I got an email once from a pastor who received some members that we had disciplined out of our church after many months of trying to work with them. And the pastor told me that we're legalistic because we practice church discipline. That made me kind of scratch my head because church discipline is commanded in Scripture.

We like to call it church restoration because we want to call people to repentance and do so repeatedly. And Jesus prescribes in Matthew 18 that you escalate that call from one person to two or three people to the whole church calling someone to repentance. But beyond that, if you simply read the account of the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, you see that Jesus is very displeased with churches that will not purify themselves, with churches that will not deal with sin in their midst. So church discipline, first and foremost, is necessary because God has commanded it.

Secondly, though, it is for the good of those that we're pursuing to try to get them on track to follow Christ. And third, it is good because it purifies the church. It relieves the church of the burden of those who just simply want to rebel continually.