2 Corinthians 2:5-7 “If anyone has caused pain, he has caused pain not so much to me but to some degree– not to exaggerate–to all of you. This punishment by the majority is sufficient for that person. As a result, you should instead forgive and comfort him.”

Church discipline is a process poorly understood even among many Christians. Some regard it as self-righteous, a failure to mind your own business, even an excuse to be mean to others. I don’t deny there are cases where all those criticisms were valid. But a church that won’t practice spiritual discipline is like parent who won’t discipline their children. Failure to correct a child does the real harm to them.

There is a graphic passage in the book of Proverbs that describes what happens to the undisciplined child. “The eye that mocks a father, that scorns obedience to a mother, will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley, will be eaten by the vultures.” That isn’t a threat of some supernatural bird attack sent by God like a scene out of the old Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds. It is the picture of young person who has gone from naughty child to criminal adult. Now he is hanging from a gallows where his dead body has become food for the birds.

Failure to confront sin committed by church members may not produce such dramatic results in this life. But eternally the consequences can be far worse. Lax discipline entraps people who conclude that the church’s inaction means they have permission to ignore God’s commands. When Paul wrote his first letter to these Christians in Corinth, he had to confront them for tolerating a case of incest in a family. Already it had led others in the church to become proud of their open-minded acceptance of this perversion. Paul insisted the congregation had to deal with the issue swiftly. “Hand the man over to Satan.” Confront the sin. Remove the man from the congregation.

We can’t say for certain whether Paul is referring to that case here in 2 Corinthians, or whether there is another case of church discipline involved. But it is clear that the discipline has been successful and some sinner has repented. Now it’s time to forgive, because that serves the offender. “If anyone has caused pain, he has caused pain not so much to me but to some degree– not to exaggerate–to all of you. This punishment by the majority is sufficient for that person. As a result, you should instead forgive and comfort him.”

“The punishment by the majority is sufficient for that person.” Sufficient for what? In the world of criminal justice, we try to make the punishment fit the crime. There is this idea of “paying your debt to society,” as though a crime were a business transaction, a sale, in which a price in monetary fines or time spent in prison somehow makes up for your deed. Sometimes we even rethink the price tags we put on criminal activity. How much should it really cost to use illegal drugs or sneak some clothes out of Walmart? Are we making the drunk driver or the people who abuse their pets pay enough?

There is no such idea of paying off your sins in the church, because Jesus has already covered the whole debt for us. “Sufficient” is not about how much pain or discomfort we extract from the offender. It’s about changing the heart, getting a person to confess his sin and turn away from it. That’s the whole goal.

But sometimes Christians forget that we are trying to help the offender, not take vengeance on him. An old pastor once told me about a meeting with some of his elders and a church member who had been living in some kind of sin. The church member apologized and asked for forgiveness. Later one of the elders questioned his sincerity. He didn’t seem sad enough about what he had done. The pastor asked him, “How many tears does he have to shed before you are satisfied? Can you hand him a cup and tell him you have to fill it this far with tears before we can forgive him? Isn’t it enough that he said he was sorry?”

The point of the process, we have to remember, is not to inflict pain. It is to achieve repentance, so that we can forgive and restore. That serves the offender.