KEEPING THE FLOCK PURE
DON JOHNSON

I learned recently that a preaching friend had been disfellowshipped by his congregation because of some ideas he had developed regarding the Lord’s Supper. I do not know what “new” beliefs he had formed to render himself unacceptable, but I can state with virtual certainty that his excommunication was unscriptural.

We in the Church of Christ place great importance in having specific scriptural authority for anything which pertains to our relationship with God. Such authority, though, is a requisite only in reference to our formal worship of our Creator. The “weightier matters” of justice and mercy, which should be of primary concern to us daily, take second place to being correct on Sunday morning. Our concern is misdirected, because the Bible emphasizes living a righteous and exemplary life much more than it stresses baptism, the Lord’s Supper, or the absence of a fiddle in the sanctuary.

The only definite scriptural reason for disfellowshiping a brother is the lack of such exemplary conduct; one can be scripturally disfellowshipped only for such grossness of conduct that it is noticed by those outside the kingdom. “I actually hear reports of sexual immorality among you, immorality such as even pagans do not tolerate; the union of a man with his father’s wife.” (1 Cor. 5:1, NEB)

One doubts that we would have had the patience with the Corinthian Christians that Paul had. The group was divided into sects that might well have called themselves, respectively, the Church of Paul, the Church of Apollos, the Church of Cephas, and the Church of Christ (I Cor. 1:12). The members went before the law courts to settle their family disputes. They had difficulty in casting aside their former idol worship. Although the Spirit of God worked in them in different ways, they coveted the most sensational gift: tongues. No, the Christians at Corinth were not a model body.

Paul was certainly disappointed by such troubles, but he urged the church to rid itself of only one man: the man having an adulterous relationship with his father’s wife. That man was clearly lowering the esteem in which the way was held in the Corinthian community; it was thus imperative that he be cast out, both to save his own soul and the reputation of the congregation.

Paul mentioned in chapter 5 several other sins which would taint the ecclesia if the sinner were not disfellowshipped. Perhaps our modern churches have few members who are living adulterous lives or who are idolaters, but we likely can think of several covetous people who are leading lights in their respective congregations. And we certainly know a host of railers commonly known as back-biters who specialize in slashing their fellow Christians. Yes, we know them, but we tolerate them. (Particularly the covetous man, who may well be a big giver.)

We tend not to be as tolerant of those who differ from our traditional opinions. The independent thinker is welcomed in a few Churches of Christ, tolerated in somewhat more, and regarded as suspect and ultimately cast out of most of the remainder. The jury’s reasoning in the purge usually follows this sequence: (1) we have already discovered all truth, (2) subject is proclaiming ideas which do not echo what we have always heard, (3) therefore, subject is proclaiming error, thus (4) subject must be ejected lest he lead the flock astray. The we-have-the-keys premise is untenable, and the dogmatism and rigid enforcement of conformity arising from it stifle the spirit of freedom which Christ died to bring.

The apostle John, in his first letter, did command the Christians to avoid those who brought false doctrine, but his definition of false doctrine was very limited. The “trial of the spirits” concerned only the very essentials: those who acknowledged that Christ had indeed come in the flesh were spirits from God. The traditionalist may retort—indeed, I’ve heard him do so—that John’s first epistle was written in a particular time to counteract the specific error of Gnosticism, which denied that Christ had come in the flesh. True, but what was sufficient for the apostles should be sufficient for us.

John himself had trouble with some of his peers: Diotrephes avoided him, tried to turn other Christians against him, and even tried to disfellowship some of John’s friends. John might have been in similar trouble had he tried to worship with us, because he talked about love too much. The apostle Paul was a mite soft on the baptism question in Romans. He emphasized God’s grace more than getting the steps in the right order and hence collecting a big check at the judgment. He fraternized with the Gentiles (who were much lower to most Jews than Negroes to some American whites) and even had the gall to rebuke a big preacher—Peter—for letting Establishment pressures influence his personal relations with non-Jews.

If Paul were to address modern Church of Christism with views as controversial as those he expressed before the Pharisees of his day, we might feel compelled to withdraw from him. For the flock to remain pure from taint, it must remain free from thought.

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Don Johnson is presently working on his master’s degree at the University of Texas.