The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples: Making Church Discipline Edifying

By James Durham

Mention church discipline and people often react in discomfort. But did you know that Jesus made discipline a test of whether a church meets His approval (Revelation 2–3)? In The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples, James Durham helps us to understand the matter by defining the nature of discipline and explaining when it is necessary. He identifies practical issues related to administering church discipline and shows how we can know when a case has been satisfactorily resolved. He also explains why simply leaving a church fails to address the issue and even provides practical advice for unfortunate instances when discipline is defective. Now presented in modern English, Durham’s classic treatment on the importance of church discipline can be used to edify a new generation.   

Table of Contents: 

1.     Why Does Church Discipline Matter?
2.     When Is Church Discipline Necessary?
3.     How Should Church Courts Handle Disciplinary Cases?
4.     When Has a Discipline Case Been Satisfactorily Resolved?
5.     What Practical Issues Arise in Administering Church Discipline?
6.     Why Does Separation from a Church Fail to Address the Issue?
7.     What Should Church Members Do when Discipline Is Defective?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books
• Release date: Dec 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781601789648

Book preview

The Scandal of

UNDISCIPLINED DISCIPLES

MAKING CHURCH DISCIPLINE EDIFYING

James Durham

Edited by

Matthew Vogan and Catherine Hyde

Reformation Heritage Books

Grand Rapids, Michigan

The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples

© 2022 by Reformation Heritage Books

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Direct your requests to the publisher at the following addresses:

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CONCERNING SCANDAL

In 1659, James Durham published The Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scotland; or, A Treatise concerning Scandal. The large book was divided into four parts, looking at scandal in general, public scandals in the church, doctrinal scandals, and the scandal of division. Now presented in modern English, Durham’s classic treatment on scandal has been separated into four convenient volumes that can be used to edify a new generation.

• The Scandal of Stumbling Blocks: Avoiding Spiritual Harm

• The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples: Making Church Discipline Edifying

• The Scandal of False Teaching: Combating the Plague of Error

• The Scandal of Church Divisions: Healing the Wounds of Schism

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: Why Does Church Discipline Matter?

1. When Is Church Discipline Necessary?

2. How Should Church Courts Handle Disciplinary Cases?

3. When Has a Disciplinary Case Been Satisfactorily Resolved?

4. What Practical Issues Arise in Administering Church Discipline?

5. Why Does Separation from a Church Fail to Address the Issue?

6. What Should Church Members Do When Discipline Is Defective?

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

PREFACE

When I first entered upon the work of the ministry among you, I was exceedingly ignorant of the vast importance of church discipline. I thought that my great and almost only work was to pray and preach. I saw your souls to be so precious, and the time so short, that I devoted all my time, and care, and strength, to labour in word and doctrine. When cases of discipline were brought before me and the elders, I regarded them with something like abhorrence. It was a duty I shrank from; and I may truly say it nearly drove me from the work of the ministry among you altogether. But it pleased God, who teaches his servants in another way than man teaches, to bless some of the cases of discipline to the manifest and undeniable conversion of the souls of those under our care.

—Robert Murray McCheyne

Mention church discipline and people often react with some level of discomfort. Who wants authority—especially if it might restrain your freedom? Church discipline can seem harshly authoritarian or irrelevant and unnecessary. It will not be high on the checklist of many Christians looking for a new church. And ministers and elders worry about driving people away by seeming negative. Does anyone care about church discipline anymore? Is it not up to the individual and their conscience?

Church discipline may not matter to many people, but it matters to Christ. And that ought to make us think. The Lord Jesus Christ emphasizes the matter of discipline when He writes to churches in Revelation 2–3. The Reformers said that discipline was one of the signs of a true church. Why? Because it is one of Christ’s main tests of whether a church meets His approval.

What do we mean by church discipline? It is one of Christ’s gifts to His church to prevent and correct open disobedience to His Word (Matt. 18:15–20; 16:19; 2 Cor. 10:8). It refers to doctrinal error as well as matters of behavior (Titus 3:10). Church discipline arises from Christ’s love for His people (Rev. 3:19). Its purpose is Christ’s honor and the church’s good in that it seeks to avoid others being tempted to sin in the same way or being harmed spiritually. The spiritual good of the person involved is also in view because church discipline is intended to bring them to repentance. There is also great benefit for individual believers in general. Christ has ordained this gift for His church so that they are hedged in and helped forward toward keeping the covenant. When it is done properly, church discipline is indispensably valuable as a way of maintaining God’s honor and facilitating the believer’s growth in grace.

