Church Gone Wild: The 4 Whys of Church Discipline, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Telling somebody the truth is not judging them. It's what you do after you tell them the truth that determines whether or not you are judging them in the way that Jesus forbid. The question is after speaking the truth to them, do you write them off or do you keep praying for them and inviting them back in? Hey, welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich. Today, Pastor J.D. walks us through some common objections to church discipline.

Because sin is serious, the church must take it seriously. And thankfully, 1 Corinthians 5 gives us guidance as to how to address it within the body of Christ. Pastor J.D. explains why we need to help people in the church not only wake up to the gravity of their sin, but more importantly, point them to a Savior who wants to forgive, not condemn.

Now here's Pastor J.D. continuing where we left off last time in 1 Corinthians 5. For reasons the church must remove a willfully sinning member from its midst. Number one, he says, is for the sake of the sinning brother. For the sake of the sinning brother, he says, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. The hope, the goal is always that they wake up from their sin, that the pain of being removed from the blessings of the church wakes them up and brings them back to their senses. The goal is never punishment or exclusion. The goal is always healing and restoration.

That's number one. Number two, he says, you do it for the sake of other believers. That's verse 6. Do you not know? Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. Just like a little yeast quickly spreads through the whole lump of dough, a little willful sin of the community is quickly going to infect everybody. So Paul says, first, you do it for the sake of the sinning brother. You also do it for the sake of other believers. Third, he says, you do it for the sake of Christ himself. For Christ, you see, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for sin. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, which he was crucified for, the leaven of malice and evil, but we get to celebrate it with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Christ died, Paul says. He was tortured. He had his body ripped apart to get rid of sin. So why would his bride, why would his church, why would his family tolerate in their midst people who say they love him but whose lives are filled willfully with things that put him on the cross? Paul says that when believers, when they come together to worship, they should rid themselves of the leaven of sin. And another place, the way he says it is this, 1 Timothy, you should lift up holy hands in worship. That means you are seeking as much as you are able to offer worship to Jesus that is not mixed and polluted with the leaven of sin. Now, two things that does not mean. This is the message of a thousand qualifications, okay?

But here's the first one. That doesn't mean, again, that unbelievers cannot come to worship. Again, they can't. And they should.

We should invite them in. They should just not be counted as family. An honored guest in the house is honored, but it's not the same thing as a member of the household. Second, it doesn't mean that if your life has a lot of problems that you shouldn't worship Jesus.

Oh no, by all means. Jesus welcomes people with all kinds of problems and brokenness into his house. He's invited the sick and the lame to come to him. He said that's what's around my table. He said it's the healthy lame. I need a doctor. It's those that are broken, those that are sick.

They're the ones that need a physician. The only question for you is not how bad your life is messed up. The only question is if you come in in a posture of repentance and brokenness towards your sin, or if you're in a spirit of defiance about it. Jesus told a story one time about a guy whom God was most pleased with in the worship service.

And scandalously, Jesus identified it as a tax collector, again the worst of all the sinners, whose life was riddled with problems and mistakes. But the man was in a posture of repentance, brokenness over his sin, admitting that he needed help. Jesus said I'd much rather have that than somebody whose life is all together and doesn't realize how much he needs the help of God.

So by all means friends, listen, bring him your problems. Come in sick, come in broken and wounded, but you should not lift up your hands and worship to him if your life is willfully raising its fist in defiance of him. Right? And that just makes sense. That would be inauthentic. It would be hypocritical. Come in with your brokenness, but you have to come in with a posture of I know that you are Lord and you are right.

Right? So he says do it for the sake of Christ. Number four, he said you got to do it for the sake of the outside world.

You got to do it for the sake of the outside world. Paul says these steps are important because we need to give the outside world an accurate picture of Jesus. Most of our world, most of our community will never read the Bible, but they will read the lives of Christians.

And so we have to present Christ to them accurately because you've probably heard this, you and I are the only Bible they'll ever read. My favorite superhero growing up was the invisible man. I know, I know it was surprising. Superman was cool and everything with the ability to fly, Spiderman walk on walls.

That was awesome. Batman with the car, of course, but I thought that the invisible man was way underrated as a superhero. He's the Nicolas Cage of superheroes.

I mean, right? I mean, just imagine as a kid, how awesome your life would be if you could just disappear, be invisible anytime you wanted. If you've ever watched those old cartoons of the invisible man, the only way that you could catch the invisible man was to throw something on it.

And so if you dumped like a bucket of paint on the invisible man, for example, then you could see his shape. The church, Paul is saying, is to be like the paint that is poured over the invisible to Christ to show his shape, to show the world what he actually looks like. That means that they are, watch this, they are to learn how glorious Jesus is by how passionately we worship him. Y'all, I think about that when I'm worshiping. I don't worship as a performance for anybody, but I also know that the passion with which I worship Jesus is supposed to put his value on display.

