes our sin we might be convicted of our failures and drawn to Him in repentance and faith.

Grace NEVER leads to license (a ‘free ticket’ to sin to your heart’s content), true grace ALWAYS leads to brokenness over our sin, humility about the fact that we are sinners and repentance (turning back) toward God. When we say ‘it’s okay that you’re not okay’ we are making a statement about the acceptance you have through Jesus’ righteousness, we are NOT making the statement that your present sin won’t harm you.

Secondly, Proverbs 3:12 tells us that ‘God disciplines those whom he loves’. Consider the unruly child in a restaurant. Imagine parents allowing the child to throw food, scream, yell, take food off of other tables and create general havoc. Imagine the parents doing nothing. Is that love or indifference? It certainly isn’t love! In scenarios like that people often whisper to each other, “I would never let my child do that….” Why is that? Because we LOVE our children and therefore we DISCIPLINE them. We learned this from Him. The Father in Heaven does not dispense grace to His children in order to allow us to indulge in the rebellion of our own hearts. He isn’t an absentee parent who has set the table and walked away telling us to ‘do what we think is best.’ He is a loving Father who has set boundaries for us about what is spiritually nourishing and what isn’t. Because He loves us; He disciplines us.

So where does the church come in? Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that our hearts are desperately wicked and deceitful. We are blind to our own sins. One of the benefits of being a member of the body of Christ is that we have a community of believers committed to helping us see what we are normally blind to i.e. our sin. To use our restaurant analogy: sometimes we sit down at the table and begin to indulge in things that will harm us, but in our own spiritual blindness we convince ourselves that we are ‘eating healthy.’ It is the responsibility of other believers and the church elders to patiently, humbly and gently help us to see our blind spots. In the exposure of those ‘blind spots’ we are urged to turn from our sin unto Christ i.e. repentance. Grace tells us that repentant sinners are welcomed, loved, embraced and sung over (Zeph. 3:17).
Scripture tells us that such repentance WILL produce fruit. A man repenting over stealing his neighbors cable T.V. signal will not only repent and confess to the Lord, but the fruit of that repentance and confession will ‘look like’ disconnecting the cable. If not, one must sincerely ask whether the repentance was genuine. More importantly he must ask whether the faith which he claimed to have was indeed genuine faith. “Faith” which claims that Christ’s work set sinners free to indulge in sin is not faith at all. It is self-deception masquerading as religion.

Some might say, “My life is my life. This is not anyone else’s business. The church should stay out of it!” My gentle response would simply be this: the church is involved because at some point in the past the individual asked the church to be involved. When someone joins the church they are asked, “Are you willing to submit yourself to the government and discipline of the church?” This question establishes a bond of accountability whereby a new member confesses their tendency, as a sinner, to wander from the fold. It is a formal vow requesting that, if in fact, they wander, that the church move toward them with the goal of restoration. If someone plunges headlong into sin and the church does nothing then this is not a picture of love, it is a tragic picture of abandonment. The child being disciplined by his parents at the table is not an orphan, but the unruly hellion throwing food around the restaurant may eventually find themselves alone, with no one there. Grace bestows discipline on those it loves. Where there is no discipline there is no love. The son is disciplined, but the orphan is alone left to his sin and himself.

Grace doesn’t eliminate the need for discipline; it establishes it. Because of God’s grace we now have a relationship with Him and because of that relationship with Him we are chastened as children by a loving Father. We must understand that He uses many different means to discipline us: the preaching of the Word, the conviction of the Spirit and also the formal discipline by the local church. The latter may include exhortation, encouragement, rebuke, censure, suspension from the Sacraments or even (at the farthest extreme) removal from the church roll via excommunication. Each step has one goal in mind: restoration. All formal discipline is aimed at the restoration of sinners, first to their Father and secondly to their neighbor.

The old hymn “Amazing Grace” means what it says in those words, ‘tis grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home!’ Grace doesn’t simply open the door to heaven and set us free to live in depths of sin, grace has brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home. It is the church’s passion and mine to shepherd the sheep safely home BECAUSE we believe in grace!