Church Discipline vs Gutless Grace

I've sometimes said that no statement is simultaneously more obvious and controversial than "boys and girls are different". So much of current wickedness - being forced to pretend two boys can marry each other, a 6-year-old boy pretending to be a girl and everyone else being forced to play along - comes from fighting against perhaps the most obvious fact of personhood. If boys and girls are different, these things are reprehensibly wicked. If they're not, then... um... you know, I can't even imagine what to put here. The fact that male and female are different is so blazingly obvious, I can't even think of what to use to illustrate what things would be like if they weren't. Yet that's what we're (very selectively) being forced to pretend. Yeah, that'll end well.

But there's another statement that, within the church is nearly as obvious and nearly as controversial. You ready? "You can judge a tree by its fruit". Aside from pretty much being a tautology, you have Jesus directly teaching it, so you'd think that would settle it. But you'd better have a strong backbone if you try to teach it, or worse yet, act like you believe it. Prepare for the onslaught of "you're confusing law and gospel!" protests, and all manner of assaults from the Gutless Gracers, who seek to exalt grace by insisting that it does nothing but provide fire insurance. I never cease to be amazed at how hard people will work to denounce the thought that a new creation will somehow be new.

I was thinking of this recently as I read some texts on church discipline, Matthew 18:15-20 and 1 Corinthians 5. I seriously wonder how someone who holds to Gutless Grace would handle those passages. That position maintains that there is no necessary connection between your profession of faith and your ensuing life - you can be justified without subsequently ever experiencing even the tiniest bit of sanctification. You can become a good tree while still producing nothing but poisonous fruit and thorns; Jesus is your savior but Satan remains your lord.

Now read those passages, which address how the church is to deal with sin. Notice first, the one being disciplined is one who claims to be a brother - he professes belief in Christ. Second, the discipline is brought on by his actions - in one case sin which he refuses to repent of, in the other case sin which is especially vile. Finally, the last stage of punishment is to put him out of the church, to hand him over to Satan, to have nothing to do with him (such as sharing the Lord's Supper with him), to treat him as an unbeliever.

Put it all together, and here's what you get. Based on his actions, the church is to deny the validity of his profession of faith. The church is to unite and say that he is not one of them, to deny him any form of fellowship, which is only appropriate if he is an unbeliever. Which is to say, because of his conduct, they are to have no confidence that he is a brother in Christ. If a man's belief doesn't affect his actions, the church is to regard it as no belief at all. If he claims Jesus as savior but not as lord, the church is to contradict him and disassociate from him.

So how does the 'Jesus as savior only' position deal with this?

The Romans Inclusio and Gutless Gracers

Here's the introduction to Romans, emphasis added:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ... (Rom 1:1-6)

And here's the closing:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith — to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Rom 16:25-27)

Paul brackets his magnum opus with this phrase summarizing the purpose of the letter, and in fact his entire ministry: "to bring about the obedience of faith". He starts by saying that's what it will be about, concludes by saying that's what it was about, and in between, well, that's what it's about: the glory of saving faith and the corresponding transformation to Christlikeness.

What this phrase (and the entire rest of the letter!) makes clear is that, to Paul, if there is no obedience, there is no faith.

Yet Romans is the perpetual favorite of those who insist that obedience is merely optional, a nice little extra for the Christian. All that really matters is just saying 'Christ is Lord' once - after that, you can be sanctified and that's great, but you don't need to. You don't even have to keep claiming to be a Christian - just say it once, and you're good. This idea mostly comes from a really, really lazy interpretation of Romans 10:9-10 (hints: what does "Lord" mean, and what would such a confession mean for a 1st-century subject of Caesar?). This interpretation flies in the face of the rest of the letter, where nonchalance towards sin is condemned, sanctification is a necessary result of being a son of God, being conformed to the image of Christ is what we are predestined to, etc.

