The New Testament teaches that there are certain people whom Christians ought to avoid and even shun. Who are they? Weaver and Zimmerman explain the difference between how some church groups answer that question and how Plain groups answer it:
So while both more liberal churches and the Plain churches practice avoidance, there is a difference in who they shun. Like in most other things, the more liberal churches are more lenient, some of them only shunning those who have committed fleshly sins. But the Plain People believe that to use avoidance [shunning] as the Scriptures explain it, they must also punish disobedience to the church (p. 149).
Of course, when they say “disobedience to the church,” they mean “disobedience to the hundreds of man-made rules of the ordnung.” And the Plain practice of punishing (the word that Weaver and Zimmerman use) ordnung breakers should be no surprise. If you are going to have an ordnung, you must have a way to enforce all its rules. Without threat of punishment, there will be no compliance.
Matthew 18:15–17
Weaver and Zimmerman make their case using five Scripture passages, beginning with Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:15–17:
If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that “by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.” If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
It is obvious that Jesus was referring in this passage to confrontation for sins that are personal offenses (and not infractions against man-made ordnung rules). After His words, “If your brother sins,” some of the ancient manuscripts of Matthew add the words “against you.” That is why the KJV says, “If thy brother shall trespass against thee.” Also, Jesus said concerning the initial, private confrontation, “If he listens to you, you have won your brother.” That is, you are reconciled. So, the entire problem was a personal offense. That is obviously how Peter interpreted Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18:15–17, as we find him asking immediately afterwards, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?” (Matt. 18:21, emphasis added).
From this passage, we can conclude that it is proper to shun a brother if he meets four criteria: (1) He must be guilty of a personal offense against another brother. (2) He must have refused to acknowledge his sin after a private confrontation by the offended brother. (3) He must have refused to acknowledge his sin after a second confrontation by the offended brother and one or two “witnesses.” (4) He must have refused to acknowledge his sin after a third confrontation by the church. All four criteria must be met before he can appropriately be shunned.
Happily, most broken relationships are mended during the first confrontation as the offending party asks the forgiveness from the offended party. Or sometimes the offended brother realizes that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, or that he himself unintentionally caused an offense.
When the first confrontation does not result in reconciliation, the second or third confrontation often does. But even if not, Jesus did not say or imply that the shunning must be permanent. If the first three steps are all taken in the hope of achieving repentance and reconciliation, then it is safe to assume that the shunning should have the same goal in mind. Granted, to treat someone like “a Gentile and a tax collector” would seem to imply that anyone who resists three increasingly persuasive confrontations regarding their sin exposes himself as actually being an unbeliever. However, unbelievers can repent and be born again!
Most importantly, the basis for Jesus’ instructions in this passage is a sin being committed, or a transgression of one of God’s commandments. There is no indication that Jesus had transgressions against man-made rules in mind. But that is exactly what Weaver and Zimmerman make Jesus say: “So Jesus is saying that those who don’t accept correction from the church [for infractions against the ordnung] must be expelled from it and shunned!” (p. 154). But that is not true. Jesus is saying that those who meet all four criteria He outlined should be expelled and shunned by the church. And it must all begin with a personal sin against a fellow church member. This passage has nothing to do with shunning ordnung breakers.
Another Twist
Sadly, one instance of Scripture twisting leads immediately to another, more grievous one:
Referring to an offending member in the body (church), Jesus said:
Matt 18:8. “If thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the everlasting fire.”
He is saying that the offending member must be cut off from the church lest his influence spreads and causes the rest of the church to be cast into hell. Elsewhere He taught that if the bad and unfruitful branches of the vine are not cut off, the fruit of the good will suffer (John 15:1–6) (p. 154).
To claim that Matthew 18:8 has any application to expelling and shunning church members is patently dishonest.[24] Let’s read the verse in its context:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.
“Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!
“If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than 1to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.
“See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost” (Matt. 18:1–11).
Did you see Jesus’ instructions in that passage about expelling church members who don’t obey church leaders? Neither did I. Just as in His Sermon on the Mount, when He spoke about cutting off a foot and plucking out an eye that cause us to stumble (see Matt. 5:27–30), here in Matthew 18:8 Jesus was talking about dealing with personal sin: “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble.” He was also warning about those who personally cause children to stumble. His words have no application to church discipline and shunning.
The other passage that Weaver and Zimmerman cite similarly has nothing to do with church discipline. It states:
I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned (John 15:1–7).
It does not seem possible that Weaver and Zimmerman could actually believe that John 15:1–7 has any application to church discipline, let alone excommunication by Plain leaders for transgressions against the ordnung. Nothing about church leaders is mentioned or implied in this passage. The only references are to Jesus, His Father, and the “vine branches.” God the Father, not church leaders, prunes the vines and judges the fruit. And fruit is produced in believers, not through the enforcement of hundreds of man-made rules by Plain leaders, but through abiding in Christ. Those who don’t abide in Christ will not bear any true fruit. In the end, they will be cast into the fire.
