Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] In the book of first Corinthians, the Apostle Paul instructs the church in Corinth, though he's not present with them, that they are to excommunicate a man who has been in sin and is unrepentant.
[00:00:22] It's an interesting letter because it is not the Corinthian Church's plan to do this. They have no intent to exercise church discipline. In fact, they're proud of the fact that they have this man in their midst. Still, they're proud of their open mindedness.
[00:00:47] This is much like many churches today who have no intention of engaging in the difficult work of church discipline.
[00:01:05] But in the book of second Corinthians, the Apostle Paul gives instructions again from afar to the church in Corinth.
[00:01:15] Time has passed and things have changed.
[00:01:18] And in this letter there is the joyful instruction that he gives to the church that they are now to restore this man that they had excommunicated at his instruction before.
[00:01:38] And so in 2 Corinthians 2, 5, 11, he gives the instruction as well as explanation of what this part of the work looks like.
[00:01:57] So would you please stand for the reading of God's word from 2 Corinthians.
[00:02:08] Chapter 2, verses 5 through 11.
[00:02:14] But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree in order not to say too much to all of you.
[00:02:27] Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, so that, on the contrary, you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
[00:02:43] Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.
[00:02:47] For to this end also I wrote so that I might put you to the test whether you are obedient in all things but one whom you forgive anything I forgive also for indeed what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
[00:03:16] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:03:19] Please be seated.
[00:03:27] The Apostle Paul speaks of sorrow in this passage there in verse five.
[00:03:38] But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree in order not to say too much to all of you.
[00:03:49] Now some of us might think that the Apostle Paul doesn't know how to not say too much.
[00:03:57] Certainly you might think that about me.
[00:04:02] What is he talking about here? In order not to say too much? What sorrow? What is he speaking about? In this first verse that we read?
[00:04:14] The sorrow that he's speaking of is the sorrow over the sin of the man who in the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul instructed to be excommunicated.
[00:04:28] So he's speaking of the sorrow that results from sin.
[00:04:34] And it's interesting.
[00:04:41] What Paul is pushing the church to understand here flows throughout this entire just short passage, but you see it repeated numerous times.
[00:04:53] The theme here is the oneness of the Church, the unity of the body of Christ.
[00:05:08] Paul's point is twofold.
[00:05:11] First, the damage is done to everybody, not just to himself. In other words, what Paul is pushing them to remember, even as he is speaking of the restoration of this man instructing in the restoration.
[00:05:31] He doesn't want to go too deep into the sin, but he wants them to remember one thing, which is this was not about the Apostle Paul when he was instructing them in the necessity of discipline, of church discipline for this man.
[00:05:55] He's reminding them that the reason was because they were all the ones who were being harmed.
[00:06:03] They were all the ones who were being caused sorrow.
[00:06:09] Now, of course, at first, while they are refusing to practice church discipline, they weren't sorrowful.
[00:06:19] And so this is why the Apostle Paul wants to remind them, because he was the one who insisted.
[00:06:27] But what he's trying to remind them of is that it wasn't just him that was caused sorrow by this. It was actually all of them.
[00:06:37] And of course, the evidence for this is that the punishment was inflicted by the majority.
[00:06:49] Now he moves immediately into saying that the punishment was sufficient, sufficient means enough, the punishment was enough to accomplish its goal.
[00:07:04] Now, there's a temptation here for us to think that the goal of discipline, the goal of church discipline, or the goal of the punishment as it's referred to here in verse 6, is to make somebody pay.
[00:07:27] That's a constant temptation, right?
[00:07:33] That's precisely why he gives this warning that, on the contrary, we must rather forgive and comfort.
[00:07:50] If you think about the sorrow being caused to the entire church, not just to Paul, who is someplace else, but to that particular body in Corinth.
[00:08:04] And you think about what happens when somebody begins to come to a realization of sin, begins to hate sin, a sin that they had approved in the past, a sin that they had been proud that they were accepting of in the past, you can imagine that at that point, suddenly they would get very offended, a switch would flip right from this all the way over to this, and now suddenly they hate the sin and they hate the man that made them suffer from his sin, that brought shame onto the Lord Jesus Christ, that brought shame into and onto the church.
