What is the character of fatherly care and discipline? How does the father exercise it? Is it not because he is the father? He is not in the same place as the child. This is the principle of it. There is one superior in grace and wisdom, he sees another going wrong in judgment, and he goes and says to him, “I was once there, etc.; do not go and do so and so.” It is entreaty and exposing the circumstances in love; though in case of hardness rebuke may come in. The father can make all allowance for weakness and inexperience, as having passed through the same himself. Make yourself ever so much the servant, the principle of the father must be maintained, and it is a principle of individual superiority, however accompanied by grace. All the world should not stop me: it is the prerogative of individual love to say, “Though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.” It flows from the father's love, and leads me to the other, not to let him go on wrong, for love's sake. It is not a case of trespass against me, but a case of walk or conduct against his place as a child. We fail because we do not like to go through the pain and trouble of it. If a saint gets into trouble, he is Christ's sheep, and I am bound, in whatsoever way I can, to seek to get him out of it. He may say, “What business have you to come?” and the like; but I ought to go and lay myself at his feet, in order to get him out of the net which he has got into, even though he dislike me for it. This needs the spirit of grace, and the seeking to bear the whole on one's own soul.
The other kind of discipline is that of Christ, as “Son over his own house.” The case of Judas is of great value here. It will always he that, if there is spirituality in the body, evil cannot continue long; it is impossible that hypocrisy or anything else should continue where there is spirituality. In the case of Judas the Lord's personal grace overcame everything; and it will always be so proportionably and practically. The highest manifestation of evil was against this grace: “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.... He then, having received the sop” —grace thoroughly came out when the evil was shown to be done against Himself-"went immediately out” (John 13).
This discipline never acts beyond what is manifested, and therefore we see the disciples questioning one another what these things meant, before the evil was done; it did not touch the conscience of the assembly. The Father's discipline comes in where there is nothing manifest, for that which is secret, or which may come out years after. If an elder brother, and seeing a younger one in danger, I ought to deal in this fatherly care, and tell him of it; but this is very distinct from church discipline. The moment I exercise fatherly discipline, it supposes a communion in myself with God about the thing—a discernment of that working in another which may produce evil, that he has not; the perception of which I have, by my spiritual experience, which authorizes and incites me to act in faithful love toward him, though without, perhaps, any ability to explain what I am doing to a human being.
The mixing up of these three things, individual remonstrance, the Father's discipline-in this fatherly care, and Christ's discipline “as Son over his own house"-ecclesiastical discipline, has led to all manner of most dreadful confusion.
The great body of discipline ought to be altogether aimed at hindering excommunication—the putting of a person out. Nine-tenths of the discipline which ought to go on is individual. If it comes to the question of the exercise of the discipline of “the Son over his own house,” the church ought never to take it up, but in self-identification, in confession of common sin and shame that it has come ever to this; so it would be no court of justice at all, but a disgrace to the body.
Spirituality in the church would purge out hypocrisy, defilement, and everything unworthy, without assuming a judicial aspect. Nothing should be so abhorrent as that, in God's house, such a thing had happened. If it were in one of our houses that something dishonorable and disgraceful had happened, should we feel as though we were altogether unconcerned, that we had nothing to do with it? It might be that some reprobate son must be put out, for the sake of the others; he cannot be reclaimed, and he is corrupting the family—what can be done? It is necessary to say, “I cannot keep you here; I cannot corrupt the rest by your habits and manners.” Would it not, nevertheless, be for weeping and mourning, for sorrow of heart and shame and dishonor to the whole family? They would not like to talk on the subject, and others would refrain from it, to spare their feelings; his name would not be mentioned. In the house of the Son, how abhorrent to be putting out! what common shame; what anguish! what sorrow! There is nothing more abhorrent to God than a judicial process.
The church is indeed plunged in corruption and weakness, but this is the very thing that would make one cling to the saints, and the more anxiously maintain the individual responsibility of those who have any gift for pastoral care. There is nothing I pray for more than the dispensation of pastors. What I mean by a pastor is a person who can bear the whole sorrow, care, misery, and sin of another on his own soul, and go to God about it; and bring from God what will meet it, before he goes to the other.
There is another thing most clear: the result may be putting out, but, if it ever comes to a corporate act in judgment, discipline ends the moment he is put out, and ends altogether. “Do not ye judge them that are within? But them that are without God judgeth” (1 Corinthians 5:1212For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? (1 Corinthians 5:12)).
The question whether I can sit down with this or that person who is within never arises. A person staying away from communion because of another, of whom he does not think well, being there, is a most extraordinary thing; he is excommunicating himself for another's sake. “For we being many are one bread [loaf], and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:1717For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:17)). If I stay away I am saying that I am not a Christian, because another has gone wrong. That is not the way to act. There may be steps to pursue; but it is not to commit the folly of excommunicating myself lest a sinner should intrude.
All discipline until the last act is restorative. The act of putting outside—of excommunication—is not, properly speaking, discipline, but the saying that discipline is ineffective, and there is an end of it; the church says, “I can do no more.”
As to the question of unanimity in cases of church discipline, we must remember it is the Son exercising His discipline over His own house. In the case in Corinthians, it was the direct action of Paul in apostolic power on the body—not of the church. The body claiming a right to exercise discipline! one cannot conceive a more terrible thing; it is turning the family of God into a court of justice. Suppose the case of a father going to turn out of doors a wicked son, and the other children of the family saying, “We have a right to help our father in turning our brother out of the house” —what an awful thing! We find the apostle forcing the Corinthians to exercise discipline, when they were not a bit disposed to do so. “Here,” he says, “there is sin among you, and ye are not mourning, that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among you” (he is forcing them to the conviction that the sin is theirs, as well as that of the man); “and now put away from among yourselves that wicked person.” The church is never in the place of exercising discipline until the sin of the individual becomes the sin of the church recognized as such. There is all this “Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear” (1 Timothy 5:2020Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. (1 Timothy 5:20)); “Brethren, if a man he overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such,” etc.; and the like. But if evil has arisen, of such a character as to demand excommunication, instead of the church having a right to put away, it is obliged to do it; the saints must approve themselves clear. He forces these people into the recognition of their own condition, gets them ashamed of themselves; they retire from the man, and he is left alone to the shame of his sin (see 2 Corinthians 2 and 7). That is the way the apostle forced them to exercise discipline: the conscience of the whole church was forced into cleanness, in a matter of which it was corporately guilty. And what trouble he had to do it. That is, I think, the force of “To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also: for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” What the devil was at was this—the apostle had insisted upon the excommunication (1 Corinthians 5:3-53For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, 4In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 5To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (1 Corinthians 5:3‑5)), and the church did not like it. He compelled them to act; they did it in the judicial way, and did not want to restore him (2 Corinthians 6; 7). Then he makes them go along with him in the act of restoration: “to whom ye forgive,” etc. The design of Satan was to introduce the wickedness, and make them careless about it, and afterward judicial; and then to make it an occasion of separation of feeling between the apostle and the body of saints at Corinth. Paul identifies himself with the whole body; first forcing them to clear themselves; and then takes care that they should all restore him, that there should be perfect unity between himself and them. He goes with them, and associates them with himself in it all; and so, both in excommunication and restoration, he has them with him. If the conscience of the body is not brought up to what it acts—to the point of purging itself by the act of excommunication—I do not see what good is done; it is merely making hypocrites of them.
[J. N. D.]
(Continued from page 153)
(To be continued)