This article is the thirty-third installment in our series "Christian, What Do You Believe: The Belgic Confession of Faith." Find the whole series here.
We have a complicated relationship with rules. Our sinful nature rebels against restrictions. Saint Augustine tells a story from his pre-conversion life about how he and some friends stole pears from a neighbor. They didn’t need food. Their “pleasure lay” simply “in doing what was not allowed.” Like young Augustine, we dislike boundaries. But we also recognize the need for good rules. Augustine asks, “What thief can with [calmness] endure being robbed by another thief?”
Even in the church, we need regulations to help us faithfully serve the God of order who calls us to follow him according to his will. So it is “useful and good for those who govern the churches to establish and set up a certain order among themselves for maintaining the body of the church” (BC 31). Church leaders promote God’s honor in the church through two types of ordinances. The first we might call “house rules” and the second “holiness rules.”
House Rules in the Church
Every healthy family has house rules. Parents enforce bedtimes, regulate how much media is consumed by family members, and screen the friends their children associate with. These house rules are different than God’s rules—they aren’t universally required, especially in the specifics—but they are consistent with God’s rules. And they help families maintain good goals like restfulness, time-stewardship, and safety.
Churches also need proper house rules “to maintain harmony and unity.” Church “house rules” answer important questions not directly stipulated by Scripture. When and how often should members gather for worship on the Lord’s Day? How frequently and in what manner should the Lord’s Supper be celebrated? Which songs should be sung in corporate worship? How should congregants be protected from potential predators? How should leaders keep an accurate and useful record of their meetings? Without house rules, all things could not “be done decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40).
But church house rules also need rules. Church leaders “ought always to guard against deviating from what Christ, our only Master, has ordained for us.” What guidelines can help church house rules honor Scripture?
- Church bylaws and other formal decisions must be applications of biblical principles. Scripture, for example, doesn’t require churches to have a benevolence fund, but they must “remember the poor” (Gal. 2:10), so churches that insist on such a fund are following Scripture’s order. Christ also requires church discipline. But he doesn’t give us the congregational bylaws or denominational church orders that outline the procedures of church discipline.
- House rules must not bind consciences on morally indifferent matters. They must not “[teach] as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matt. 15:9; cf. Col. 2:16–23). So, for example, it would be ungodly for church elders to either forbid or require the raising of hands in worship, or the eating of meat in church calendar seasons.
- House rules may not be personal. No one person may, for example, impose the use of a certain songbook or Bible translation; these decisions belong to the body of elected leaders serving under Christ (see Acts 15).
- House rules may not be secret. Accessible procedures are like good fences, they clearly outline how the church is ordered. Well-ordered churches resist proliferating unwritten or unspoken expectations.
Church house rules require balance. To enjoy communal life, we voluntarily relinquish some personal liberty, as in a healthy marriage (see 1 Cor. 7:32–35). Well-ordered church life balances personal freedom and order, resisting both tyranny and anarchy. To achieve this balance, only those rules that are “truly useful and beneficial for the congregation as a whole ought to” be enacted. And all members must “[restrain] their liberty and refuse to disturb the peace of the church by agitating about non-essentials.”
Honoring God requires biblical house rules. But another rule is also needed.
Holiness Rules in the Church
The goal to “maintain harmony and unity and to keep all obedience to God” requires “excommunication, with all it involves.” The word excommunication is not found in Scripture. But it contrasts the reception of disciples into church communion. As members are received into fellowship with a vow of loyalty to Christ the King, so they must be “removed from among” the congregation for stubbornly refusing to honor Christ (1 Cor. 5:2).
And while this discipline may seem harsh, God means it to be a blessing to his church (Heb. 12:11). Congregations will only flourish as they practice “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). To live the way Jesus expects, we need spiritual leaders who will care about our walk with the Lord even when we don’t. Through the practice of discipline, leaders refuse to look the other way when sheep wander from the safety of God’s flock (Matt. 18:12). And even when sheep insist on wandering, church leaders must not allow unrepentant sin to spread (1 Cor. 5:13).
But excommunication is not the goal. It is an extreme remedy for sin. We hope that less-invasive correction will work. So we must understand “all that [excommunication] involves,” and all that should precede it, and avoid it except as a final measure.
First, Scripture demands self-discipline. Paul wrote, “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest … I myself should become disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27; cf. Matt. 18:8–9). Christ gives us his word and Spirit to convict us of our sin and train us in godliness so that we might “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which [we] have been called” (Eph. 4:1), thus preventing the need for outside intervention.
Second, Scripture demands communal discipline. Sometimes church members need the gentle restoration of spiritually-minded fellow-members (Gal. 6:1). Every believer has the duty to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2). Interpersonal discipline means pursuing unity and peace, lovingly confronting others, and resolving conflicts biblically. When receiving discipline, we practice the humility of little children (Matt. 20:4), embracing loving admonitions with maturity and graciousness.
Third, Scripture requires formal church discipline. When private admonitions fail, church shepherds must intervene. They prayerfully plead with the wayward to be reconciled to Christ and escape his wrath. They warn of the terrible danger that awaits all those who refuse to repent. And when necessary, Christ’s under-shepherds must officially pronounce the impenitent to be outside the communion of the saints (Matt. 18:17), hoping that this extreme remedy will shake them into repentance that they “may be saved in the day of the Lord” (1 Cor. 5:5).
God desires order and holiness in the church; so must we. In Christ, he gives us all we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), including orderly guidelines. Rules lack the power to make people holy, but they do testify to God’s kindness, and they can be the guardrails that prevent us from falling off course as we press on to glory and to God, our exceeding joy.
Footnotes
Peter Y. De Jong, The Church’s Witness to the World (Pella, IA: Pella Publishing Inc., 1962), 2.323.