[00:09:01] This was not the goal of the discipline that was given, that Paul was instructing them in, in the first letter.
[00:09:12] It's never the goal of church discipline that we would somehow come to hate those who are caught in sin and are being disciplined.
[00:09:29] In spite of the fact that it is necessary for us to understand that it harms us.
[00:09:38] It is not the goal that we then make them pay.
[00:09:45] The goal rather is threefold with discipline.
[00:09:56] We understand that our goal first and foremost is always that God's name would be glorified here on earth.
[00:10:09] And it requires faith to see that when discipline happens, God is glorified.
[00:10:21] Requires faith to see that.
[00:10:23] Of course, we also remember that another one of the goals is that others would be prevented from falling into sin.
[00:10:36] So you have first the goal of God being glorified, then you have the church that's all been harmed, right?
[00:10:45] And the goal of discipline being to protect the church, protect others from falling into sin.
[00:10:55] And then finally you make it to this beautiful goal of the restoration of the sinner. That's actually a goal from the beginning, that the one who is being disciplined might be restored in the end, that they might be turned away from their sin to repentance, and that they might be brought back into fellowship with Christ and his body.
[00:11:23] So this is the three fold goal of church discipline.
[00:11:32] Historically, there has been an understanding that outside of the proper administration of church discipline, if that's absent, there is no true church.
[00:11:56] There is no true church where church discipline is not practiced.
[00:12:07] Now that's a pretty outlandish thing to say today when most churches refuse to practice church discipline.
[00:12:19] The emphasis today is on the restoration.
[00:12:24] But we can't understand the restoration apart from understanding the intensity of the particular discipline that comes through excommunication.
[00:12:37] Being barred from the table, you're not even to eat with such a one.
[00:12:48] There is another danger here.
[00:12:51] The danger, of course, of not disciplining sin means you become not a church if you fall into that right.
[00:13:01] But the new danger that we see here is a refusal to forgive and comfort those who are repentant.
[00:13:15] And it is just as much true that the church that refuses to forgive and comfort is not a church.
[00:13:29] There can be no church body where there is no forgiveness, because the church body that refuses forgiveness, refuses to comfort has ultimately rejected the gospel. In other words, what I'm getting at is that proper church discipline does not just include the acts that we think of as the discipline itself, but it also includes the proper restoration of those who are repentant that also is a part of the process of discipline.
[00:14:09] And so, although we may more often see the lack of initiating discipline in the first place, there is also a temptation for us to forget what the purposes were, forget what the goals were, and only focus on ourselves.
[00:14:35] Now we see how we are offended by this sin and we hate it, and we hate them, and that's it. We keep them out.
[00:14:48] This loses track of the goals.
[00:14:54] It may be a help in preventing others in the church from sinning, maybe.
[00:15:01] But ultimately it does not bring glory to God because it is a rejection of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The good news that we have been given to proclaim to the world, both in our words and in our deeds, through the declaration that those who have been caught in sin, those who have been disciplined, those who have been put out from amongst us.
[00:15:35] As they repent, are brought back in. Through that we declare the Gospel itself.
[00:15:43] That there is forgiveness in Christ Jesus, that there is forgiveness in the Lord that he might be feared.
[00:15:54] You see how it's a continuation of the process of discipline for restoration to come at the end so that he might be feared. There is forgiveness so that he might be feared and so that we might be comforted.
[00:16:17] And so the instruction that the apostle gives is forgive and comfort.
[00:16:27] Now, forgiveness, I hope you remember, we are required to give or we will not be forgiven ourselves.
[00:16:43] In order for us to understand this, though, we do have to first come to an understanding that it wasn't just the Apostle Paul that was harmed or offended, but the Church was right.
[00:16:59] The Church is being instructed here to offer its own forgiveness because it was the Church itself that was caused sorrow.
[00:17:09] It was the Church itself that was engaged in the work of discipline.
[00:17:16] Barring from the table, Therefore, it is the Church itself that must forgive.