Romans simply cannot support the Gutless Grace position - it denounces it many times and in various ways - which Paul lets us know with a few little words at the beginning and end. The gospel brings about the obedience of faith; no obedience, no faith.

Monuments to Failure

Since I work in the construction industry in Chicago, I've with some interest followed the saga of the Chicago Spire. This magnificent structure will, when completed, stand over two thousand feet tall! Situated right on the lakefront, this building will dwarf the Sears Willis Tower, Trump Tower, Hancock Building, Aon Center, and all the other massive skyscrapers this beautiful city has to offer. It will be the tallest building in the US by far, and may be the tallest in the world.

The excitement over this spectacular project hit a fever pitch in July of 2007, when ground was broken and the massive foundation was being dug. The foundation extends more than eighty feet deep into the ground, the sort of undertaking required to support such an enormous tower. More than two years ago the excavators started removing dirt by the truckload, leaving a spectacularly huge hole in the ground to make way for a ginormous concrete pour.

Today, two and a half years later, there's nothing at the site but a spectacularly huge hole in the ground. Oh, and a small fence to keep people from falling in.

What happened? From the start this project had problems securing funding, and really never should have begun. They never even got to the point of hiring contractors for anything other than the foundation - nobody who could handle something of this scope was willing to commit to such an unfunded and poorly-conceived project. But they pressed ahead and started the foundation work, dug a big hole, poured some concrete, and just figured they'd raise the rest of the money as they went. That didn't work so well, and the site's been dormant since May of 2008. Then that little housing/economic/credit crisis hit, and suddenly lending $2.4 billion to build mega-expensive high rise condos in a city that's already oversaturated with crazy-expensive high rise condos seems like an even worse idea. So the project is now essentially dead, and everyone who's done any work for it is suing to get whatever they can from the funds previously raised.

I worked at several sites nearby, close enough to see the Spire site from higher floors. When riding the lifts up the side of the building, it's fairly common for someone to point out the big hole in the ground with a sarcastic quip about how great and wonderful the Spire is, and how it's blessed everyone who's associated with it. At other sites around the city, it's become a laughingstock, a sort of mutual joke that no matter how bad things are at this site, at least we're not working the Spire. The project was poorly conceived and started without adequate preparations, and now it's become a source of derision and mockery, and a disaster for everyone who bought into it.

I couldn't help but think of the Spire this morning as I read this in Luke 14: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’


The Spire project began foolishly, and the cost so far has been tens of millions of dollars wasted, countless hours of time wasted, and a big, mockable hole in the ground. Those who pressed on with this short-sighted silliness are ridiculed, and rightly so. But the disaster they've left in their wake is infinitesimal compared to the disaster Jesus warns about - people who make a start of following him, then quit.

One of the worst products of the American church has been an easy-believism which fails to take the demands of Jesus in the gospel seriously. Jesus condemns this unserious view of his call to discipleship, and declares those who make a profession of faith but don't follow through to be a disaster worthy of mockery. Yet so much of popular American evangelicalism seems geared towards producing and encouraging such spurious confessions. Our evangelism produces 'decisions' which affect no change in the person; we proudly proclaim that "five hundred people received Christ!" at an event, yet a month later only a handful are anywhere near a gathering of God's people. We speak of people who "are Christians but not living anything like it", and encourage people that their salvation is secure based on what they said at one time in the distant past, even as their years of subsequent living deny Christ with every word and deed. (Obviously I hold to the fully-biblical doctrine of eternal security, but utterly denounce the bastardized version of it which removes from it any notion of sanctification or perseverance.) Those who began without counting the cost and turned back are encouraged as if they are going to heaven rather than called to repentance and real, persevering, disciple-making faith.



I'll close by asking you to compare the message of the easy-believe church with the demands Jesus places on all who would follow him. This is not for a super-special level of disciple beyond the regular believers; this is the bare-level commitment of all who would be saved. Here's what Jesus had to say:


Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

“Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”