2 Thessalonians 3:6–14
As they continue their quest for scriptures that support the shunning of those who don’t obey the ordnung, the authors next quote 2 Thessalonians 3:6–14:
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example, because we did not act in an undisciplined manner among you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with labor and hardship we kept working night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you; not because we do not have the right to this, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you, so that you would follow our example. For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.
If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him, so that he will be put to shame.
Paul’s instructions in this passage are to all the believers in Thessalonica, not just to the leaders. He tells all of them to avoid “every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us.” According to the passage, the tradition of which Paul was speaking consisted of his own example and teaching regarding individual responsibility to work and provide for oneself, which is a specific example of how to love our neighbor. If we love our neighbor, we won’t be lazy and expect him to work to provide for us.
These instructions should be followed by every believer today. If any professing Christian is unwilling to work and expects other Christians to provide for him, he ought to be avoided in order that “he will be put to shame.” Hopefully, his shame will lead to his repentance.
The same principle applies to any other moral instructions Paul gave in any of his letters, as they, too, can all be summarized by the Golden Rule and the second-greatest commandment.
We should all seek to obey the Spirit-inspired instructions and commandments of the New Testament epistles, as they reflect the teaching of Christ, which can all be summarized by the Golden Rule and the second-greatest commandment. As we know by now, there are no instructions in the New Testament instructing church leaders to devise hundreds of extra-biblical rules and traditions, let alone to enforce those rules and traditions by threat of shunning. Yet Weaver and Zimmerman somehow extract that very idea from 2 Thessalonians 3:6–14:
This … reinforces the teaching brought out from Matthew 18, that those who do not listen to a church that’s striving to follow Christ’s teaching [that is, a Plain church] must be shunned. The traditions are the guidelines [extra-biblical ordnung rules] the apostles had given to the church. Those who willfully disobey church standards [ordnung rules] and do not repent must also be shunned (p. 155).
So a passage that instructs all believers to avoid lazy Christians who want to live off the charity of others is twisted to teach that the apostles devised an ordnung (“traditions” and “church standards”) that they enforced by shunning! This is a gross distortion of God’s Word.
1 Corinthians 5:1–12
The third passage of Scripture to which Weaver and Zimmerman appeal contains Paul’s instructions to the Corinthian believers to expel a man who everyone knew to be living in an immoral relationship with his stepmother:
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.
For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves (1 Cor. 5:1–12).
Although some commentators, such as Weaver and Zimmerman, claim that the immoral man was a Christian (see p. 156), the evidence in the passage indicates otherwise. Paul never refers to the man as a believer or Christian, but only as a “so-called brother” (5:11) and a “wicked man” (5:12). In just one chapter later, in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul declares that “the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God,” and he includes “fornicators” (better translated “sexually immoral”) in this group as well as “adulterers,” the “effeminate,” and “homosexuals” (see 1 Cor. 6:9–10). Finally, Paul expressed hope that the man’s expulsion would result in his “spirit being saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (5:5), so clearly Paul did not believe that the man currently had a saved spirit (even if he did at some point in the past).
In any case, everyone in the Corinthian church knew about the man’s immoral behavior and they were tolerating it. His perverse lifestyle was a terrible stain on the church of Jesus Christ. Outsiders who knew of the situation might easily conclude that one can be a Christian and also be sexually immoral.
Shocked by their toleration, Paul instructed the church to immediately expel the immoral man. He implied that they should expel any other false believers, including any who were immoral or covetous, as well as idolaters, revilers, drunkards, and swindlers (see 5:11). True Christians should not even eat with such persons if they claim to be Christians.
The Twist
This passage offers no hint that church leaders should devise hundreds of man-made rules to enforce them by threat of shunning. Yet that is what Weaver and Zimmerman claim.
Before we consider their argument, I should point out that Weaver and Zimmerman often refer to Paul’s lists of “exclusionary sins”[25]—found in 1 Corinthians, Galatians and Ephesians—as “sins unto death.” Paul never used that phrase in connection with his exclusionary lists, and I don’t think the authors use the phrase correctly, particularly in light of how the apostle John used it:
If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death (1 John 5:16–17; KJV).
If the sins in Paul’s “exclusionary lists” are all “sins unto death,” then we should not pray for any Christian whom we see commit any of those sins, which would seem to indicate that all the sins in Paul’s exclusionary lists were unpardonable. But we know that isn’t true. For that reason, most Bible interpreters see the “sin unto death” as a certain unpardonable sin, such as the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (see Luke 12:10).
Let us now consider Weaver and Zimmerman’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 5:1–12, in which they focus on a few of the exclusionary sins listed by Paul in a desperate attempt to find support for their thesis that ordnung breakers should be shunned:
1 Corinthians 5 is often used to support lenient avoidance—that only the sexually immoral, drunkards, and sinners of that degree should be shunned [rather than also those who transgress Plain ordnungs]. And yet, questions arise even in this short list of sins unto death (see verse 11).
The first word we’ll look at is “covetousness.” To be covetous is to desire or intensely long for something one cannot or should not have. So let’s say some Peter joins a Plain church and promises to uphold their guidelines [ordnung rules] and those things that the church has agreed on as Scriptural [even though they can’t be found in Scripture]. The church is now accountable for him and his Christian walk. And he’s accountable to the church, and is under the authority of the ministry [church leaders] as the Bible teaches.