And no offense to you, but I don't really feel like you put much of his value on display when you've got your hands in your pocket and a bored look on your face. Because I'm wondering, what do people look at me and what do they think about the worth of the savior that I'm worshiping when my worship is so tired and lethargic? They are to learn how loving he is by how we love each other. They are to learn how seriously he takes sin by how seriously we take it.

So Paul says, for the sake of the outside world, for the sake of the outside world, we take sin seriously so that they get the right and the actual picture of Jesus. So y'all, that's four reasons, four motivations to go through all the pain and all the hassle of this process. And by the way, here's a little special bonus promise. Jesus promises to be with us in a special way if we do this. One last time, keep your $100 bill in 1 Corinthians 5, go back to Matthew 18 real quick.

All right, let's go there. I'm going to end that thing and then we'll come back to 1 Corinthians and end there. Matthew 18. Jesus ends his instructions on how to call out a sinning brother or sister with these words. He says, for where two or three are gathered in my name to do this, there I am among them. Now y'all, I always hear Christians quote this verse whenever a small group is poorly attended and they're trying to encourage each other, right?

Like, well, there's only two of us tonight, but you know, two or three are gathered. Jesus was here. And yes, I get it, Jesus was there, right? But the context of Jesus' statement is he is saying, when you choose to go through that really messy process, that really hard process, lovingly trying to restore somebody caught up in sin, he wants you to know that he's with you. He's with you. When you're actually doing the hard work of being family, he's like, I'm there for that.

And I'm there for that in an unusually powerful way because you're doing the work of being family and you're representing me. We want to be a church where Jesus is, amen? Jesus will be with us if we take sin seriously.

And if we don't, he's not going to be here. It's one of my favorite summit stories. There was a couple who came to our church a few years ago. Neither of them were Christians, but they both wanted to get God back into their lives, but they were engaged in a lifestyle that the Bible clearly called sin, that they didn't want to stop. God was really doing a work in their lives at our church, but they just could not get over that we called their chosen lifestyle sin. And we told them like, hey, you're welcome to come, but you can't be a member. You can't serve because those are family things and you can't take communion with us. And so they left and tried another church in downtown Raleigh where that church tolerated, even celebrated their lifestyle.

And I learned this story later because they told it to me. After three weeks at this church there in downtown Raleigh, one of them looked at the other one and said, the presence of God just ain't in this church. And she said, we got a choice. We can go to the summit church where the presence of God is.

They don't accept our lifestyle and we're going to have to change, or we can go to this church where they accept our lifestyle, but the presence of God is not. And then she said, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go where God is. Both of them came one at first and then the other. Both of them professed faith in Christ.

Both of them turned away from their sin. Summit, I want to be a place where God is. Amen. And if that means that we sometimes got to do the uncomfortable work of talking about sin, if I got to stand up here and say things sometimes that are unpopular, if it means we got to have conversations, I'll take it.

That is a billion times worth it to me if it means that we get to be a partaker in the presence of God. Amen. Now, listen, before I close, because I know this is a difficult subject, let me deal with some common objections. I'm solely doing this for my sake so that between here and the car, I don't get like a thousand questions. Okay.

So let me just give you the big question people ask. Number one, all right, but aren't we supposed to be talking about but aren't we supposed to be the friends of sinners? You're talking about, you know, this feels like wouldn't Jesus himself known as the friend of sinners? Yes.

Yes, for sure. Paul makes clear, he makes clear that he's not talking about separating yourself from unbelievers. Again, you see verse 10?

I do not mean at all separating yourself from the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and the swindlers or the idolaters because you need to get raptured out of the world to do that. God left you in the world. No, I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister.

If he is willfully guilty of these things, we are not supposed to separate ourselves from people in the world. You work among these people, you live among these people. Lost people act like lost people.

Who else are they going to act like? He's talking about people inside the church, those who bear the name brother. That's the limitation of the focus of this. Now, let's just be honest.

We usually do the opposite, don't we? We separate ourselves from those outside the church, but then we tolerate the sin of powerful people in our midst. Paul says, look, cancer outside the body is no threat to you. It's no threat to you.

It's only when it gets inside the body that it destroys. So by all means, something that we need to reach out to and befriend sinful people, delay our lives down for them because otherwise there was no reason for God to leave us in the world. So number one, that's your first question. Here's number two. Shouldn't our church be a hospital for the spiritually sick?

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. We're not talking about excluding people who struggle, even people who struggle a lot, even people who struggle and fail on a daily basis. That is all of us, pastor included, pastor especially. What Paul has in view here is defiant, unrepentant postures by people who name the name of Christ.

