Sunday morning I preached on church discipline from Titus 3, and I really wanted to share with the church the loving nature of church discipline from the most famous passage in the Bible on the subject, Matthew 18:15-17.  However, I just didn't have time, so I thought I'd post it here:

The first way church discipline is initiated is when someone who is sinned against goes to the offending person.  This is the Matthew 18 way: ^15 "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you [just one on one]. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. ^16 But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.' [so, you're going and getting help, but only the bare minimum of help, because you don't want to unnecessarily embarrass the brother].  17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church [last resort – hoping and praying that this brother will turn from his sin]; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

What's the goal in this type of church discipline?  Restoration – you go because there's something between the two of you and you want to make things right. 

Now, what do we typically do when someone sins against us?  Usually, we just avoid them.  If it's someone we don't live with, we just cut them out of our lives.  We don't have to deal with them, so we don't.  Or, if we're really aggressive, we take revenge.  We pay them back for what they've done to us.  If we do live with the person – if we're married to the person – we just stay mad at each other, and sometimes you get over it, sometimes you get divorced, and sometimes you just develop two separate lives and live under the same roof.

But none of those ways of dealing with the pain that comes when someone sins against you is a loving way of dealing with conflict.  Do you know what is a loving way of handling conflict?  Going to the person and telling him or her: what you are doing hurts me – please stop!  Love the person enough to go and tell them the truth. 

And if the person's stubborn, you love them enough to pursue them further – bring along someone you both trust to try and talk some sense into the person.  You both tell the person, "Please, stop this."  That's far more loving that just cutting the person off. 

You see, when you've been sinned against, it's okay to be angry.  It's not a sin to be angry – Paul says in Ephesians 4: "In your anger do not sin."  In fact, if you're not angry when someone you know acts in a self-destructive manner, you don't really love them.

"Anger isn't the opposite of love.  Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference."  Becky Pippert.  But if you're the type that justs cut someone off when they sin against you, all you've proven is that you don't really love them.  But if you pursue them and say, "Please, stop this, you're destroying our relationship and you're only hurting yourself," you're angry, but you're using your anger in a positive way – trying to love your friend.

I know of a married couple – the husband left his wife and started living with another woman.  The wife went to him and said, "Stop this, come home, I'm your wife – I want to live with you."  He wouldn't do it.  So, she went to the leaders at her church, and they went onto the next step of Matthew 18 church discipline.  And they loved him enough to go to him and say, "This is wrong – you cannot call yourself a Christian and live this way.  You've got to stop this."  And, after a period of time, he did – he left his girlfriend and returned home and even returned to the church.  All the relationships were restored.

Do all church discipline cases turn out so nice and neat, with restoration all around?  No – but don't you see?  It's far more likely it will turn out well if you love the person sinning enough to confront them than if you simply hate them by cutting them off, and never have anything to do with them again.  There is love behind biblical church discipline.