On Church Discipline & the Sacraments
Below is a talk I gave at the 2026 Athanasius Youth Conference in Winter Springs, FL. The theme of the Conference was the Sacraments and this was my assigned topic. I was encouraged to publish the manuscript. I hope it is edifying to you in some way.
Why is upholding church discipline necessary for the effectiveness of the sacraments across the Church?
I’ll tell you the answer up front.
Upholding church discipline is necessary for the effectiveness of the sacraments across the church because if baptism does what we say it does, and it does…and if the eucharist rightly administered is what we say it is when partaken of, church discipline affirms and confirms those truths.
Put another way, if we don’t uphold church discipline, we betray what we say about the effectiveness of the sacraments. If the sacraments are objective, meaning what’s true about them is true regardless of our feelings or whether we ever existed at all, then objective church discipline is a necessary consequence. It follows suit. It fits.
It is one of the ways the church affirms and confirms the Biblical teaching about the real-life objective nature of the covenant people of God. Because the sacraments unite us to Christ, nourish and strengthen our union with Christ, church discipline affirms and confirms that our union with Christ is objective.
So, how do we arrive at this conclusion. Other speakers at this conference are going to talk more about the Sacraments in depth, so I won’t try to belabor that point, but my topic deals more specifically with ecclesiological matters, so that’s where we need to start, we need to talk about the Church.
So, let’s talk about what we mean by the church. The inimitable Theologian James B. Jordan is ever helpful, insightful, and dare I say unmatched in his theological excursions on the doctrine of the church. I gathered much insight from his work.
First thing we need to lay out are the different ways the Bible talks about the Church. The Bible talks about the church as the people of God, as the people of God in their sabbatical (or religious) acts – meaning the things God requires of His people for true worship. And third, the Bible talks about the Church as a government, its authority and control.
We must get these settled in our understanding in order to see the role the sacraments play in the make-up and formation of the church and it’s then that we can understand the relationship between the sacraments and church discipline.
Now as the church is the people of God, this is stated in contrast to what? The enemies of God. So, we understand the world is made up of two peoples, the people of God and the enemies of God. The church is the people of God, and the rest are enemies of God who need to become the people of God. Dutch Reformed theologian and Pastor turned politician Abraham Kuyper called this the antithesis.
In the world you have always had this antithesis between the seed of the serpent, and the seed of the woman. And as history progresses and the Great Commission is further fulfilled, the people of God will eventually be all that exists. In the end, all Nations will come to mount Zion, and Christ will have put all His enemies under His feet. We’ll come back to how this antithesis between the people of God and the enemies of God relates to the sacraments in just a moment.
Secondly, the church as those who assemble to worship the true God are set in contrast to who? Those who worship falsely, be it a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, or a Secular Humanist who worships either the state or self, all of that is false worship of false gods, but the Church are those who carry out their sabbatical duties faithfully in worship of the true and living Father, Son, and Spirit.
These sabbatical activities are contrasted with culturative activities. Everything you do fall into those two categories. When you participate in worship on the Lord’s Day, or in some other lawfully called worship service, those are sabbatical, or worshipful activities. Everything else, your job, your hobbies, your family gatherings, civil gatherings, those are all culturative activities. The sabbatical activities inform, fuel, and provide the blueprint for all the others. Sabbatical activities is what people mean when they say, “I’m going to church on Sunday”. And then, how many have you heard someone respond with logical incoherence and say something like, “you don’t need to go to church, you ARE the church.” It’s a category error. One is talking about the church as the people of God. The other is talking about the church in her sabbatical activities as an assembly.
The third way the Bible talks about the church is the church as a government. In total, there are 4 fundamental governments instituted by God, over which King Jesus rules: The first is self-government. Second, there is the civil government, which bears the sword against the wrongdoer. Gen 6 and rom 13. Third is the sphere of the family, which bears the rod. Deut. 6, Heb. 13, Prov 22:15, Prov 23:13-14.