But with a little time Peter starts looking around and his discontentment with nonconformity starts growing. Those in that liberal church down the road have things so nice and easy. Instead of driving a pluggy horse they can hop in a car and soon be where they’re going. The tools they allow would make his work so much easier.
Finally, Peter gives in to his desire and chooses to leave this church with so many restrictions. The ministry admonishes him to not give in to the love of the world [that is, “love of the world” by Plain definition] but he refuses to listen. He rejects their authority and disregards his accountability to the church to attain more worldly [by Plain definition] possessions.
Is that covetousness—a sin unto death? It’s something to consider. In the ten commandments we are told not to covet our neighbor’s ox. Is it any better to covet his car? (pp. 158-159).
Hopefully, you spotted all of the faulty assumptions and logical flaws in those paragraphs. The two most obvious ones are the authors’ misleading definition of covetousness and their related arbitrary forbidding of some material things (a feature of all Plain ordnungs). According to the authors, anyone who desires anything church leaders have arbitrarily forbidden is guilty of covetousness, which is a “sin unto death” that will send them to hell. What a stretch!
Imagine if I said to you, “I’ve decided that owning more than ten cows is a sin, so anyone who desires more than ten cows is guilty of the damning sin of covetousness, and they will go to hell if they don’t repent of that desire.” You would probably say to yourself, “Who does he think he is?” Then, imagine if I saw you with eleven cows and told you that you are on the road to hell, and that to help you be saved, I would be shunning you until you repented by getting rid of your eleventh cow. I doubt you would be persuaded that the eleventh cow was keeping you out of heaven. But that is what Plain leaders do all the time when they set arbitrary standards as to what church members may possess.
Plain leaders defend themselves by claiming that all the church members agree on the ordnung rules and declare their agreement twice a year. However, we all know what happens to anyone who dares to disagree. He is branded as “divisive” and “not submissive to church leadership,” and he soon finds himself “under the bann.”
What Is Coveting?
Weaver and Zimmerman say that to covet “is to desire or intensely long for something one cannot or should not have.” But who decides what one cannot or should not have? The authors assume that church leaders have the authority to set those standards, yet we can’t find any of the apostles setting standards restricting any material thing. They, like Jesus, instructed their followers to avoid laying up earthly treasures and instead to lay up heavenly treasures, but they did not specify what constituted earthly treasures.
Weaver and Zimmerman write, “In the ten commandments we are told not to covet our neighbor’s ox. Is it any better to covet his car?”
The authors confuse coveting what belongs to my neighbor with desiring to possess what is not my neighbor’s. The Tenth Commandment is not a prohibition against purchasing or owning an ox. It is a prohibition against coveting my neighbor’s ox. Everything God listed and prohibited the Israelites from coveting in the Tenth Commandment was something that belonged to a neighbor. If God meant that we can’t possess anything that our neighbor possesses, then it would be wrong for me to be own any house, field, ox, or donkey if my neighbor happened to own any of those (see Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21).
If my neighbor owns a car, I am certainly forbidden from coveting his car, but I am not forbidden to buy or own my own car. Coveting my neighbor’s car could lead to jealousy, hatred, or even theft or murder, none of which are compatible with loving my neighbor. But there is nothing evil about me buying my own car, or buying a car that is identical to my neighbor’s, or even buying my neighbor’s car if he desires to sell it.
Weaver and Zimmerman’s imaginary scenario of “some Peter” joining a Plain church is similarly flawed. Why? Because that scenario rarely occurs, for the simple reason that very few adults would ever join a group that demands conformity regarding hundreds of minor details of their lives for no justifiable moral or biblical reason. That being so, why didn’t Weaver and Zimmerman use a realistic example? The only people who do join Plain groups are those like Weaver and Zimmerman, who were born into Plain families that taught them Plain ideas from childhood and that exerted immense social pressure on them to join their Plain churches. Socially pressured teens who want to get married are hardly comparable to “some Peter” who, as a sober and informed adult “outsider,” joins a Plain group.
I suppose that if “some Peter” did join a Plain church and knowingly agreed to follow the ordnung, then he certainly would have no right to complain when church leaders expect him to keep his vows. But that still doesn’t make his desire to own a car covetous in God’s eyes. He would be covetous only in the eyes of Plain church leaders—the ordnung police—who not only have confused coveting what belongs to someone else with simply desiring to own the same thing, but who have also set arbitrary and non-biblical standards regarding what one can and cannot possess.
So far, we’ve covered three of five Bible passages Weaver and Zimmerman deploy in an effort to show why ordnung breakers should be disciplined. In the next chapter, we’ll look at the final two.
[24] Weaver and Zimmerman make the identical false claim regarding Matthew 5:29-30 and 18:8 on pages 165 and 167.
[25] Paul declares that those who practice the “exclusionary sins” that he lists in 1 Cor. 6:9–10, Gal. 5:19–21 and Eph. 5:3–5 “will not inherit the kingdom of God.
