3. In what spirit and way should Christian discipline be exercised and carried out?
Christian discipline must be exercised in the spirit of grace and truth. By grace we are saved. Grace keeps our inward man as our outward man is kept by the power of God on our way, through a cruel and subtle enemy's territory, towards our final rest and glory with Christ. Grace then should be the keynote of all true Christian discipline, and truth in righteousness and holiness should characterize it. Throughout Holy Writ, grace and truth go hand in hand, from cover to cover. “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,”
“He dwelt among us full of grace and truth.” But scripture does not say that, from His fullness we have received “grace and truth,” but “grace upon grace.” Grace then ought to be the keynote of Christian discipline. We are but too much inclined to deal in grace with ourselves, and (at least in our own opinion) in truth with our fellow Christians. Whenever our own faults are to be dealt with, we want our brethren to deal with us in grace and truth; but in case of a brother's failure, we proceed but too frequently as if it were written “truth and grace.”
When the Lord was speaking of Christian discipline, Peter asked Him:— “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? until seven times?” He evidently thought he had expressed the fullest measure of grace by saying “seven times,” this being the expression of spiritual perfection. But what was the Lord's answer? He named a still more perfect number. “Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy times seven,” and then adds the solemn parable of the King “who would take account of his servants.”
Let us ask ourselves, Christian reader, “How often have you and I forgiven a brother who had sinned against us? I am afraid, if the same brother should sin against us the seventh time, grace would become an effort to us. We should in that case be inclined to think that with us “grace has had her perfect work,” and that he is “turning grace into lasciviousness.” But if you and I, reader, have once got beyond the number “seven,” we shall get such a relish for exercising grace in “forgiving one another,” “even as Christ forgave us,” that long before we have reached the number seventy,—not to speak of seventy times seven, i.e., 490, we shall have left off counting, in case we really had exerted ourselves with that unpleasant task “until seven times.”
In the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John the apostle, that grace manifests itself in all its lovely and touching character. There we behold Jesus as “Son over his own house,” exercising discipline in the most solemn case of Judas Iscariot. There the darkest treason that ever was or will be had to be dealt with. And in what spirit and way did Jesus exercise that discipline? Was it with the rod, the “whip of small cords,” in His hand, as in the quite different case of John 2? No, but in perfect grace from first to last, though all the time in truth. For He dwelt among us in “grace and truth.” How often in cases where church discipline has become necessary, are we inclined to deal graciously with the sinning brother, if he has not offended us personally, especially if he is our friend or related to us! We are then often but too inclined to lay full stress upon grace at the expense of truth. But in cases when he has been irksome or personally disliked by us, we are inclined to do the opposite, laying all the stress upon truth. How different was His procedure, Who is our pattern as He is our Savior. When the holiness of His Father's house was in question, He dealt in truth with those that defiled the temple. But in Judas Iscariot's case of the blackest treason and ingratitude against His own Person, He acts with such perfect grace, that to the natural mind it almost appears as if there had been too much of grace before truth. But we shall soon see that this was not, nor could be, the case on His part, with Whom grace never was separated from perfect truth, and truth never from perfect grace.
Not a few refuse to believe that Jesus could have washed the feet of Judas Iscariot; as such grace, shown to such a hardened unconscionable traitor, would not only appear to be thrown away, but scarcely in keeping with the dignity of the Lord. I am afraid that those who think so have very little entered into the spirit of that glorious chapter. From its whole tenor and connection there can be no doubt but that the Lord washed the feet of His betrayer as He did wash those of His other apostles. (Compare verses 10 and 11).
The same grace and love, which made the “Good Shepherd” exchange His glorious heavenly home for this sin-benighted world, the home of misery and death, in order to look, first for the lost sheep of Israel, and then for sheep who were “not of that fold,” moved Him, Who was grace and truth personified, to exhaust all the means of that grace and truth, to reach the heart and conscience even of him, who whilst eating His bread, had lifted up his heel against Him,
“But why all these attempts,” some perhaps will reason, “as Jesus must have known before that they would be in vain, Judas being the son of perdition!”
His thoughts are not our thoughts, reader, nor are His ways and His heart ours. The omniscience and perfect knowledge of the Son of God could not limit the grace of the perfect Son of man in its activity. What could be more adapted to reach the conscience even of a Judas and to soften his hard heart, than seeing Him, Whom he was about to betray, stooping down at His feet to perform the menial service of washing them? We should have thought, that (each time when those hands, which had fed those thousand hungry ones, healed the sick and blessed the little children, and during more than three years had given to His apostle the daily bread and blessed it and broken it with him, with their gentle touch applied the cleansing water to Judas Iscariot's feet), his heart must have welled up and discharged itself through his eyes, until the purifying streams of penitent tears had mingled with the cleansing water around his feet. And when He heard Peter say, “Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Thou shalt never wash my feet,” and then the Master's holy yet ever gracious voice saying, “Ye are clean, but not all;” and when He, whom Judas too called Lord and Master, then went down at his feet to wash them likewise, should we not have thought that the betrayer's trembling feet would have shrunk back, bringing him on his knees publicly to own his deep fall and the covetousness that had caused it? And when the same calm, unimpassioned, and yet so gracious voice added those warning words, “He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me;” and when Jesus, “troubled in spirit, then testified and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me,” (these last words of grace and truth, addressed to Judas Iscariot's heart and conscience); and when “the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom He spake,” —should we not have thought that if even the least spark of a better feeling had been in his heart, or the slightest movement of repentance in his conscience, such words, spoken by such a Master, would have evoked there a response?
But Judas Iscariot's heart and conscience had become as hard as the thirty pieces of silver, which he had received from the chief priests and Pharisees. For more than three years he had walked alongside with the Son of God. He had seen and heard His mighty and gracious words and deeds. But whilst walking day by day as an eye-and-ear-witness, nay as an apostle, by the side of Him, who was “God manifest in the flesh,” his heart was a secret idol-shrine, where the “mammon of unrighteousness” was enthroned. Only his body, but not his heart, was in the presence of the Son of God. Thus all his privileges had only served to harden his soul entirely, and render his measure of responsibility and his deep fall and following judgment all the greater.
The bosom disciple “whom Jesus loved,” and who in our most solemn and yet so blessed chapter asks Him in childlike simplicity, “Lord, who is it?” addressed in his old age to all the children of God the solemn injunction, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”
Jesus replied to His beloved disciple's inquiry with “He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it.” “And when He had dipped the sop, He gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.”
Grace had done its utmost and exhausted its last remedy. Nothing remained but judgment. That portion of holy writ, spoken in solemn warning by our gracious yet true Master, had been fulfilled: “He that eateth bread with me, hath lifted up his heel against me." “And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.” “He then having received the sop, went immediately out: and it was night.” Solemn words!
The Lord, the “Son over His own house,” had exercised discipline, but not until all the means of grace had been exhausted. Compare 1 Cor. 5:2.
Christian reader, I have dwelt at a greater length than usual on this case of discipline, unique in its terribleness, not in order to sit in judgment upon a traitor, but to judge our own treacherous hearts. Judas, though unconverted, was a man of like natural passions as we. How little, alas! have we learned from our gracious Master, Who showed such patience and grace to His betrayer, to exercise grace and patience towards our erring brethren in Christ, being unmindful of the injunction of the apostle of the church, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.”
Hear the words of the inspired James:
“Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.”
How often have we exercised grace without truth, or handled truth without grace! It is difficult to say which of the two would be the worst.
In my next paper I shall, if the Lord will, offer a few remarks as to the way of carrying out Christian discipline.