[00:17:27] Of course, we know that God must forgive. Ultimately, the message of the Gospel is that God, in his great mercy and love through the blood of Jesus Christ, has made a way for us to be restored into righteousness, for us to be forgiven for our sins, to be washed away, for our hearts which were stone, to be made to flesh, to remove our sin as far from us as the east is from the West.
[00:18:02] This is the miraculous work of God's forgiveness.
[00:18:07] And yet there is a mystical connection between the work of the Church both in discipline and in the completion of that discipline, which is to say restoration.
[00:18:24] Because the Lord Jesus Christ, Speaking to his disciples, says that whatever they bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever they loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
[00:18:46] It Is in part because of this, that when the instruction is given that we are to forgive and comfortable, there is a very real sense in which we are granting the forgiveness of God.
[00:19:14] That seems what you might think over the top to say that it seems maybe a little bit, you know, giving too much power to man.
[00:19:33] Right?
[00:19:36] But I want you to think, I want you to ask yourself the question, what is it that barring somebody from the table means?
[00:19:55] It means that the church has declared somebody outside of the fellowship, outside of the faith.
[00:20:04] And so if there is repentance, to then refuse to bring that person back in and to forgive and to comfort is to say there is no hope for those who are in their sin.
[00:20:24] That's ultimately a denial of the gospel, as I've said here we have this beautiful opportunity to demonstrate the power of the gospel, that the one who has in rebellion, rejected the commands of God, been recognized by the church to be in sin and put out from our midst.
[00:20:57] That such a one could be restored is the beauty of the forgiveness and grace that God offers to all in the gospel.
[00:21:08] This is the good news.
[00:21:16] In other words, church discipline, including the process of forgiveness and comfort for those who are repentant.
[00:21:29] Church discipline actually demonstrates the very will of God.
[00:21:39] It demonstrates our need of forgiveness. It demonstrates his offer of grace.
[00:21:56] One of the dangers that churches that refuse to practice church discipline, one of the dangers that they don't generally realize, is that they are preventing the glorious power of the gospel from being seen through the restoration of sinners.
[00:22:28] One of the dangers, another one of the dangers that they don't often recognize is that it leaves people in the church in the position of not knowing how they should behave towards one who is in sin.
[00:22:49] Shall I, on my own, excommunicate? I don't even understand what that would mean. It's the whole church that has been offended that has caused sorrow.
[00:23:02] How am I supposed to live? How could I restore such a one if he's never, how am I supposed to forgive?
[00:23:11] And so often what happens is that through the lack of discipline, restoration is impossible and relationships are broken permanently.
[00:23:24] There is no way, for those who recognize sin and see its seriousness to properly judge and receive repentance and comfort.
[00:23:43] So with that understanding that restoration is part of the process, we're given this command to forgive.
[00:23:56] Think about the forgiveness that Christ has accomplished for us through his blood.
[00:24:08] How could we then refuse to forgive those who have sinned against us if there is repentance?
[00:24:20] And of course, this is what it means when it says that it was Sufficient not that enough pain was caused, but that it accomplished its goal, which was turning away from sin in repentance to living in holiness.
[00:24:44] This is what it means, that the discipline, the punishment, was sufficient.
[00:24:53] The risk of lack of forgiveness and lack of comfort that's laid out here is first and foremost that the one who was in sin might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
[00:25:12] You can understand how this would happen.
[00:25:20] Being cut off from the family of God, being cut off from the fellowship of the saints, being cut off from the Lord's Supper, being cut off ultimately from the hope of the Gospel.
[00:25:37] How could that do anything besides drive you to repentance or despair?
[00:25:50] And there is a danger of being overwhelmed by excessive sorrow for those who are caught in sin. And this includes people who are not barred from the table.
[00:26:04] We're not under formal church discipline in any way.
[00:26:09] This is why we are to forgive and comfort one another, not just the one who has been repentant after discipline, forgiveness.
[00:26:28] The reason that we can offer forgiveness is because we have been forgiven by our Heavenly Father.
[00:26:35] And the same with comfort.
