Church Discipline: The Heart of Discipleship for Lost Sheep

Church discipline is a painful subject. Ministry leaders and recipients seeking help from Harvest USA have wrestled with its application, voicing their concerns over the process of church discipline or the suffering they’ve experienced through its presence or absence in their lives.

When Church Discipline Goes Wrong

On one hand, I’ve met ministry leaders who wanted Harvest USA’s discipleship ministry to be a prerequisite for measuring genuine repentance. Though we can serve as a witness to brothers and sisters walking in faithful repentance, Harvest USA, as a parachurch ministry, cannot hold people accountable before God to the same degree that the church is called to do. Our direct discipleship aims to help sexual strugglers fight sin as they look to Jesus. It’s not our role to discern whether they should receive church discipline, as though their progress at Harvest USA could determine their standing before the local congregation. Though this is an area of misaligned expectations regarding what Harvest USA can provide, it is still encouraging to meet pastors who take church discipline seriously and seek to implement it with wisdom and grace.

On the other hand, I’ve met with countless people who would slowly distance themselves from their church after enduring some form of church discipline or the lack thereof—particularly if the process had become confusing and destructive rather than clear and restorative. I’ve seen people wandering—seeking a fresh start in new churches or being excommunicated with no due process—and deeply hurt by mishandled counseling appointments or public confessions of sin. Even worse, I’ve met with people who proactively pursued counsel from their leaders when addressing sin but, due to the lack of any church discipline practice, they arrived at Harvest USA without shepherds, without support from a body of believers, and without a Christ-centered direction.

I share these things with both tears and love for the local church, longing for unity and peace in Christ while remembering the call to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt. 3:8) until his return.

Firstly, to those who do not exercise church discipline, I would like to present the historical reasons why church discipline should be regarded as an essential mark of the church, alongside the Word and the sacraments. Secondly, I earnestly write so that undershepherds may know their lost sheep, where knowing entails a relationship, a patterning after the Father’s love. Our Father disciplines those he loves and chastises those he receives (Matt. 9:36; Heb. 12:6). Church discipline springs from love. When we avoid church discipline, we are not loving the sheep as Christ loves us.

Church Discipline in the Middle Ages

Church discipline became increasingly controversial in the post-apostolic era. What began as a vital expression of life under Christ gradually became more difficult to administer amid the pressures of a fallen world and the absence of apostolic leadership. “By the third century, a fairly rigorous series of acts of penance were required for restoration” for wayward Christians, such as fasting, wailing, and wearing sackcloth and ashes. “Discipline became highly impersonal, institutional, formal, and mechanical.”^[1]

In 381, the Nicene Creed articulated four attributes of the church: One (united in Christ), Holy (set apart for God), Catholic (universal), and Apostolic (founded on the teaching of the Apostles). Over time, however, the church began using these attributes to justify her actions, like the Crusades, rather than to evaluate her faithfulness. Church discipline became tied to the institutional authority of the Roman Catholic Church, contributing to a penitential system that eventually included the sale of indulgences—one of the primary catalysts of the Protestant Reformation.

The Difference Between “Attributes” and “Marks”

The Latin expression post tenebras lux, “light after darkness,” is a good description of the Holy Spirit’s work to enlighten the church according to God’s Word through the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers distinguished the attributes of the church from what came to be known as the “marks” of the church: preaching God’s Word and administering the sacraments. They saw that people in the church, as well as whole communions, can indeed leave the faith. The attributes (“one holy, catholic, and apostolic”) do not merely describe the church but highlight her calling when making demands of believers in terms of ongoing faithfulness.

So, Protestants passed the church’s attributes through the filter of her marks to discern the extent to which the church was fulfilling her calling. They began to reinterpret the attributes to be used not in self-justification but self-examination. The reality that the church needed to be healed included the notion that we are not where we should be and must become more of what we one day will be.

Recovering Church Discipline

The Reformation, then, sought to recover the biblical basis for church discipline, seeking to comprehend the role of grace and works in the context of private and public confessions.^[2] John Calvin sought moderation and gentleness in church discipline. He understood discipline as a way to “confirm the love for and restore the sinner, to protect the flock, and to uphold the dignity of the name of God and the table of the Lord’s Supper.”^[3] Calvin’s eyes were focused on seeing how the sacraments are nothing short of the visible Word of God through preaching.

When John Knox learned this from Calvin and took his teachings back to Scotland, bringing the Genevan Reformation northward, a third mark was added: discipline. The Scottish Reformers emphasized how discipline functioned alongside Word and sacraments in the life of the believer. The preaching of the Word is not only explanatory but produces spiritual formation in every respect. It leads Christians to holiness, wisdom, accountability before God, and communion with Christ, which are necessary not only once but perpetually throughout life.

Ligaments Holding the Body Together

The Reformers understood that discipline cannot be thought of merely as bringing charges or complaints of judicial processes because, at a primary level, the preaching of the Word is the means of discipline. But on a secondary level, discipline occurs in the ordinary life of the church, wherein we correct one another in gentleness. Judicial proceedings do not initiate discipline; they are a final recourse for those who remain obstinate after extended pastoral care. In other words, set in the context of the other marks, discipline is the tangible Word. A lack of church discipline jeopardizes the health of the church.

We need to remember the ordinariness of the means of grace and, in humility, ponder the innumerable mistakes found in church history as, sadly, many of these mistakes continue to inform our consideration and practice of church discipline today.

