*Editor’s Note: The following blog post is the second installment of a three-part series authored by Pastor Ben Habegger. Click here to read more installments: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Honing Careful Distinctions in Our Application

The elder distinguished the creation and common grace institution of marriage from the redemptive and special grace institution of the local church…. In general, the elder explained, the family members of a disciplined individual should continue to fulfill the biblical obligations of family life (e.g., Eph. 6:1–3; 1 Tim. 5:8). And surely this would include the duty of children to eat with their parents, or husbands with their wives.[1]

This advice from Jonathan Leeman (related by him as a hypothetical story) is sound as far as it goes. However, the more difficult question is how to relate to excommunicated family or relatives who are not in the same household (such as grown children who are not or should no longer be dependents of their parents). A careful distinction should be made between our duty to those in our household and our normal social duties to relatives by blood or marriage. For instance, while taking care to avoid the extrabiblical binding of consciences, I personally would advise church members to generally avoid including excommunicated relatives (such as adult children) in family meals or celebrations (such as birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays). While this is certainly counter-cultural (and likely to be viewed as bigoted, cruel hatred by our society), it seems fully in line with the apostolic teaching on both the household and the church.[2]

In the Westminster Assembly’s Directory for Church Government, we read this:

After the denunciation of this sentence [of excommunication] the people are to be warned, that they hold him to be cast out of the communion of the church, and to shun all communion with him. Nevertheless, excommunication dissolveth not the bonds of civil or natural relations, nor exempt from the duties belonging to them.[3]

This isolated statement by the Westminster Assembly could leave room for disagreement over the duties of “civil or natural relations”. Brethren can agree on the statement while differing on individual applications. The same could be said regarding the statement below by Francis Turretin, the seventeenth-century Genevan scholastic.

This ought not to be extended to political society and to charitable and moral duties simply or other things due and necessary from our vocation in the economic or political state, as the Romanists wish; as if wives should be prohibited from their husbands, children from parents, servants from masters, subjects from rendering obedience to excommunicated princes, to which they are bound by the law of nature. For excommunication cannot sever the natural and moral bonds by which men are mutually held together. Rather this separation ought to be extended only to those parts of intercourse which would seem to imply connivance or approbation.[4]

Much as we might admire the eighteenth-century British Particular Baptist John Gill, I am persuaded that he muddies the waters here regarding the scriptural interpretation of excommunication:

There are various passages of scripture, which are thought to respect excommunication, or exclusion from church-communion; which seem to have nothing to do with it, and are not to be considered as rules to proceed by, with respect unto it. As,

1st, The words in Matt. xviii. 17. Let him be unto thee as an heathen man, and a publican; which was no form of excommunication, neither with Jews nor with Christians. Not with Jews, for that with them was expressed by casting out of the synagogue, especially in the times of Christ: nor with Christians, with whom it was after signified by putting away wicked men from among them; between an excommunicated person, and an heathen man and publican, there was no agreement; for an heathen man and a publican, however considered by the Jews, were very familiarly conversed with by Christ and his apostles; with whom they frequently eat and drank, and Christ is called a friend of such; whereas, with an excommunicate person it was not allowed to eat, nor indeed to have any familiar conversation with them, as little as possible. Moreover, the words are not a rule to the church, how that was to proceed towards a person who behaved in the manner described; for it is not said, If he neglect to hear the church, let him be to the church as an heathen man and a publican; but it is a rule to the offended person how he should behave to the offender, under such circumstances; Let him be to thee, &c. and the design of the whole is to justify the offended party, that when he has taken all the steps directed to; as to reprove the offending party privately, and then with two or more, who would be witnesses of his obstinacy, and then lay the whole affair before the church or congregation, which, with the Jews, never consisted of less than ten persons; so that he would be abundantly vindicated in behaving towards such a man as… a worthless neighbour, as the Jews used to call such, and to look upon himself as freed from all brotherly and neighbourly offices towards him.[5]

Here Gill engages in strained interpretation because he misses Jesus’ point in Matthew 18:17b. The point is that the people of God did not recognize the Gentiles or tax collectors (viewed as apostate Jews) as part of the Lord’s congregation. The emphasis is on a stark change of status. This does not conflict with Paul’s further description of social exclusion in 1 Corinthians 5. True, Jesus was accused of social intercourse with “tax collectors and sinners”, but largely because he received any and all sinners who were attracted by his gospel message (and thus was willing to violate the extrabiblical dictates of the Pharisees). The prime example is Levi/Matthew the tax collector, who forsook his tax-collecting profession to follow Jesus and then hosted a banquet for Jesus along with Levi’s own disreputable associates (in a decidedly evangelistic context).

