When Paul says to “restore” in Galatians 6:1 he uses a word that means to put something back into its proper condition. What can more perfectly convey the goal of church discipline than that picture? Believers are never going to be perfect, and when we get off track we need help being put back into position. Discipline restores sinners, protects all involved from the collateral damage of sin, and promotes the purity of the church. Church discipline brings glory to God when it follows God’s prescribed order. 

If you had to make a short list of church practices that have fallen on hard times, “church discipline” has to be near the top. Whether the unpopular nature of confronting sin, or the way people seem to run away from conflict, to the underdeveloped art of conflict resolution, church discipline has become nearly non-existent.
Yet we don’t apply this approach in other contexts like sports, the arts, or physical fitness. You would fire a coach who did not tell players the truth or confront dysfunction on a team. You would laugh at the notion that one could become a concert-performing violinist while ignoring practice. You would never hire a trainer who lets you eat whatever you want, scroll your phone during workouts, and watch movies from a chair while the treadmill speeds along with no human on its track! And yet, how can we tolerate church leaders who refuse to confront sin and church environments where discipline is not taken seriously?
At the same time, I do wonder if one of the reasons for the lack of practicing church discipline in the church today is an issue of ignorance, rather than indifference. Furthermore, perhaps there is a stigma of shame because church discipline has not been practiced with a spirit of love and gentleness.
Whether you’ve never seen it practiced, or been hurt by poorly handled discipline processes, I want to help you think through both the what and the how of church discipline. Here are 10 truths that every church leader and Christian should think deeply about:
1: Only for professing believers
(MATTHEW 18:15; GALATIANS 6:1; 1 CORINTHIANS 5)
The outside world may drive you crazy, but the primary goal of church discipline is to exercise loving judgment upon unrepentant sinners who profess to be a part of the church and see them restored. The world is not the subject of discipline, the church is. In 1 Corinthians 5:12-13, Paul is rebuking the Corinthians for tolerating sexual sin in their midst. He exhorts, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”
Perhaps to Christians who spend more time yelling about Taylor Swift (and believe me, I find her problematic!) Paul might say: Hey, maybe spend more time dealing with sin in your own ranks, rather than barking about the world being the world.
2: Involves as few people as possible
(MATTHEW 18:15-16)
In Matthew 18:15-16 Jesus makes it clear that church discipline should involve as few people as possible and that things should be resolved privately, long before ever saying something publicly. This is convicting because we are often tempted to go public before going private. A church that practices discipline faithfully will do so with discretion as much as possible.
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The heart of Christian worship is the act of asking for forgiveness of sin because the shed blood of Jesus alone washes it away, and because the spotless righteousness of Christ covers our unrighteousness.  This conviction of sin arises from a reading of God’s law with opportunity given for all those present to confess their sins, before hearing a biblical word of pardon and assurance.  This should tied to the present intercessory work of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of the Father interceding for his people, making a defense for his own before the Father (1 John 1:7-2:2).

For the Reformers, Recovering the Gospel Also Meant Recovery of Proper Worship [1]. 
The Reformers understood that the recovery of the gospel was directly connected to proper Christian worship.  John Calvin, for one, saw his own conversion and subsequent work of reform tied directly to the removal of all forms of Roman idolatry (especially the mass) from Christian worship.  The centrality of the gospel to the life of the church must be made manifest in the pure worship of God.  This meant a Word-centered liturgy in which biblical texts were preached upon, biblical exhortations and commands were made clear, and biblical promises made to the people of God were to be read for their comfort and assurance.  As one writer puts it, “the recovery of the gospel in the Reformation was ultimately a worship war–a war against the idols, a war for the pure worship of God.”[2]  Our worship must reflect our gospel, and our gospel must define our worship.
The Reformers Sought to “Reform” the Church’s Worship
While affirming Sola Scriptura and striving to base all liturgical reform on biblical principles of worship, the Reformers carefully considered the practices of the ancient church and the teaching of the church fathers when revising the liturgies they inherited.  The goal was to reform the church’s ancient liturgies by striping them of all unbiblical additions, not to compose entirely new liturgies from scratch.  “New” and “contemporary” when used in the Reformed tradition in connection to worship, are therefore best understood as “reforming” (i.e., removing all unbiblical accretions, as well as adding those things which are missing), not replacing the ancient liturgies with contemporary fads grounded in popular preferences.
Martin Luther stated that his intention was to not to abolish, but to cleanse the liturgies of “wicked additions” (i.e., Roman inventions) and recover their proper (pious) use.  Calvin too sought to remove Roman additions made to the liturgies of the ancient church, which is why his Genevan liturgy (The Form of Ecclesiastical Prayers) was subtitled “According to the Custom of the Ancient Church.”  Like Luther, he was no innovator, but a “Reformer.”  It was said of Heinrich Bullinger (the Reformed pastor in Zurich and a contemporary of Calvin) that he restored “all things to the first and simplest form of the most ancient, and indeed apostolic tradition.”[3]  It is fair to say that “tradition mattered to the Reformers.  It was the living faith of the dead, not the dead faith of the living.” [4] 
Returning to the ancient ways meant, in part, incorporating the reading of the Ten Commandments (or “law” texts from throughout the Scriptures), using the Lord’s Prayer (either recited or as a model for prayer), reciting the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds, God’s people thereby confessing the orthodox faith while effectively uniting the church of the present to the people of God of the past—the so-called “cloud of witnesses” mentioned in Hebrews 12:1.
Reformed Worship Is Catholic but Not Roman
The Reformers took seriously the charge from the church father Cyprian (c. 210-258), “You can no longer have God for your Father, if you do have not the church for your mother.”[5]  Calvin expanded on Cyprian’s comment, explaining,
Let us learn even from the simple title `mother’ how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her.  For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels (Matthew 22:30).  Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives.  Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation, as Isaiah (Isaiah 37:32)  and Joel (2:32) testify.[6] 
For Calvin, one finds the Word of God proclaimed and the sacraments properly administered in the church.  Since word and sacrament are essential to a healthy Christian life, the Christian must seek these things where they can be found.  They cannot be found in false churches (i.e., Rome), nor in our age in entrepreneurial churches which are the institutional facade of their charismatic leader, nor in the various so-called “ministries” which mimic the church’s biblical activities but exist apart from all ties to local churches.  Those who claim to be Christians, but who have no connection to a local church (or who do not see the importance of joining a local church) need to be reminded that the New Testament knows nothing of a professing Christian who is not a member (or seeking to become one) of a faithful congregation where the proper elements of worship can be found.
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Worship in this life that is shaped by our covenant relationship with God through the gospel, the spiritual realities of heavenly worship, sanctifies us into a pure church who live in light of that relationship as we wait for our blessed hope. By reenacting what we are in Christ, Christian worshipers become what we are.