Pastor Ron Lutz writes that, in the Institutes, Calvin referred to discipline “as the ligaments of the church which hold the members together. To favor the abolition of discipline is to favor the dissolution of the church”^[4] as “discipline is like a bridle to restrain and tame those who rage against the doctrine of Christ […] like a father’s rod to chastise mildly and with the gentleness of Christ’s Spirit those who have more seriously lapsed.”^[5]

But as Edmund Clowney notes, Calvin also “recognized that no church could perfectly match the Lord’s pattern in Scripture, […] his aim was to describe practical standards, standards necessarily more objective and stringent for the organized church than for individual believers”^[6] while defending that “if the church is identified by the Word and the Sacraments, church discipline uses the keys of the kingdom to maintain that identity.”^[7] According to Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 83, such keys are the preaching of the Word and Christian discipline.^[8]

Church Discipline Springs from Preaching the Word

How, then, should we understand the tension between Calvin’s high view of discipline and its frequent misapplication by church leaders today? A tension between our confessional theology (what we believe) and our functional theology (what we do) is revealed here.

Herman Bavinck, a Dutch theologian, gives clarity when concerned with how “doctrine and life increasingly went their own separate ways”^[9] as the church became more institutionalized. He discerned how “in the one mark of the Word the others are included as further applications. Where God’s Word is rightly preached, there also the sacrament is purely administered, the truth of God is confessed in line with the intent of the Spirit, and people’s conduct is shaped accordingly.”^[10]

Therefore, where God’s Word is not rightly preached, the opposite is likewise true: the sacrament is not purely administered, the truth of God is not confessed in line with the intent of the Spirit, and people’s conduct is not shaped accordingly. Church officers who preach the Word must faithfully steward their calling to teach the whole counsel of God.

In this heart, Jay Adams reflects: “God is honored by church discipline, rightly administered, and is greatly dishonored by its absence.”^[11] Discipline therefore serves a God-glorifying, Word-applying, and sacrament-guarding purpose where the body of Christ is restored, and order is established by the conviction that God’s forbearance spearheads the process as sinners seek repentance (Rom. 2:4).^[12]

The Danger of Neglecting Church Discipline

The challenge is that the effective practice of church discipline has declined and, in some cases, disappeared. The heart of discipleship, particularly toward sexual strugglers, has been replaced by complacency and apathy when preaching fails to address the nature of sin, grace is no longer sufficient, mercy is seen as weakness, and when Christians cause one another to stumble and divide instead of being peacemakers.

“When a church makes no effort to address itself to the most obvious sins within its assembly, great damage is done to the cause of Christ. […] Uncorrected sin may spread like a disease within a congregation. If young believers observe that flagrant lawlessness is tolerated by church officers in others, they may be emboldened to practice similar vices (1 Cor. 5:6).”^[13]

The church must not neglect church discipline. It carries a tremendous weight. Church leaders need to lean on its redemptive power when seeking to rightly use authority to build up God’s people, not for tearing down. The church is to embody mercy, not condemnation.

True Safety Is Discipleship within the Body of Christ

That’s why discipline demands urgent and wise application. The ultimate place for wandering sheep to find help is not in parachurch organizations or ministries, but the church (Mat 16:18; Eph. 4:11–16; 1 Pet. 5:1–4). A faithful shepherd is one who, “having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, [will] leave the ninety-nine . . . and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it. And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:4–7). So, too, faithful undershepherds seek to “restore [them] in a spirit of gentleness” (Gal. 6:1) and admonition (Matt. 18:15–16). Shepherds need to remember what it means to smell like sheep. We are the branches and Jesus is the Vine, pruning those who abide in him (John 10:14–15, 15:2).

The church is messy because it’s filled with sinners. It is, nevertheless, the bride of Christ, purchased by his blood. So, I pray, for the cause of Christ, that he will lead churches to urgently reconsider what discipline means for their congregations. I pray for pastors, as undershepherds called by the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep (John 10:11), to know and love their sheep in his name and for his sake. May his Spirit lead you forward. Amen.

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^[1] Lynn R. Buzzard and Thomas S. Brandon Jr., Church Discipline and the Courts (Tyndale House: 1987), 43–47.

^[2] The level in which this was applied varied according to context. Lutherans were generally less inclined to develop formal structures for church discipline until Luther died and, overall, Reformers were more consistent in pursuing a systematic approach to discipline.

^[3] Eric J. Bargerhuff, Love That Rescues: God’s Fatherly Love in the Practice of Church Discipline (Wipf & Stock Publishers: 2010), 40.

^[4] Ronald E. Lutz, The Redemptive Power of Church Discipline (DMin diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1987), 126.

^[5] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, transl. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 2 (Westminster: 1960), 1230.

^[6] Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 101.

^[7] Ibid., 105.

^[8] Online page for the Heidelberg Catechism (1563 AD), Q&A 83: Question: What are the keys of the kingdom of heaven? (Matt 16:19). Answer: The preaching of the holy gospel, and Christian discipline, or excommunication out of the Christian church; by these two, the kingdom of heaven is opened to believers, and shut against unbelievers (John 21:23; Matt 18:15-18), accessed May 29, 2026, https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/heidelberg-catechism.

^[9] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 4, “Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation,” ed. John Bolt, transl. John Vriend (Baker Academic: 2004), 291.

^[10] Ibid, 312.

^[11] Jay E. Adams, Handbook of Church Discipline: A Right and Privilege of Every Church Member (Zondervan: 1974), 19.

^[12] See Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (The Banner of Truth Trust: 2018), 404.

^[13] Walter J. Chantry, “Caution in Church Discipline,” in Biblical Shepherding of God’s Sheep: The Use and Abuse of Authority by Church Officers, ed. Steven Martin(Day One Publications: 2010), 149.