Those who proclaim Him with their lives, but intentionally crucify Him with their lives. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll be right back with more of today's message in just a moment, but I wanted to remind you about our featured resource this month. It's called Cutting Through the Noise, 14 Five-Minute Studies in 1 Corinthians. This study guide will take you deeper into the message of the book, helping you to apply its principles to your everyday life.

And it's designed in such a way as to be accessible to even the busiest of people. And the goal here at Summit Life is to make disciples. And if we can do it even five minutes at a time, we're all in and we hope that you'll join us. So make a decision today to prioritize God's word by giving us a call at 866-335-5220, or go online to jdgreer.com today. Don't miss out on this opportunity to grow deeper in your understanding of the Scriptures.

Now let's return for the conclusion of today's message. Here's Pastor JD. Number three, people say, well, you only pick on certain sins, sins that you just don't like because you're a conservative Christian. And unfortunately, that has been true in a lot of church history. A lot of times, Christians make a big deal out of sins that are common in the world while they wink at the sins of rich or powerful people in their midst. Conservative Christians, of which I am one, have a list that we make a big deal out of and then we ignore the rest. Progressive Christians have their own list. But look at the breadth of Paul's list in verse 11. He's like, I'm telling you not to associate with a brother who is guilty intentionally of sexual morality or greed. There you've got conservatives and liberals there in the same sentence he's offended. Or an idolater, a reviler, a drunkard, a swindler.

That's not supposed to be an exhaustive list either. The point is not the kind of sin that is committed. The point is the posture of defiance toward that sin. The point is the posture toward the lordship of Jesus.

It just doesn't make sense to proclaim his lordship with your mouth and then intentionally crucify him with your life. Number four, here's the fourth question I get. What about the command not to judge? That's a big one.

Okay, so let me spend a minute on it. Maybe you saw in verse three where Paul says, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. And you were like, wait, wait, just a hot second, Paul. Didn't Jesus tell us not to judge, judge not let you be not judged? That's like the most famous verse in the Bible now. It used to be John 3.16. Now if you ask the average guy on the street to name you two verses, that's going to be one of them.

In fact, I'll just prove it. I asked the infinite mind of the human race, Google. I typed in the Bible says not to.

Here's what Google auto suggested for me. I just took a screenshot of it. The Bible says not to eat pork. What's going on there? The Bible says not to judge. That's a big one.

Number two, right? That's like the most common thing that people think of. The Bible says not to get tattoos. The Bible says not to worry.

That's actually a good one. The Bible says my favorite. The Bible says not to eat. I don't know what Bible you're reading. That's certainly not the Baptist Bible that I grew up with. Potluck for like the third church ordinance for us. It's like baptism, Lord's supper, and potluck. That's how you get close to Jesus.

Right? So everybody knows this verse. Everybody knows.

It's like Google knows it. Like, oh, the Bible says not to judge. Don't judge. Is that really what Jesus meant? Did Jesus mean you never tell somebody that they're in error?

How could it mean that? I mean, first of all, Jesus spent his whole ministry telling people they were wrong. John the Baptist, his cousin, looks at Herod and says, hey, you think it's fine that you can sleep with your brother's wife?

That's wrong. He took Herod off the bed. He cut off John the Baptist's head. And Jesus said, that's the greatest prophet ever to live. And he tells those of us who are his followers, he says, I'm sending you into the world to rebuke the works of darkness. So he can't mean that. So what is Jesus talking about when he says judge not? What he's talking about, if you read it in context, I don't have time to unpack it fully, but what he's talking about is he's saying, A, don't be a hypocrite and think that you're not a sinner too.

But B, don't ever do it from the seat of the judge's chair and pass sentence on them. He's not talking about not telling somebody the truth. He's talking about writing that person off as beyond hope, as if you are the judge. Paul is saying, I'm not saying cut this person off and declare them rejected by God.

In fact, the whole point of what you're doing is to do something that wakes them up and brings them back. You're not doing it as a judge. You're doing it as an act of love. When we do something like this, we're not doing it from the posture of a judge passing sentence.

We're doing it with arms open wide, ready to receive them back. Telling somebody the truth is not judging. Telling somebody the truth is part of loving them. We have got to get rid of this crazy idea in our culture that speaking the truth to somebody is judging them.

By the way, nobody really actually thinks that. Who says we should not speak out about injustice? That we should look at things like, take female subjugation, discrimination, institutionalized racism in a society and say, well, you know, we shouldn't judge.

No, love requires you to speak out. Telling somebody the truth is not judging them. It's what you do after you tell them the truth that determines whether or not you are judging them in the way that Jesus forbid. The question is, after speaking the truth to them, do you write them off or do you keep praying for them and inviting them back in?

