Repentance
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Repentance
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The community’s leaders must pour out all their energy, and exercise their best pastoral gifts to care for the wayward member, because “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matt. 9:12). They should use every skill of a wise doctor and send in “specialists” – that is, wise and mature members who can support the wavering member, even as he continues to face the harsh possibility of a life cut off from those who love him the most. These specialists should urge him to be humble, as a way of working toward reconciliation, and they should console him “lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow” (2 Cor. 2:7). For Paul also says: “Let love for him be reaffirmed” (2 Cor. 2:8). So everyone should pray for him. . . .
If a member has been confronted time and again for the same fault, or if he has even been cut off for a time, but still hasn’t changed his ways, then he needs something else – a form of discipline that can shake him from his sleep. Every good doctor knows that the best treatment can sometimes hurt the worst. Still, there’s no guarantee that the treatment will work.
If, God forbid, the patient gets worse – if he becomes proud and tries to defend his actions – the good doctor must go through the whole course, applying compresses, the ointment of encouragement, the medicine of the Holy Scripture, and finally the cauterizing iron of discipline.
But if, even after all of this, the good doctor can see that his efforts are not working, he should resort to an even better remedy: he and the whole community should pray for the wayward member so that the Lord, who can do all things, may miraculously send healing.
If even this procedure does not work, then finally the good doctor must use his knife and amputate. For Paul does say: “Banish the evil one from among you” (1 Cor. 5:13), and again: “If the unbeliever departs, let him depart” (1 Cor. 7:15), so that one diseased sheep might not infect the whole flock. ◆
To forgive on a personal basis is one thing; for a fellowship to pronounce forgiveness is quite another. Is it even necessary? Granted, in many instances a wrong committed can be put right by a simple apology. In community this should be a daily experience. But grave sins may need to be brought before the community or at least before a small group of trustworthy brothers and sisters. To use the New Testament analogy of the church as a body, it would be unthinkable for an injury to one part to go unnoticed by the whole: the defenses of the entire body are mustered. So too the sin of one person in a church will affect every member.
As Stanley Hauerwas writes, “A community cannot afford to ‘overlook’ one another’s sins because they have learned that sins are a threat to being a community of peace.” Members of a united community will “no longer regard their lives as their own” or harbor their grievances as merely theirs. “When we think our brother or sister has sinned against us, such an affront is not just against us but against the whole community.”
Most churches today shy away from practicing discipline. Unfortunately, because of this, members who stumble and fall have little chance for repentance, let alone a new beginning. Mark and Debbie, members of the community I belong to, experienced this firsthand before coming to join us:
Over the years we witnessed the disastrous results of ignoring sin or secretly hiding it. We lived in a small urban community with several people, one of whom was a single man who had fallen in love with a married woman in our group. Some of us tried to tackle their affair by talking with them separately about it. Yet there was no way to really “bring it out in the open” – we had no mutual understanding or covenant, and no grasp of the authority Jesus had given to his church to expose and rid itself of sin – and so there was no way to experience clarity or victory.
Under the excuse that church discipline was too harsh or fundamentalistic, too legalistic, and too judgmental, we opted for the lie that this sin wasn’t a very serious matter, at least not serious enough to bring it out into the open. Didn’t we all sin? Who were we to judge? Anyway, as the modern myth goes, we thought that what people needed most was loving acceptance and space to fail, not confrontation. We were under the illusion that confrontation not only added to the pain of personal shame and self-condemnation but perpetuated the cycle of failure. So we avoided it like the plague. Now we see that it was our so-called compassion that did the perpetuating.
Tragically, the man eventually left. Two years later the woman also left the community – and divorced her husband.
Naturally I cannot advise others on how – or even whether – to practice church discipline. There is some guidance in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 5), but every situation calls for discernment. Clearly, we must reject the practice of “shunning,” which is used in some denominations to separate the “righteous” from the “evildoer” – the emphasis on punishment rather than hope for redemption and reconciliation has devastating consequences. A great deal depends on the level of commitment and accountability a community has. In a united church community whose members are accountable and committed to one another, discipline is a great gift: in rooting out sin, it can bring clarity to the most clouded situations; and by restoring those who fall, it can cleanse and enliven the body by purifying its members and giving them new faith and joy.
There are, I feel, a few basic aspects of communal discipline that must be considered if it is to be practiced redemptively. First, it must be voluntary; otherwise it will only harm the person who needs to be helped by it. Second, it must be practiced with love, sensitivity, and respect – not overzealously, not judgmentally, and certainly never with gossip. Instead of holding ourselves above the disciplined member, we need to repent with him and see where our own sin might have caused him to stumble. Our goal should never be punishment, but restoration.
Finally, discipline must be followed by complete forgiveness. Once the member shows himself to be repentant, he should be joyfully reaccepted, and the reason for his discipline should never be mentioned again. There are few joys as great as accepting a brother and sister who has undergone discipline back into the life of the fellowship. Repentance is a gift which we should actually all ask for again and again. ◆
In my church community, each member makes a covenant with God at baptism and promises never again to sin willfully against him. If after baptism someone does sin willfully against God, he must undergo church discipline in order to make a completely new beginning.
The small sins we all commit every day can be forgiven through our daily prayer. If the sins are worse, they can be forgiven through confession. James says, “Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, and then you will be healed” (5:16). For more serious sins, church discipline is necessary.
Discipline is offered only at the request of the person concerned. In some cases a person may be asked to refrain from common prayer and from members’ meetings until he has repented and is forgiven. If an even graver sin is committed, a person may be asked to not take part in the communal life of the church until he has found a repentant heart.
We believe – and have experienced it – that through discipline people who have sinned can find full repentance and full forgiveness and can become true brothers and sisters again.
The writer of Hebrews warned the early church to let no bitter weed grow up to poison the whole (12:15). If this warning was given to the earliest believers, then it surely applies to us too. That is one reason we use church discipline: so that no poison may destroy the church. Another reason is to give the person who is disciplined a chance to begin anew, to find forgiveness of sins, and to purify his or her life.
We can discipline a brother or sister only if we recognize that the sin in our own hearts must be judged as well. The purpose of church discipline is not to judge a person, but to separate the evil in a person from the church. This has to happen again and again in our own hearts.
When brothers and sisters accept church discipline, it should remind us of the grace of repentance. If they really repent, they do something for the whole church – in fact, for the whole world – because evil is overcome by Jesus. In this sense we must have deep respect and reverence for those who are disciplined, because we know that we need God’s mercy and compassion ourselves.
We must be very careful not to load onto a person even one milligram more than his actual guilt. We should be thankful that repentance and reconciliation with God is possible for those accepting church discipline, for us, and for all humankind.
Church discipline is a victory of light over darkness; it is the beginning of healing in a person. If it is accepted in this sense – the only true sense – it is a grace.
When something is not right in a brother or sister, we must speak to him or her about it out of love. And if someone speaks plainly to us, we must not be touchy. I can assure you that those who lived with Jesus heard plenty of straight talking. In comparison to Jesus, we are perhaps still much too polite. Jesus honored his mother, but he also said to her, “What have I to do with you, woman?” (John. 2:4). His way of love is not a way of politeness.
In the Letter to the Hebrews it says that the spirit of God is as sharp as a two-edged sword (4:12). We should apply this sharpness to ourselves first of all. But the New Testament also speaks of the great compassion, love, and warmth that come from the Spirit, and we should always show this love to others, especially to sinners. . . . God wants us to become clearer in discernment, but he also wants us to become more loving, more understanding, and more merciful. ◆