Proceeding from his aforementioned interpretation, Gill continues:

Nor does it [excommunication] affect the temporal estate and civil affairs of a man; it does not subject him to fines, imprisonment, or death; it does not interfere with the business of the civil magistrate; nor does it break in upon the natural and civil relations between man and wife, parents and children, masters and servants; nor forbid attendance on the external ministry of the word.[6]

While I mostly agree with Gill’s comments on men’s temporal estates and civil affairs, I must take exception to the supporting interpretation he gave of Matthew 18:17.

Again we encounter the confusion of categories as well as an oversimplified choice (merely between religious and civil consequences, making no distinction between general civility and social closeness) presented by the esteemed Dutch Reformed theologian and Princetonian Geerhardus Vos:

The consequences of discipline are not civil, as if one may not have any sort of contact in civil life with a censured or excommunicated person. Paul has expressly warned against this excess in 1 Corinthians 5:9–12. One must have no religious fellowship with such person. In a religious respect, he must be as a pagan or publican. But one may certainly work with a pagan and a publican.[7]

Vos misconstrues Paul’s point and confuses categories. Paul actually warns against treating all worldlings as we ought to treat an excommunicated person. We find better clarity regarding 1 Corinthians 5 given by the British Particular Baptist Benjamin Keach: “And this [delivery unto Satan] being done, he is to be esteemed to be not better than a Heathen Man, or Publican, or as an evil Person, and not to have so much as intimate civil Communion withal.”[8] Keach is absolutely correct. Intimate civil communion, social closeness, is forbidden, not merely religious activities together.

Compatible with Keach is this extended treatment from the eighteenth-century New England Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards:

They are cut off also from the society that Christians have together as brethren. Thus, we are commanded to withdraw from such (2Th 3:6). To avoid them (Rom 16:17). To have no company with them (2Th 3:14). And to treat them as heathens and publicans (Mat 18:17). The people of God are, as much as may be, to withdraw from them as to that common society that is proper to subsist among Christians. Not that they should avoid speaking to them on any occasion—all manner and all degrees of society are not forbidden, but all unnecessary society or such as is wont to be among those who delight in the company of each other. We should not associate ourselves with them [in order] to make them our companions. Yea, there ought to be such an avoiding of their company as may show great dislike.

Particularly, we are forbidden such a degree of associating ourselves with them as there is in making them our guests at our tables or in being their guests at their tables. [This] is manifest in the text, where we are commanded to have no company with them, no not to eat. That this respects not eating with them at the Lord’s Supper, but a common eating, is evident by the words. The eating here forbidden is one of the lowest degrees of keeping company, which are forbidden. “Keep no company with such an one,” saith the apostle, “no not to eat.” [This is] as much as to say, “No, not in so low a degree as to eat with him”…Saith he, “If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator…With such an one keep no company, no not to eat.” This makes it most apparent that the apostle doth not mean eating at the Lord’s Table…Here naturally arise two questions:

Question 1. How far is the church to treat excommunicated persons as they would those who never have been of the visible church? I answer, they are to treat them as heathens, excepting in these two things, in which there is a difference to be observed.

