Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 02:3 (Fall 1959)
Article: Discipline In The Local Church
Author: Roger L. Peterson

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CenQ 2:3 (Fall 1959) p. 1

Discipline In The Local Church

Roger L. Peterson

from the author’s B. D. Thesis

Central Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary

The Importance Of Proper Church Discipline

Church discipline is of utmost importance to the person who desires to see the local church march ahead with its Leader, the Lord Jesus Christ. However, victory always demands a price, and the price to be paid by the local church in this case is holiness and orderliness. No church can expect to be victorious over Satan without being holy before God and man. Likewise no local church can hope to succeed without orderliness.

It would be utter nonsense to expect holiness and orderliness without laws. Laws express a standard of right and wrong. This function of the law leads to holiness. Laws also regulate a plan of procedure. This function of the law leads to orderliness. The laws of the local church are found in the pages of God’s Word. These laws are perfect and irrevocable.

Then there must follow a system of discipline, otherwise the laws are meaningless. Let it not be thought, on the ground that God is love, that discipline is contrary to the divine method. The two phases of discipline are teaching and enforcing. The laws must be taught, and the laws must also be enforced. Both phases are necessary. Without discipline there can be no true force in the laws; without a true force in the laws there can be no holiness or orderliness; without holiness or orderliness there can be no victory for the local church over Satan and his hosts. This vital relationship of discipline to the spiritual victories of a local church underscores the importance of the subject of discipline in the local New Testament church.

However, discipline has a further aspect which equally applies to the. local church, that is, the aspect of instruction. Discipline in this sense means to train, to drill, to exercise, to cultivate, and to prepare. This is done from the pulpit, in the Sunday School classrooms, with the young people, across the counseling table, at the sick bed, and wherever else people are taught the Word of God.

No local church procedure of discipline is complete without both of these aspects of discipline, instruction and correction. Instruction is basic to the proper concept of discipline. Before Christians can act right they must be taught right. We have the sure promise of God in II Timothy 3:16, 17 that “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. One of t...

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