Discipline may involve private correction or more public rebuke (1 Tim. 5:20). Other cases may involve removing some of the privileges of church membership such as participating in the Lord’s Supper. At its most serious it may be excommunication from the church (1 Cor. 5:13). We are always to hope that it will be temporary because it is intended to bring the person to repentance (1 Cor. 5:4–5; 2 Cor. 2:6–10).

We should think of it in a family context. Good parental care for children includes warning, correcting, and disciplining as well as loving, encouraging, and providing. It is all nurture. We know what happens when parents fail to set boundaries for their children and neglect to restrain and even chastise them when they do wrong. Parenting involves both word and action. It may proceed from a look of correction, to a word, and then to an action. This is how it is spiritually too. The Lord lovingly chastises as a father (Heb. 12:5–11; Rev. 3:19). He has also established means for doing this in the context of the church by those who are to be spiritual fathers to the household of God (1 Cor. 4:14–15; 1 Thess. 2:11–12). They administer His Word and necessary actions of correction.

James Durham on Church Discipline

James Durham (1622–1658) handled the subject of church discipline with a practical and helpful emphasis. He was a prominent minister in Glasgow in the middle of the seventeenth century, known to excel in exposition and handling especially difficult practical matters. The ministers and elders of Glasgow met weekly to discuss and act on matters of concern for the church in the city. Everyone in the parish was included under the oversight of the church, as there were no other denominations. This resulted in many cases of discipline to decide, along with other matters. It could easily become a weariness, but in this volume Durham shows a concern that matters of discipline should be handled with a gospel spirit.

During this high point of gifted ministers and scholars like Samuel Rutherford and David Dickson, James Durham shone. He left an enduring legacy of writings. Robert Baillie esteemed him one of the most gracious, wise, and able preachers in this isle. His early death was lamented. Yet someone commented that the greatness of the sorrow should not make them forget it was the riches of Christ’s kindness to the church in Scotland that they had been blessed by one such as Durham.

Durham wrote A Treatise concerning Scandal in 1658, knowing that he was dying—this work was not undertaken as a detached, technical examination of an obscure topic but rather with a sense of urgency as a topic of immense practical importance. The full title in fact includes the words, The Dying Man’s Testament to the Church of Scotland. Nothing could be more helpful as a legacy for the church than a book addressing matters that cause division between fellow Christians and impede their spiritual growth. In the four distinct parts of this treatise, Durham covers problems that occur between individuals, issues within a congregation requiring discipline, the evils of doctrinal error, and how to heal church divisions.

Despite being so helpful, the language used in Durham’s treatise and the way he develops his argument make it very difficult for most Christians today to access. We are therefore publishing each of the four parts of his treatise as separate volumes, allowing a distinct focus on each of the four topics. Part 1 has already been published in this series with the title The Scandal of Stumbling Blocks. This volume presents part 2, disciplinary issues within a congregation, The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples. In this volume, Durham’s language has been updated slightly so that his scriptural and wise analysis of this subject can best be appreciated today. Discussion questions have also been added as a help in further study and reflection on the issues raised. We hope this book will encourage you to seek out and benefit from the original book once you have grasped the key points of Durham’s argument.

This series of four will present Durham’s classic in a fresh way for today’s church. Until now it has had only a limited readership, but the subjects addressed are so essential to the well-being of the church that it would be a tragedy to lose the benefit of Durham’s advice.

Explaining the Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples

Some people have spoken of the church’s problem with undiscipled disciples. No doubt there is a widespread lack of discipleship—of solid teaching and training in righteousness. A closely related problem is that of undisciplined disciples. Discipline is one aspect of discipleship; indeed, they come from the same word, meaning instruction. As we will discover, church discipline is not about punishment but rather practically applying and supporting the gospel taught. If we are failing in discipleship, we are failing in Christ’s commission to the church, and that is very serious (Matt. 28:20). But why is indiscipline such a feature of the contemporary church?

