Excommunication Is Not Enough
No amount of excommunication can restore strength to a church where sound faith is lacking. Indeed, a heavy use of excommunication indicates commonly the lack of a sound teaching ministry. Coercion replaces teaching and covers up the failure of the ministry. Coercion not only replaces teaching but also the Holy Spirit. Neither permissiveness nor excommunication can be productive of faith in the life of the church. Both in the Old and New Testaments, excommunication is for serious moral infractions of God's law, and for heresy (Titus 3:10). [1]We are guilty of two faults: 1) little use of excommunication, and 2) the lack of a sound teaching ministry -- especially as it relates to sanctification and the law of God. With no threat of judgment, and rampant Biblical illiteracy, the church is rushing for collision with even greater immorality and false teaching.
Sanctification by the law of God is not likely to be heard within the padded sanctuaries of the mega-church. If it is mentioned, it usually dies the death of a thousand qualifiers like, "hey, nobody's perfect." This casualness with sin goes right along with the shorts, sandals, plasma screens, and coffee shops that adorn the modern super-churches.
The purpose of church discipline, as Rushdoony noted above, is not coercion. However, it provides a necessary admonition to fear -- this is especially true when it is church leaders that are engaged in sin:
Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear. 1 Tim. 5:19-20The monumental exposures of elite Charismatic leaders in the late 1980s should have been a lesson to all of us. After Jim and Tammy Bakker were exposed for massive financial fraud and racketeering (along with Jim Bakker's raping of his former secretary Jessica Hahn), leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Swaggart publicly denounced the Bakkers in the harshest terms. They were correct to do so.
In Swaggart's case his hypocrisy was soon revealed when in 1987 Marvin Gorman tailed Swaggart to a swank Texas hotel where Swaggart was held up with a prostitute. Gorman's vendetta was due to his dismissal from the Assemblies of God after Swaggart exposed him for committing adultery. Gorman deflated Swaggart's tires and photographed Swaggart and the prostitute outside the hotel.
In February of 1988 Swaggart televised his greatest preaching performance to date in the unforgettable weeping of pretended repentance. Like Ted Haggard, Swaggart did not publicly testify of his specific sins.
In 1991 Swaggart was stopped by the police in Indio, California for reckless driving. Once again he was found with a prostitute, Rosemary Garcia, who later testified that Swaggart asked her the following twisted request:
"He asked me if I ever let anyone screw my daughter when she was that young," and I said, "No, She's only nine years old."Swaggart himself should have been excommunicated, but he continues today in ministry and television. In this sense excommunication is not enough, although it was never applied. It is the Biblical illiteracy of God's people that allows such wolves to continue their ministries -- with the full financial support of God's money. Therefore, the people of God must be taught. But, they must no longer be taught the man-centered gospel of self-significance, i.e. "who I AM, and what I HAVE in Christ." They must be taught the law of God -- the message they despise.
Too many of God's people want promises and not commandments. Too many desire keys to successful living and not laws directed towards holiness. Too many are self-indulgent and refuse to embrace their Christian responsibility. We as teachers are surely to blame. Until conversion happens first in the pulpit the pews will continue the march down the wide path to destruction.
1. R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology in Two Volumes (Ross House Books: Vallecito, CA, 1994), p.1142.