Fourth, there is the church government, and they are given the keys to the kingdom in order to bind and loose on earth what is bound and/or loosed in heaven.
Now, in this sense, the government of the church is not over against other governments in the world. The government of the church is not placed above all other government.
Now, there is a sense by which the church government is superior, and that is in its sabbatical and prophetic role as the herald of the Gospel.
Scottish theologian John Murray put it this way: “To the church is committed the task of proclaiming the whole counsel of God and, therefore, the counsel of God as it bears upon the responsibility of all persons and institutions. While the church is not to discharge the functions of other institutions such as the state and the family, nevertheless it is charged to define what the functions of these institutions are, and the lines of demarcation by which they are distinguished.”
To summarize, the church isn’t to take charge of the civil and family spheres, but because the church is specifically tasked to proclaim the Word of God, it proclaims God’s definitions for those spheres and proclaims what it looks like to glorify God in those spheres.
Murray continues: “It is also charged to declare and inculcate the duties which devolve upon them. Consequently, when the civil magistrate trespasses the limits of his authority, it is incumbent upon the church to expose and condemn such a violation of his authority. When laws are proposed or enacted which are contrary to the law of God, it is the duty of the church to oppose them and expose their iniquity.”
So, while there is parity among the spheres of society, the church holds a privileged role because to the church alone God has tasked the church heralds of His Word to all people and institutions. Understanding these different terms for the church is crucial as we get into the topic of how the sacraments and church discipline relate to each other. Since the government of the church is tasked with upholding and carrying out discipline within the body of Christ the question naturally arises:
How does the government of the church know who is under their care? How can they know who are the people of God? The Apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians that we don’t judge outsiders, it is only those inside the church, church as the people of God, who we are to judge. 1 Cor 5. The first way you can perceive a Christian is behavior. Christ said you can tell a tree by its fruits…Paul said it is only by the Spirit that one declares Christ is Lord.
How do we perceive an assembly of God’s people conducting sabbatical activity? Word and sacrament…you can tell because it’s a gathering of people who confess Christ and their intention is to worship God, be taught from His Word, and strengthened through the eucharist. How do we discern the church as a government? What makes the church as government a visible and objective reality?
There are two dominant views to this: 1) catholic ecclesiology & 2) separatist ecclesiology
1. the catholic ecclesiology understands that Christians are all part of the mystical body of Christ throughout all the world. We of course believe that our little corner of the kingdom is the truest form, but we don’t believe that only those in our group are true Christians. We recognize the legitimacy of other churches even if they do things a little different than us, or if they are downright weird. We understand that we can’t see the roll of the elect. That is impossible for man. So, we can’t make election the basis for acknowledging members of the body of Christ. It’s a fool’s errand.
The church has been traditionally and historically defined by those who preach the Word, administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and keep a membership roll. As far as the sacraments are concerned, they publicly identify covenant membership. These are all very objective things, things you can see with your eyes. Of course, within the body of Christ there are varying degrees of faithful practice, but nevertheless, these are helpful and objective ways to identify a true church.
2. The second position, separatist ecclesiology, they attempt to only recognize the TRUE church of those who are elect. Their mission is to have an individual regenerant only membership. They want REAL Christians only…none of those fakers or hypocrites.
Well, that would be nice. Except, mankind is unable to see the heart and the fact that God has kept secret whose names are on the list of the elect. So, what the separatist churches end up doing is developing some sort of criteria for membership in order to determine whether a person is really regenerate or not.
Many times this takes the form in some kind of distinctive cultural traits that they deem evidence that someone is TRULY Christian…they homeschool like we do…they hold this confession like we do…they have the same approach to politics like we do…they operate their home like we do…often tertiary positions become topics worthy of discipline because the group is defined by them. To allow difference is to betray the fundamentals of the group.
