Restoring a Repentant Adulterer - Ask Pastor John

Video from Desiring God

Restoring a Repentant Adulterer - Ask Pastor John

"Audio Transcript

One of the dominant themes throughout the history of this podcast, Ask Pastor John, is looking at the local church. How do I find a good local church? When should I leave my church? Can I attend multiple churches? How do we respond to people who say, “I won’t leave Jesus — but I’m done with the local church and its failed leaders”? Et cetera. A lot of ground has been covered in these topics, as you can see in the APJ book, beginning on page 417. Yesterday in our Bible reading, we read Galatians 6 together, which relates to the local church — to how it functions and to a specific situation to ask you about today, Pastor John.

“Pastor John, hello. My son-in-law committed adultery and lied to the church elders about it. For it, they removed him from church membership. Since his transgression, he has ended the adulterous relationship and repented, and has been working hard to restore trust in his marriage. But the church has not reached out to him to restore his membership. He has continued to attend church and hasn’t taken the Lord’s Supper. The church does not allow him to attend the small group they were a part of or go to membership potluck dinners. How and when does a church wisely restore the repentant? As a pastor, what fruit were you looking for? What were your steps forward? How do those who are spiritual ‘restore him in a spirit of gentleness,’ as Paul says in Galatians 6:1?”

Well, it’s always dangerous, isn’t it, to give local church advice from a distance. Oh my, there’s so much of this on the Internet, and it’s so often quite harmful when people pontificate from a distance about what’s happening in a local church thousands of miles away. From a distance, we seldom see all the factors that go into choices that elders and members are making. And so, without telling this church what to do in any specific case, let me give maybe — I don’t know — five or six biblical guidelines or principles that I think will provide some guidance in this situation. I have an opinion, but I’m so hesitant to put it forward as anything like absolute.

1. Goodness of Discipline

Here’s principle number one: Church discipline is a good thing. The guidelines for practicing it are given in Matthew 18:15–17. Examples of it are given in 1 Corinthians 5:1–13 and 2 Thessalonians 3:6–15. The principle behind it is that the church is made up of baptized believers in Jesus — born-again, Spirit-indwelt, Christ-obeying people. The expectation is that the church is, to use the words of Peter in 1 Peter 2:9, “A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for [God’s] own possession, that [we] may proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

“Discipline is the way that the church exhorts itself to walk in holiness.”

And to the degree that a local church ceases to be a distinct and holy people, to that degree do we cease to be a true church bearing witness to our calling out of darkness into the light, the light of holiness. Discipline is the way that the church exhorts itself to walk in holiness and puts out of the church those whose unholiness brings reproach upon Christ. So, principle number one: Discipline is good.

2. Aim of Discipline

The aim of all discipline in the church is not destruction or damnation or alienation but rather restoration and salvation. We see that repeatedly in Matthew 18, where the aim is to gain the brother who has sinned. We see it in Galatians 6:1, where the aim is to restore the one overtaken in sin. We see it in 1 Corinthians 5:5, where the hope is that, even in the last day, after death, the discipline will have brought someone to repentance and salvation. So, that’s number two: The aim is restoration and salvation.

3. Levels of Restoration

The restoration to church membership does not imply that sins have no ongoing repercussions. There are several levels of restoration. We know this because the standards for becoming an elder — for example, in 1 Timothy 3:1–7 and Titus 1:5–9 — are higher than for an ordinary church member. Now, that would imply, it seems to me, in principle, that there are various roles of leadership in the church for which a person may not qualify, even though he is restored to membership in the church.

I think the New Testament shows that the door to membership is very wide, and the door to eldership, for example, is very narrow. And I think the implication of this is that we should not exclude from membership a person who gives genuine evidence of repentance, even if we think that person’s trustworthiness is tarnished enough that he would not yet qualify for certain roles until he has recovered the trust that he once had but squandered through some sin.

4. Degrees of Betrayal

There are degrees of betrayal, degrees of shortcoming, degrees of waywardness. It’s not helpful to say that all sins are equally flagrant, equally harmful. They’re not. For example, in 1 Corinthians 6:7, Paul believes that the ideal reaction for a person who’s been wronged is not to take the brother to court. He says, “Why not rather just be wronged?” (see 1 Corinthians 6:7). But when they fail in that ideal, his next best thing is to say, “Well, at least, in the Christian community, there certainly is a judge who could help you sort this out instead of going to pagan judges” (see 1 Corinthians 6:5–6).

In other words, Paul does not jump immediately to church discipline at the first level of shortcoming. He sees degrees of shortcoming. We take this into account when we restore a believer.

5. Real and Fake Repentance

There are genuine and counterfeit tears of repentance, which implies that leaders must be discerning when they assess a person’s readiness for restoration. I am always amazed when I bump into this, every time I read through the Bible, in 2 Corinthians 7:10–11, where Paul says, “Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief” — now, think about that worldly grief: tears, worldly tears — “produces death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you.”

Most of us who have dealt with repenting people over the decades have discovered that there are tears that are only because of the consequences of sin, not the evil of sin — tears for the misery the sinner feels, not tears because they’ve done dishonor to God’s glory. So, leaders have to be very discerning as to what repentance really is, whether penitence and tears are really signs that a heart is broken for the Godwardness of the sin, not just the messed-up life it brought them into.

6. Divisive Spirit

And then finally, this implies that spiritually discerning leaders may see in a person such a divisive spirit that they encourage the church to have nothing more to do with him as a believer. Titus 3:10: “As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him.”

So, those are my six principles. My conclusion is that, while I don’t know enough of the details of the situation we’re being asked about, nevertheless, I would say that as far as membership goes, the door should be wide for restoration unless there’s some very good reason to think that a person’s repentance is not sincere." from the Transcript

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy. Read more about John.

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