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Is All Discipline Negative?
Doing the Math
There are both positive and negative aspects to church discipline
as well.
- Some church discipline is indeed negative or corrective - warning,
rebuke, admonition, excommunication. These are all designed to awaken the
sinning member to the reality and gravity of continuing in their sin instead
of repenting of it.
- Some church discipline is actually positive or formative - teaching,
preaching, modeling, discipling, even implementing biblical structures of
accountability in the church.
- Positive forms of church discipline are all designed to strengthen
members against the seductive power of sin by teaching biblical principles
and modeling practical applications that cultivate godliness and lessen the
likelihood of being overcome by temptation.
Even negative aspects of church discipline are ultimately
positive!
- This is true because in all forms of corrective discipline,
the goal is a positive goal, not a negative one.
- The goal is never to pronounce the church's condemnation of
a person's soul - that is not the church's prerogative. This is what Jesus
means by "Judge not, lest ye be judged."
- Rather, the proper goal of exercising corrective discipline
is always to rescue a sheep from falling over a precipice and to bring it
back into the protective proximity of the Good Shepherd. Thus, all godly corrective
discipline is redemptive in motive and intent.
- A positive corollary to redemption of the individual is the
protection or restoration of the corporate witness of the church in the community
after being soiled by a publicly known sin committed by a church member.
- Therefore, even negative or corrective church discipline is
ultimately positive, because its motive and intent are redemptive at both
the individual and corporate levels.
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