Last week in our Local Church sermon series, we talked about how God is a loving father who disciplines His children for the sake of restoration, healing, and holiness for further intimacy with Himself. This week, we saw how God calls his church to loving discipline as he would.

We can think about church discipline in two ways one is formative church discipline and the other restorative church discipline. Formative church discipline is the continual encouragement believers give one another as they seek to grow in holiness. It could also be called discipleship. It is how we protect each other's intimacy in our relationship with God.

Restorative church discipline is the corrective care the church gives when a believer persists in unrepentant sin. Restorative church discipline is the process in which the church responds to unrepentant sin that culminates in removing a person from the membership of the church and from participation in the Lord's Supper with the desire of seeing that person repent and return to Christ. Restorative church discipline is not forbidding them from coming to the church. It says the church cannot affirm this person's profession of faith. Restorative church discipline should always follow the instructions of Matthew 18 private correction, small group clarification, Church admonition, and Church ex-communication.

In both ways of church discipline, the purpose of church discipline is to lovingly restore a member back to intimate fellowship with God and His church.

Resources:

• Article - 5 Questions about Church Discipline by Jonathan Leeman

• Article - Primer on Church Discipline by Geoff Chang

• Treasuring Christ Church Covenant

Reflection Questions:

• How does church discipline reflect God’s character?

• Why is it important for the church to practice church discipline?