I have heard people talk about “sins against the church.” Is this idea a
biblical one? What would be the passages to show this? How would this
fit with Matthew 18 and the confrontation with a brother in sin? I have
heard people use the idea of a particular individual sin of a member of my
church being a sin against the church. The leaders said that, therefore,
the person needed to publicly repent. I am very uncomfortable with this
idea. What do you think about this? (note: this is a paraphrase of a long
question with many personal details I am leaving out)

On your specific question, I am hesitant to give you an answer. This is
the kind of thing which depends on the individual circumstances. There is
no hard and fast sort of rule one can give, and it is best to only comment
on such situations when one has actual knowledge of the situation from
first hand. In fact, one of your complaints is that a leader or leaders
pronounced judgement in the situation when you feel that they do not have
first hand info. That is the situation with myself or Doug for that
matter. You should be careful about obtaining an outside opinion on such
a situation. Not that it is wrong. It may be a great idea, but in such
situations, the person being asked is obviously only getting one side of
the story. Proverbs warns about such situations.

Having given that long-winded statement, let me at least attempt to wade
in here. I would say that yes, it is possible to sin against the church.
I believe that if you study out the sin offering and the guilt offering
in Leviticus you will find the principle that there is sin against God
(needing the sin offering) and there is sin against an individual (needing
the guilt offering) and even against groups of individuals. There is a
section on this in my new book From Shadow to Reality (www.ipibooks.com)
In Leviticus, one sees that sin against a neighbor or a brother is dealt
with by first making restitution to the offended party, followed by making
sacrifice to God. Jesus followed this precedent when he said that if a
brother has something against you, you should get it right with that
brother first, then come and worship God.

With that introduction, let me give an example. If I lust after someone,
that is not a sin against the body. If I make a public statement which
brings shame on the entire church, that is a sin against the body. If I
lie to someone at work, that is not a sin against the church, but if I, as
a deacon, steal funds from the church, that is a sin against the church.
You cannot find hard and fast rules on this. You must find principles
and apply wisdom for certain situations.

Having said that, I believe that in some churches there is a tendency to
define sins “against the body” which are questionable at best. We need to
be very careful in applying this principle to specific situations. If a
brother has a fight with another brother in a private situation, I cannot
see that as a sin against the church. They will need to work this out
together and pray to God about it, but I do not see this as a sin against
the body. However, if two very influential leaders had a very public
fight, that would be a different situation altogether, in my opinion. I
do not believe that you can use 1 Corinthians 6 to prove that sexual sin
is not a sin against the church. It clearly is a sin against God and it
clearly is a sin against “one?s body.” (whatever that means? that is
another discussion), but it is not clear one way or another if it should
be treated by leaders as a sin against the body. I would say that in
general, personal sins should be handled personally, but I do not want to
make rules here.

Let me give another example. If a disciple gets drunk one time,
especially if this is a younger Christian, I have a really hard time
seeing this as a sin against the church. However, if a supposed disciple
is a known drunk, and if he or she has been called to repent on an
individual level, at some point this becomes a situation where if everyone
is aware of the problem, and nothing is said or done publicly, I believe
this becomes a dangerous precedent for the church When the church is
threatened or hurt AS A WHOLE then I would say by definition, this is a
sin against God, against individuals, and against the church. Again, I do
not have an exact list of passages laying this out, but I would use
Leviticus and the sin and guilt offerings as precedent, noting that Jesus
applied these passages to specific situations.

Now, finally, getting back to the situation you describe. You do not
give specifics, so all I can say that my first intuition is that you are
in fact giving an example in which the claim of a sin against the church
is very dubious. I will leave it at that and ask you to not say that
“John Oakes said this in not a sin against the body,” as I clearly do not
know the specifics.

John Oakes