When should a church apply church discipline?

The answer to this question depends on whether we are dealing with what Jay Adams calls formal or informal church discipline. Informal church discipline involves private rebuke, while formal involves a process that involves the entire church.

1. Informal discipline

Any sin, serious or not, can be a cause for private rebuke between two brothers or sisters in the faith. This does not mean that we should denounce every sin another member of the church commits. It merely emphasizes that any sin, even the smallest, is an area where two Christians can lovingly discuss it privately, depending on their discretion.

2. Formal discipline

All that the Bible says on this can be summarized as follows: formal church discipline is necessary in cases of obvious, serious, and unrepentant sin.

• Sin must be obvious. It must be something that can be seen or heard. Churches should not be quick to excommunicate a person whenever they suspect greed or pride. This does not mean that sins of the heart are not serious. But the Lord knows that we cannot see each other’s hearts, and the real problems of the heart will still be revealed in time (1 Sam. 16:7; Matt. 7:17ff.; Mark 7:21).
• The sin must be serious. Pursuing every minor sin in the life of the church is likely to cause paranoia and promote legalism. Clearly, there must be room for love to «cover a multitude of sins» in the life of the church (1 Pet. 4:8). Not every sin must be pursued to the end. Fortunately, God does not do that with us.
• The sin must be unrepentant. Formal church discipline is appropriate when a person involved in serious sin has been privately rebuked by God’s commandments in Scripture, but refuses to forsake the sin. On the surface, it appears that the person values the sin more than Jesus. The only exception to this is a sin so serious that it immediately calls into question the genuineness of the person’s faith in Christ (see the example in 1 Cor. 5).

(This material is adapted from Jonathan Lyman’s article «A Church Discipline Primer.»)