[00:26:40] Why do we need comfort? Why does the one who is repentant in need of comfort?
[00:26:49] Because we are weighed down by guilt, weighed down by shame, weighed down by our sin and the consequences of it that we have seen not just in our own lives, but in those that we love and in the church.
[00:27:09] Think of how easy it is for us to grow discouraged when we are trying something and failing at it.
[00:27:26] Some of you will try once when you're learning something new, and if you don't accomplish it, that's it. Nope, failed, done.
[00:27:36] Others of you might become obsessive and try 10, 15, 20 times in a row.
[00:27:46] But if you're not making progress, eventually you're going to quit.
[00:27:59] How comforting it is to be encouraged and instructed in what we need to do, particularly when we have been failing. And is that not precisely what's going on? When we have fallen into sin, when we have been disciplined, we have been failing, failing to live according to the commands of God, failing to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
[00:28:23] We've been failing in serious things.
[00:28:34] Comfort and encouragement can make all the difference in persevering in the work and beginning to live in holiness.
[00:28:49] Now, when you come to the end of this passage, the apostle Paul says why he wrote.
[00:29:00] He says, so that I might put you to the test whether you are obedient in all things.
[00:29:05] And I want you to understand that that includes the whole gamut of discipline, from recognizing sin as sin in the first place, to Dealing with it appropriately all the way to forgiving and comforting the restored one.
[00:29:25] Will we be obedient in all things?
[00:29:30] Depending on your personality, some of you may be of a mind to be very obedient in the forgiving and comforting, but not so much in the exhorting and confronting first part.
[00:29:47] On the other hand, there may be some among you who are much more inclined to be hard hitting.
[00:29:55] You just need to stop, hit that front side of discipline. But once somebody's fallen into sin, eh, you're done with them.
[00:30:07] You don't have any hope for them.
[00:30:09] There's no comfort, there's no encouragement from you.
[00:30:14] Are you going to be obedient in all things?
[00:30:17] This is the apostle's goal in writing. He says to put us to the test.
[00:30:27] And he closes out by again hitting on the unity of the Church.
[00:30:39] When he says, the one whom you forgive anything, I also forgive.
[00:30:45] He's just saying the church is a whole.
[00:30:52] Have you declared that he is forgiven? He is forgiven.
[00:30:59] In fact, when he says, I have forgiven, I have forgiven. If I did, I did it for your sakes.
[00:31:06] He wants us to understand that this unity of the Church that we have in Christ Jesus is central to the work of discipline and restoration.
[00:31:24] And he says that this is important so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan.
[00:31:31] What is this danger that he speaks of, Satan taking advantage of us?
[00:31:40] The danger is that there would be disagreement on this issue of forgiveness.
[00:31:49] Some who are saying, no, he's forgiven, others, no, he's not.
[00:31:54] He can be restored. He can't.
[00:32:00] He can be trusted. He can't.
[00:32:04] There must be unity in forgiveness, just as there is unity in discipline.
[00:32:12] So when the Apostle Paul speaks of his own forgiveness being for their sakes, he's teaching us the unity of the Church.
[00:32:24] We don't have the option of just being on our own, holding our own judgments.
[00:32:37] Either we are one at the table, a family, or there is no body.
[00:32:53] Christ has paid for the sins of his people.
[00:33:00] And this is part of why, when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, we celebrate it like a family.
[00:33:10] That unity that is demonstrated, That is a big part of the goal of having process, having public declaration, of having sin confronted, having sin known, having it forgiven.
[00:33:36] When we do that work that establishes Christ's will in front of the world.
[00:33:51] And so I'm returning to the theme, as I said, that we have in this entire passage that there is a oneness of the Church that's un unmistakable here.
[00:34:07] And it's interesting because certainly the individual, his need for forgiveness and comfort.
[00:34:16] The dangers that attend him being overwhelmed by excessive sorrow, these are certainly addressed.
[00:34:25] But much more important to the apostle is that we would understand the gospel in Christ Jesus applies to the whole church, every one of us.
[00:34:45] We're all included.
[00:34:48] We're all one in Christ Jesus.