Here's number five, our last question. Some of you are like, does this actually work? I feel like this would just drive a lot of people farther away. Yes, it does work. And I will tell you that we have seen it happen here at the Summit Church a number of times. I've talked to a lady in between our services in the last service that came up and said, yeah, remember when we were in this process? Remember how God used it in my life? I have example after example of where we've seen God use this in our church.

But the one that comes the clearest in my mind actually occurred when I was a teenager. I was a teenager in a church that I grew up in in Winston-Salem. There was a woman in our church who left her husband and engaged in a very promiscuous lifestyle. Now, we were a pretty small church comparatively, and I remember how painful and embarrassing of a situation this was. And I remember our church very carefully, very tearfully followed this Matthew 18 process. Members of a care team, men and women, went to meet with her and plead with her. And I remember when our pastor stood up and our chairman of deacons and a couple members from this care team stood up and very prayerfully and very tearfully told us that she was refusing to turn away from her sin and that we'd done everything that we knew that we could do and that Jesus had clearly told us in Matthew 18 that we needed to remove, move her from the family of the church and hand her over to Satan to let him work out the pain of her sin in her life.

I can remember a lot of tears in that auditorium. We prayed for her and this went on just praying for her for several months. I can remember that day at the end of one of our services when she very tearfully unexpectedly came walking down the aisle during the invitation.

I was at a church where you gave an invitation every service. And she came very tearfully down the aisle and she told the prayer counselor, the pastor up front, that her life had become unbearable. And that began a process of healing and restoration. When we removed her from the church, all the blessings of being a part of God's family went away and that brought her to repentance. So I would ask you, which would have been more loving?

For us to turn a blind eye and just let her go on about her destruction or us to warn her about the seriousness of her sin. I'll tell you what, here we are some 25, 30 years later. I got a husband.

I got some kids and I got some grandkids that would say, thank God you did that because you gave back to us our mom and our grandmother. So yes, it works. And yes, it's done in love. But I want you to understand we don't obey scripture because it works.

We obey because God said it and we trust him. But we shouldn't be shocked when it does work. Right? I don't know if this has been clear or not.

Probably not, but thank God it's over. Amen. I'm just doing what 1 Corinthians 5 tells us to do. But listen, if you are here, listen to me, and you're not a believer. I want you to know we're glad that you're here. We don't pass judgment on you.

We're just like you. We do want you to know, we do want you to know that we take sin seriously. Not because we feel righteous, but because Jesus takes us seriously. Sin destroys people's lives. Sin condemns people to hell. Sin was so bad that Jesus had to die a bloody, tortured, gruesome death where his body was ripped apart on a cross to release us from it. We want you to see that your sin puts you in grave, eternal danger.

Yes, we want you to see that. The good news of the gospel, though, that we also want you to see, John 3.17, is that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn you. He sent his Son into the world so that the world through him might be saved. That means that Jesus stands before you now, not to condemn you, not to judge you. He stands before you as a Savior to save you. He extends salvation to all who will receive him. He said, Whosoever will, let him come. That means you.

You're part of the whosoever. It doesn't matter what you bring in, no matter how messed your life is, the past, the present, he's ready to receive you because he can wash away your sin and make you new. See, here's the truth. If you won't receive him as Savior, then one day you will face him as judge. Every human being on planet earth will encounter Jesus as one of two things, either Savior or judge. That's because there's only two ways to pay for sin. Either Jesus pays for it for you on the cross and you receive that as a gift or you reap the consequences of your sin yourself for all of eternity. Sin is serious. It is deadly serious, but Jesus saves. What a powerful message on the importance of church discipline from Pastor JD Greer on Summit Life.

To listen again or to share this message with a friend, be sure to visit jdgreer.com. JD, we've been studying 1 Corinthians for a week or so now, and one of the first things that we learned about was the city of Corinth. It was cosmopolitan, rich, young, diverse, and Paul lived there and loved the church that was established there. And then what went wrong? Yeah, you're exactly right, Molly.

That's actually a great way to ask the question. I mean, just as a reminder, after Paul left, he was concerned because the church seemed to be divided politically, relationally. They had sexual and romantic confusion within the church.

There were differences among them about what good Christians were allowed to do, what they shouldn't do, not to mention that their church services were just, I don't know any other word, just chaotic. And so Paul, systematically in this letter, addresses all these problems. By walking through these instructions, you'll see that Paul answers a lot of questions that are still relevant to us, but even more importantly, you'll develop a gospel instinct that will help you answer questions that you encounter in life. And so to go along with this series, we've produced this, it's like a 14-part Bible study in just five-minute increments that'll give you a key question, an insight, and a way to apply it.

This resource, I think, will really help you get out of the book of 1 Corinthians, what the Holy Spirit wants you to have. Take a moment, check this out, go to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to join us again tomorrow as we continue this series called Cutting Through the Noise. Listen Tuesday to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.