When Christ and His covenant aren’t the center, something else takes its place. There is an inescapable concept here. It’s not whether but which. It’s not whether sacraments will identify the group, but which ones…true sacraments, or false ones. This is why you’ll often find silly practices like altar calls or writing sins on a sticky note and nailing it on the cross setup on the stage…and some of things aren’t altogether bad…but they are not the covenant rites…they aren’t biblical sacraments; they are not commanded by Scripture.
When it comes to church discipline, that means people aren’t discipline for forsaking Christ and His covenant (which is identified by participation in the covenant rituals), people are discipline for not conforming to the norms of the group.
Separatist employ subjective criteria to identify who is part of the invisible church. As James B. Jordan quipped, many of these churches become more and more invisible as they disregard the physical and objective nature of Christ’s body.
So, how does the Bible identify who is the people of God. How can we tell whether we are to treat someone as a Christian or not?
One of the first things we should reckon with is that the Bible does not divide the church up into visible and invisible…where the invisible is the TRUE church…and the visible is an unfortunate physical reality of regenerate and unregenerate mixed together. That’s very platonic thinking, that is not biblical.
God address His people as a whole knowing there were those who did not have faith. Romans 2 and Romans 9 are examples of this. The people of God were all those who were circumcised…and those with true faith were those who persevered to the end. We see that true faith is proved through faithfulness.
Terms like invisible and visible are relative to man’s perspective. We say invisible because WE can’t see every Christian on earth right now or that has ever lived. God can, of course. Visible to us means those Christians that we can see. A better paradigm that encompasses biblical teaching much better is to distinguish between the historical and eschatological church.
Historical church is what we humans see and read about in the Scriptures and church history. But as we know some will fall away, some will prove not to possess true faith, and there are elect that haven’t even been born yet. So, the historical church undergoes change. But in the end, on the last day, the eschatological church will arrive in full, and that number is the number of the elect chosen before foundations of the earth were laid.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem; He wept over unregenerate people. What God has done is He has chosen to make history real to Him and He chooses to work out His redemption in relation to history. God choose to do this. God treats His people objectively, as if they were elect. So, then we deal with the historical church not according to election, but according to perseverance in the faith.
Therefore, in the event that someone is not persevering in the faith, the church as government is tasked with excommunication, the church can bind the faithless person. We can do this because heaven has already declared that those who steal, lie, commit adultery, murder are not permitted in the kingdom of God, so when those who do that and are impenitent, the church can declare them apostate. The church must declare them to have walked away from the faith. The church declares what God has done.
The keys of the kingdom are what most strikingly distinguish the church sphere from the others. The other spheres to some degree herald God’s word so there must be something else to draw that line.
The keys, the power of the church, are primarily the sacraments. The officers of the church admit or exclude from the sealing ordinances, of sealing rituals within the church.
Baptism admits one into the body of Christ, uniting them to Christ, permitting them to come to His table. The Lord’s Supper shows forth union and communion not only with Christ but with His people. This is why it is called excommunication…you are removing that person from communion.
The person under discipline is removed from the Lord’s table because unrepentant sin separates you from God. To allow them to the table would be to distort the Scriptures and live a lie. Paul was emphatically clear that discipline occurs to the one who calls themselves brother but is impenitent. What discipline does is remove the label Christian from those who refuse to remove it from their bio.
The person under discipline is still offered everything an outsider would…they can come to church, they can hear the word preached, they are greeted warmly, but fellowship and communion is on the church’s terms, not on their terms.
To once again partake of the sacrament which shows forth fellowship with God, the one under disciple must show that they have repented of their sin and have been reconciled to God.
Part of why church discipline is necessary since the sacraments are effective is for protecting the church from scandal, to protect the person in sin from eating and drinking condemnation unto themselves, to protect God’s honor, and to maintain the purity of the bride.
Church discipline is an element of the church’s prophetic voice. Just as the sacraments are didactic and catechetical, meaning they teach us something, so does church discipline.
Church discipline presupposes sacramental efficacy. You only discipline those you know are “brother”…and it is by those objective means that we call anyone Christian.