Expressive Individualism

Expressive individualism is the cultural shift in modern Western societies that encourages us to find our deepest fulfillment and freedom in being yourself. This affects how we see the moral codes and scriptural lifestyles that the church traditionally expects—our instinct is to make religion suit us rather than conforming ourselves to religion. Pressure to behave a certain way (through exhortations in preaching, for example, but especially through formal church discipline) is considered to be automatically a bad thing if it makes me feel uncomfortable or limits my freedom to live the way that I feel most authentically expresses my own unique identity and desires.

Consumerist Mindset

There is increasing acceptance of the idea that the church is a place that serves us and our needs. The customer is king, and their needs are fundamental. In this view, church is there for our personal affirmation, perhaps to give us a pep talk or exalt our feelings, or perhaps it is there to provide friendship and company. If we find fulfillment in helping others, then church becomes merely an avenue to serve people’s practical needs. Church leaders develop the mindset (unconsciously or otherwise) that they have to give people what they want or they will take their business elsewhere. Discipline and warning are the antithesis of this mindset, and it gives rise to a situation when discipline is avoided out of fear that people will leave or from the belief that it hampers a welcoming and affirming environment. In the process, we retreat from the idea that the church is Christ’s ordinance for gathering to give honor to Him and likewise from the idea that He is glorified when His people hear Him obediently and are increasingly discipled and recreated into His image.

Creeping Secularism

Our culture pursues meaning and satisfaction in temporal rather than spiritual and eternal things. This has reduced the influence of religion in our lives. Religion is seen as just one more potential kind of private pursuit of relaxation, like mindfulness or music, rather than something that directs the whole of life. This also comes to control the thinking of believers. More or less consciously we prioritize our temporal concerns as the things that are real and important, even in the life of the church. The unseen and eternal is much more vague in its impact and has low priority in our lives. The realm of the spiritual is something we can largely treat as irrelevant to the important business of going about our everyday lives, even though we are believers. Spiritual life, spiritual liveliness, spiritual growth, and spiritual harm become things that are relegated to when I’ve got time. Spiritual authority, spiritual leaders, and spiritual censures—to the extent that they are spiritual—need not function influentially in our lives. The ethical element of religion is downplayed or more individualized as a result.

Therapeutic Theology

We live in a culture of therapy, where the constant emphasis is on cultivating self-worth and self-esteem. This can lead to an imbalanced understanding of God’s attributes. We put so much emphasis on the love of God that we sometimes stop thinking about His holiness. We are so keen to insist that God loves us as sinners that we give the message that He will still love us whatever we do. As churches we want to demonstrate unconditional acceptance, but we are tempted to pursue this to the extent that we forget that the holiness of God places obligations on us to be holy in our own lives and to maintain holiness as the atmosphere of God’s church.

Downgrading Holiness

Too often our guiding principle is that nobody should be made uncomfortable because of things they do or ways they live their life—especially because we do not have high expectations that we or others will really be increasingly sanctified in our lives. Being holy is seen as unattainable, and for most it’s not really desirable even if it were attainable. This is a diminished view of God’s grace and the beauty of Spirit-given Christlikeness. We act as if it is enough for Christians to be nice and that it’s okay to have ongoing issues with sin that you struggle with because we all slip up. The thought of holding people accountable through formal disciplinary procedures conflicts with the imperative to be nice to each other, and because we are so ready to profess that we are all sinners, nobody really has the right to be upset if someone else doesn’t meet high standards. Sometimes even ministers and elders do not want to be seen as particularly different from the rest of the people. They emphasize their own vulnerabilities in the attempt to be seen as more authentic. They often do not feel comfortable with the idea of being examples of godly living for the people to follow. They would rather not be exemplary for godliness and would prefer not to stand out from the crowd. So if some problem arises in the congregation that ministers and elders have a responsibility to address, it is too easy for people to think or ask, Who are you to say? What right have you got to interfere? and it is too common for church leaders themselves to feel they have no real authority or remit to challenge people’s behavior or exhort and nurture them into increasing sanctification.

Congregation Dynamics

In larger congregations it can be difficult to have the kind of close contact with people’s lives that helps ministers and elders to shepherd them. More often Reformed congregations are much smaller, however, and denominations and networks are internally very interconnected. Small numbers can lead to a great deal of reserve when

Reviews for The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples

[Jonathan Wilwerding · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So, incredibly helpful. For any pastor or pastors wrestling through questions around church discipline, this is a must-read!