1. They are to have a greater concern for their welfare still, than if they never had been brethren, and therefore ought to take more pains by admonitions and otherwise to reclaim and save them, than they are obliged to take towards those who have been always heathens. This seems manifest by that of the apostle: “And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother” (2Th 3:14-15). The consideration that he hath been a brother heretofore and that we have not finally cast him off from that relation, but that we are still hoping and using means for his recovery, obliges us to concern ourselves more for the good of his soul than for those with whom we never had any such connection. [Because of this, we] pray for him and take pains by admonishing him. The very reason of the thing shows the same. For this very ordinance of excommunication is used for this end, that we may thereby obtain the good of the person excommunicated. Surely, we should be more concerned for the good of those who have been our brethren and who are now under the operation of means used by us for their good, than for those with whom we never had any special connection…
2. On the other hand, as to what relates to the love of complacence, they ought to be treated with greater displacency and disrespect than the heathen.This is plain by the text and context. For the apostle plainly doth not require of us to avoid the company of the heathen or the fornicators of the world, but expressly requires us to avoid the company of any brother who shall be guilty of any of the vices pointed out in the text or any other like them.

This is also plain by the reason of the thing. For those who have once been visible Christians and have apostatized and cast off that visibility, deserve to be treated with more abhorrence than those who have never made any pretensions to Christianity. The sin of such, in apostatizing from their profession, is more aggravated than the sin of those who never made any profession…

Question 2. What kindness and respect may and ought to be shown to such persons? I answer, There are some things by which the members of the church are obliged to show kindness to them. These things are chiefly, to pray for them and to admonish them. The common duties and offices of humanity ought to be performed towards them: relieving them when they are sick or under any other distress; allowing them those benefits of human society and that help, which are needful for the support and defense of their lives and property. The duties of natural and civil relations are still to be performed towards them. Excommunication doth not release children from the obligation of duty to their parents nor parents from parental affection and care toward their children. Nor are husbands and wives released from the duties proper to their relation. And so [it is] of all other less relations, whether natural, domestic, or civil.[9]

Along the way in a few spots, Edwards interprets 2 Thessalonians 3:14–15 as full excommunication (rather than a step of congregational censure just short of that), and therefore he tries to explain the command to “admonish him as a brother” in the context of excommunication (though excommunication actually declares that we may no longer affirm the impenitent sinner as a brother). Though I disagree with Edwards on that lesser point, I agree with his larger points. Edwards properly explains the social exclusion demanded by excommunication. Also, his answer to Question 2 is particularly helpful. We still have certain duties of kindness and respect toward those excommunicated.

[1] Jonathan Leeman, Church Discipline, Building Healthy Churches (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 121–122.

[2] One of my pastors and personal mentors from the past has born testimony to his own faithful application of such principles toward his excommunicated daughter, though the experience was certainly excruciating. Marvelously, the daughter was eventually restored to the church, and her unconverted husband was born of God. Years later, the daughter freely agreed to bear public testimony to her parents’ faithfulness in that painful situation. Here is a link to her father’s words and her own at a pastors’ conference: https://ccggrockford.org/church-discipline-the-responsibility-of-love-steve-thomas

[3] “The Westminster Assembly Directory for Church Government,” Paradigms in Polity: Classic Readings in Reformed and Presbyterian Church Government, edited by David W. Hall and Joseph H. Hall (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 271.

[4] Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Volume 3, translated by George Musgrave Giger, edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1997), 294.

[5] John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 2019), 888–889.

[6] Ibid., 893.

[7] Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, translated and edited by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020), 893–894.

[8] Benjamin Keach, “The Glory of a True Church and Its Discipline Displayed” (1697), Polity: Biblical Arguments on How to Conduct Church Life, edited by Mark Dever (Washington, D.C.: Nine Marks, 2001), 74.

[9] Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), “The Nature of Excommunication”, Free Grace Broadcaster, Issue 222: Church Discipline, Chapel Library (https://www.chapellibrary.org/read/cdisfg), from “The Nature and End of Excommunication” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2, 118-21, The Banner of Truth Trust, www.banneroftruth.com.

Ben Habegger

Ben Habegger first served in full-time pastoral ministry near Detroit, Michigan from 2013-2017 and has now been vocational pastor at Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Aloha, Oregon (formerly Glencullen Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon) since January of 2020. He has a Master of Divinity degree from Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary and a Master of Arts in Reformed Baptist Studies from Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. Ben and his wife Theresa have four children.