Individual Entry: Church Discipline
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February 27, 2009

Faith : Church Discipline

There are a lot of tough passages in the Bible that I struggle to understand, and even a few that I wish I could use my black highlighter on. One of those is the 5th chapter of 1 Corinthians.

Paul started the church at Corinth on one of his missionary journeys; but from the records we have it appears to have been one of his “problem children” – a dysfunctional church (at least for some period of time). What we know of as “1 Corinthians” is one of a series of letters Paul wrote to them to answer some of their questions and to provide some unsolicited admonitions. Chapter 5 is one of the latter. Now one of the problems we have interpreting this passage is that it doesn’t provide much of the background, so we are clearly missing some key details. What is clear is that there is someone in the congregation who is involved in a sexual relationship with “his father’s wife” which is taken to mean his step mother. What’s more, there seems to have been some element of “boasting” related to this man being in the congregation, although how and why is unclear. Regardless, Paul come down hard on them for their acceptance of this man, and orders them to expel him from the community. Later (in 2 Corinthians), it appears that the church followed Paul’s orders and as a result of being disfellowshipped the man repented and now Paul is saying they should welcome him back into the community.

Now I believe in church discipline. Even Jesus taught the principles on which it should work in Matthew 18:15-17. Over my years as a Christian I have been witness to these principles being applied on several occasions. There was the man (who clearly had some spiritual issues related to money) who kept trying to get other people in the congregation involved in his latest get-rich-quick schemes, resulting in some people (who were perhaps too trusting of a “brother in Christ”) losing money. Then there was the man whose actions towards some of the young women of the congregation were inappropriate. In each case there were approached privately, then by the church leadership ,and were finally asked to no longer participate in the church.

The key similarity in these examples, and in of all of the cases I have been aware of, was that the individual was considered a danger to others in the community. They were doing things that either directly harmed other people or were a direct temptation to others. It would have been irresponsible to have allowed them to continue being part of the fellowship when they failed to change their behavior.

And that’s why I struggle with 1 Cor 5 – because it is not clear from what it written that the man in Corinth posed any danger to anyone else. Paul goes on at length about how contemptible the man’s behavior is (even observing that not even the “pagans” would accept what he does), and it sure seems that from Paul’s’ point of view, the man is too much of a sinner to allow to be a part of the community.

But that goes against almost everything else I understand about The Church. As L. L. Nash says, “A church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” Jesus himself freely hung around with notorious sinners who were not accepted by the culture at large, and it is clear from the gospels that his disciples were far from perfect. As I understand it, The Church is meant to be a community in which we can get mutual support as God works in us to clean up the mess that we are. I have written in this blog before about how I feel it is presumptuous for Christians to believe they know what issues in someone else’s lives need to be dealt with “now”, yet that seems to be exactly what Paul is doing. I still don’t know how to process this passage.

Of course, as I already noted, we don’t have the whole story. Perhaps the person was in leadership in the church. There are several places in the Bible that establish that people in leadership are held to a higher standard, although it would seem that notoriously sinful leaders should only be asked to give up their leadership position, not be asked to leave the community. Or perhaps the person was causing harm to other people; although given the behavior that is described, it is hard to see how. Perhaps his step-mother was also part of the congregation and there was a sense that she was willing to repent; but he was keeping the pressure on in the relationship. Another possibility is there was some reason why it was in fact obvious that his relationship to his step-mother was what God wanted to change next – perhaps there was a prophetic word to that effect, although I can’t see how that would have become general knowledge. I can certainly agree that the man’s presence in the community is not a cause for boasting; but that still leaves room for allowing him to work through this privately.

So the bottom line is that I don’t understand why God conspired to have that passage preserved for us to read and be instructed by when it seems to me that key parts of the story are missing. I take on faith that there is a reason it is there in the form it is in; but I don’t know what it is, and therefore my own understandings of church discipline (focus on people who are a danger to others, give room for all other kinds of sinners to grow in The Lord) is suspect.

Posted by Steven at February 27, 2009 05:00 AM

Comments

Posted by: roland at February 27, 2009 07:02 AM