Though during this present age kingdom and cultus (God’s worshiping community) are separated, God intends one day to join them together under the rule of his Anointed One. The question for us is, of course, where we currently fit in this plan of God for a holy theocracy, a perfect union of kingdom and cultus under the kingly rule and priestly ministry of the Second Adam.
The book of Hebrews addresses both kingdom and cultus in this present age. First, the author quotes God’s declaration in Psalm 8 that he intends for man to exercise regal dominion over all the earth; however, “At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him” (Heb 2:8). The First Adam failed, and still all things are not yet in subjection to the son of man. But, “because of the suffering of death,” Jesus is “crowned with glory and honor” (Heb 2:9)—he has earned the right to rule; Christ is, as Psalm 110 states, presently seated at the Father’s right hand until the Father makes his enemies his footstool. The perfect eternal kingdom has been promised and already ensured, but it is not yet a consummated reality. Christ sovereignly rules over all creation as the Son of God, and Christ presently rules over his redeemed people, but the consummation of his rule over all things on earth as the Son of Man will happen when he comes again, when “the kingdom of this world”—that is, the common grace kingdom—“will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ” (Rev 11:15).
In other words, if we want to look to the Old Testament for an analogy to our present situation as Christians in this age, we are more like the sojourning patriarchs and the exiled Hebrews than either the Edenic or Mosaic holy theocracies. And, of course, this is exactly how the New Testament portrays us. Peter specifically calls us “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11). “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul tells us (Phil 3:20); we are “citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph 2:19). Like Abraham on his pilgrimage or Daniel in Babylon, Christians participate in the common grace aspects of the earthly kingdoms in which we dwell, but we “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb 11:16); we long for the heavenly Jerusalem above our highest joy (Ps 137:6). And that heavenly Jerusalem will one day descend to the earth, uniting kingdom and cultus as was God’s intention from the beginning.
Yet Hebrews also reveals to us the nature of our worship in this age as well. The author proclaims at the end of chapter 12,
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, 23 and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, 24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Heb 12:22–24)
This is the heavenly palace/temple Isaiah and John envisioned, the place where God himself sits enthroned, surrounded by heavenly beings.” To this higher kingdom where God reigns Christian worshipers come to the reality, to the true worship of heaven itself. Paul describes this reality for Christians in Ephesians 2:6 when he states that God has “raised us up with [Christ] and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Christ is seated in heaven as the king/priest, and since we are in him by faith, we are with him there. And he tells us how just a few verses later in Ephesians 2:18: “For through [Christ] we . . . have access in one Spirit to the Father.” We have access to the Father because in one Spirit through Christ, we are actually there, in the presence of God in heaven.
Pure Worship
This biblical understanding situates us in this present age as dual citizens. As members of the human race we are citizens of common grace earthly kingdoms, and so we participate as such. But ultimately we are a called out cultic community with “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [us], who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet 1:4–5). Consequently, as Peter goes on to say, “as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. . . . Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Pet 1:15, 17–18).
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