You wouldn’t discipline someone who isn’t baptized…someone who isn’t a member of the people of God…someone who isn’t united to Christ. Just like you wouldn’t as a parent discipline the kid down the street unless deputized by their parents…just like the mayor of Orlando wouldn’t bear the sword against citizens of Atlanta. This overstep of juridical boundaries is what led the Colonists to declare their independence from Britain. With church discipline, you wouldn’t discipline an outsider, and you wouldn’t discipline a member of another church. Church discipline is necessary if there is going to be consistency in our objective understanding of the church.
Faithful practice of church discipline affirms and confirms the fact that Christianity is an embodied reality of salvation from sin through the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Son of God who took on flesh. Refusing to take church discipline seriously in most cases occurs in churches that also do not take the sacraments seriously. Disregarding both often goes hand in hand, and often in churches with separatist ecclesiology.
Something that makes church discipline across the church difficult are separatist thinking churches who do practice discipline, but they discipline for trivial matters…he throws the football with his son on the Sabbath…he believes in Calvinism now…he doesn’t hold to a pre-tribulation rapture view anymore…he believes in infant baptism now…some of these things I’ve seen before. Church discipline only ought to be carried out for sins clearly stated in the Scriptures. Not for trivialities, but for refusing to turn from sin and embrace Christ.
As we begin to wrap up the lecture portion, something we need to remember is that church discipline is not to be punitive…it is not carried because a sin has been committed. Church discipline is carried out when repentance is refused. Discipline is for the obstinate and for refusing to stop calling themselves a Christian while refusing to let go of their sin. The issue in discipline is impenitence. Is there a fight? Even if the Christian is struggling and losing, they are not a subject for discipline.
Christ did not come for the healthy, He came for the lost. So, if Christ has invited the broken and sinful to come, then the church cannot kick out those that Christ has welcomed. The key is that when you come, you submit to Christ dealing with you. Coming to Christ so that your brokenness is healed, that your sin is forgiven, that you are brought up out of the miry clay.
Those who struggle against sin, which means all of us, should have no worry about church discipline. It should be a great encouragement to know that God loves us so much that He will never approve of you traveling down destruction Blvd.
Again, Church discipline goes hand in hand with the sacraments, it is essential for the health of the body, and it is an invitation to blessing, it is an invitation to Christ.
The person under discipline is cut off from the body and blood of Christ at the Lord’s Table, the sacrament that seals the promises made in God’s word and communicates all the benefits of the resurrection of Christ through the power of the Spirit. They are denied this blessing and so implied is an invitation to come back to Jesus Christ. They are denied the option to redefine the Christian faith according to their whims. Church discipline refuses to acknowledge their redefinition of what faithful Christianity looks like, and the church maintains its position as the buttress of truth.
May the God the Father, who has given all authority to His Son Christ in heaven and on earth reinvigorate the Church with a full world and life view of the faith that appreciates and acknowledges both the sacraments and church discipline as vital for the health of the bride.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Question and Answer time:
One final note: One of the ways we see the breakdown between churches is the failure to acknowledge communicant status and/or a status of discipline. Often someone comes under discipline, and they just go down the street and join that church, and that church doesn’t do any follow up or check. Or they disregard the discipline of one church because they wouldn’t have disciplined for that. But normally churches that have an individualistic and separatist ecclesiology won’t care what another church did.
Bibliography of sorts, these are the fields I gleaned from are gathered my thoughts from:
On Christian Worldview Lectures by James B. Jordan
Collected Writings of John Murray Volume 1 by John Murray
Handbook of Christian Discipline by Jay Adams
Mother Kirk by Douglas Wilson
The Kingdom and the Power by Peter J. Leithart
The Baptized Body by Peter J. Leithart
Sermon: Church Discipline and Life (1 Corinthians 5:9-13) by Douglas Wilson
Drop your thoughts in the comments. The Lord bless you and keep you!
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