Thoughts on church discipline and the Lord’s Table
- Church has become consumer based. How can I best be served by the church vs. How can I best serve the church? We must learn to filter our lives through scripture rather than filter scripture through our lives.
Living sacrifices – Romans 12
Serving vs. aspiring – Matt. 20:25-28
- We have moved away from an understanding of being God’s covenant people, of being true disciples of Christ.
New Covenant – Jer. 31:31-34; Ez. 36:26-27; 1 Cor. 11:23-34
Take up your cross – Matt. 10:37-39; 16:24-26
Crucified with Christ – Gal. 2:16-21
Love like Christ – Jn. 13:34-35; 15:1-17; 1 Cor. 13:1-13
- Church discipline is to be exercised as a mechanism of body health. While Christians still have a sinful nature, we are not to be permissive of ongoing, unchecked sinful behavior. We are to be God’s holy, peculiar people (Covenant).
You be holy for I am holy – 1 Peter 1:14-16
Chosen race, royal priesthood… - 1 Peter 2:9-12
If a brother sins – Matt. 18:15-20
If anyone is caught in any trespass – Gal. 6:1-10
In my ministry career, I have exercised public church discipline twice, both times in northern New England. One involved a man who was vocal about God’s grace and blessing his life but was also the local drug kingpin in the region with possession, selling, distribution, and trafficking Illegal narcotics. The elders met with him privately to discuss the matter from a biblical perspective and his direct defiance of God. He commented with, “That’s why I always talk about God’s grace and blessing. I know I don’t deserve his love but he keeps blessing my business anyway.”
He was informed that I’d be doing a teaching on church discipline the next Sunday and that he shouldn’t come back. He did show that Sunday. I did the teaching on church discipline and then the elders escorted him out, never to return. The congregation’s response was basically next time you do that pastor, tell us who it is up front; we were a little worried.
The second time involved an adulterous couple who attended our church with the mentality that although each was still married to another, God was blessing their relationship. Why else would they be so happy?
We were doing our best to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and obey the Bible. One of the elders told me that I had a funny way of growing the church by running people off. After these disciplines and obediently working through several other issues, including a massive church split, God began to grow the church in a healthy fashion. We saw 25 people come to the Lord, be baptized, and discipled over the next year!
- The Lord’s Table: Communion is a commemoration of the gospel. We need clarification on what the gospel actually means; the substitutionary death of Christ on behalf of sin. Christ’s righteousness in exchange for our evil. A most violent, graphic, brutal, severe exchange. As such, communion is to be taken seriously – holy, reverent.
In 1 Cor. 11, we see where communion is a time of remembrance, of commemoration and celebration. It is a time of acknowledging the New Covenant ushered in through Christ’s atoning sacrifice on our behalf (24-25). It is a time to proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (26). How are we to understand this in our modern context of church? The exact same way it was understood in the first century church.
To observe and participate in communion is to understand the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross. It is also to acknowledge Christ’s ultimate return. In essence, we are proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ each time we participate in communion. For the brothers and sisters present, it’s a mutual reminder and encouragement. For the non- Christian present, it is an opportunity to witness the glory of God’s people truly worshiping God in spirit and in truth. It is an opportunity to see the gospel in action.
In vss. 27-32, Paul addresses the proper spirit with which one is to observe communion. There must be a Spirit led introspection, and if one is not in the right frame of spirit, then he/she should not participate. To do so is to take lightly the significance of the cross of Christ which profanes his sacrifice, a profaneness that brings judgment upon the church.
Given the severity of the Lord’s Table in its exhibition of God’s love and justice through Christ, those who participate in the elements should be just as severe in examining themselves but also relish in the unfathomable love of God being commemorated. Communion reminds us of God’s wrath poured out
But then notice how Paul brings the spiritual back into the realm of practical application. In vss. 33-34, he says to wait for each other and instead of eating all the food (21-22) ahead of others, and if you can’t restrain yourself, grab a snack at home before you come together.
Spiritual truth must be played out in daily life or it is nothing more than empty theory. If it does not have a transforming impact on Christians, it will never make an impact on the non-Christian. If God’s power is not seen in God’s people, then those outside the faith will have no desire to surrender their lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Communion is a reminder of our unity as a many-membered body with Christ as our head. When the church is divisive, it should not observe communion.
Somewhere around 1999-2001, as the pastor of a new church plant in Northern New England, I canceled a communion just before the worship service. The church was in complete disarray with constant arguing, bickering, and an overwhelming air of dissension. I took 1 Cor. 11 seriously and did not want to bring judgment on the church since we were acting unbecomingly so with the table still set, I preached on 1 Cor. 11 and what danger we were in as a church. With all that in mind, I was told that I shouldn’t have canceled communion because the ladies had already set the table! There was more of a concern for offending the ladies than there was offending the Lord.
I’m in agreement with a partially closed communion. Communion is only for the saints of God (a member of the body of Christ), but it’s not necessary to be a member of a particular church to observe communion in that church.
Definitely not open communion. Recently, at the National Cathedral (Episcopal), the Holy Eucharist was offered, and the invitation was for all to come and enjoy the grace of God through communion no matter one’s religious background, etc.