Session Two: The School of Christ

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Taught September 20, 2026. Reading: Adams, chapter 1, concluded.

Summary

We began where we left off, with the chain of dependence back on the screen. Discipline is not, as many have thought, the negative task of reading troublemakers out of the church; it is God’s provision for good order, and good order is what makes instruction and growth possible. Discipline establishes order, order produces peace, and peace is the condition for learning. It is very hard to memorize your times tables with the television blasting.

The Great Commission is a mission of moral education. We tend to reduce teaching to a transfer of information, as if you had a deficit of knowledge and I had a surplus. But Jesus says “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” and the word is the word of paideia: not information but a whole way of being, so that your attitudes, your affections, your instincts, and your imagination are all transformed. That is why we like to say at Beverly Heights that we make Christians. Christ expects his people to think like Christians, believe like Christians, and act like Christians, and when behavior does not match confession the church has a responsibility to discipline, which is to say to disciple, until it does. Evangelism is not lost in this; it is completed by it. Mission begins in the battleground of your own heart, then in your house, then outward. Paul’s whole letter to the Galatians can be summarized in one sentence: I insist that you act like Christians.

Our Bylaws (3.2), which borrowed a good deal from Adams, state the purpose of discipline as maintaining the honor of God, restoring the sinner, and removing offense from the church. Sin is missing the mark, living outside the bounded life God has given, and restoring the sinner is not smacking him on the hand or making an example of him. It is saying, you are in the wilderness, and nothing but weeds grows there; come back into the garden. Only when a person has been shown from Scripture that he is outside, and refuses to come in, does the church concur with his own decision and treat him as an unbeliever, which means sharing the gospel with him. The worst thing a church can do is pretend, and let people who are around the faith go on believing they are in it. Assuming the best, as one of us said, can assume a person right to hell. The most loving thing is to turn the lights up.

Is that judgmental? Judgment is a biblical good; judgmentalism is an attitude, and the people who indulge it usually are not in the seat of judgment at all. God has established judges in the church. The answer is in their name: ruling elders, who hold the yellow card and the red card, and who have a rule book, which is the Bible. A church that is slow to use them for fear of being called judgmental has to ask whether it fears men or God. Distinguishing the weak believer who says “I believe, help my unbelief” from the person who thinks he is in but is not takes real discernment, and discipline for the weak is developmental, not corrective.

Adams: if words from the pulpit are not enforced by action from the congregation and the elders, members will learn that the church does not really mean what it says. If we say this is what God expects and never follow through, we raise doubts about every other claim we make, and we are actively undermining your faith. The principle I learned long ago applies to raising children, leading a church, and governing a nation: discipline must be swift, severe, and public. Swift, so that the infraction is dealt with when it arises. Severe enough to be remedial. Public, because Jesus says “tell the church,” and the body is reminded of the boundaries. Who says it matters as much as what is said. Official communication from the pastor or the Session, following due process, is biblical and is to be received as such. The same information passed around by anyone else is gossip.

The process has off-ramps all over it. It begins with self-discipline, then one-on-one, then one or two others, then the elders, then the whole body, and only after every refusal is a person treated as an unbeliever. The circle stays as small as possible for as long as possible, and at every step the invitation is the same: come to Christ; all of this can be healed and restored. Most discipline, we began to see, is preventive, the steady hum that keeps us on the straight path, and corrective discipline begins only when that fails. Good discipline produces the conditions for maximal glory. A well-drilled marching band can do things on a field that no one can do alone, and it is beautiful to behold.

Key texts: Matthew 28:18-20; Matthew 18:15-17; Matthew 5:23-24; Galatians 1-6 (the argument of the letter); 2 Timothy 2:15; Mark 9:24; 1 Corinthians 5.

For discussion

• What does a congregation learn from a pulpit whose words are never backed by action?
• We all agree with this in principle. What changes when it is applied to your spouse, your child, or your neighbor?
• What is the difference between judgment and judgmentalism, and who in the church is in the seat of judgment?

Go deeper: Jay E. Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline, chapter 1. Buy the book