Capital Punishment and Church Discipline: Lessons from Deuteronomy 13

If church discipline, and ultimately expulsion from the fellowship of the church, is the New Testament parallel to the capital punishment prescribed for certain sins in the Old Testament (as I have argued before), what can Deuteronomy 13 in particular teach us about the discipline of the church? Deuteronomy 13 has three specific stories of idolatry and false teaching, each with its own implications.

In Deuteronomy 13:1-5, Moses deals with false prophets, those who claim to speak for God or to have had dreams from God. These are not actually true prophets, but while claiming to speak for God, they were leading people to follow other gods. Moses says not to listen to these false prophets because God is using the false prophets to test His people, to see if they love Him completely (13:3). The people were urged to obey the commands of God completely (13:4) and to put this false prophet or dreamer to death. In so doing, they would purge the evil from among them (13:5).

What is the lesson for the church today? We must root out false teaching from the church. Those claiming to speak for God who are in fact leading people into idolatry must be removed from the church. These people are an evil that must be purged from the church if they refuse to repent of their false teaching. There are several important implications here. First, just because someone claims to speak for God does not mean that they really are speaking for God. We must test the spirits as John says to see what is from God (1 John 4:1). Second, we cannot sit idly by and allow false teaching to go unchecked. We cannot simply hope that it will go away or avoid the issue. False teaching must be dealt with by the church. As Paul says, we must nourished by the words of faith and of good teaching, but we should have nothing to do with irreverent and foolish myths (1 Timothy 4:6-7).

Deuteronomy 13:6-11 deals with a situation involving a close friend or family member. Moses mentions a person’s brother, their son or daughter, their wife, or their close friend. If any of these people tried to lead someone into the worship of other gods, then the person was not to spare or have sympathy on their relative or close friend, but they should cast the first stone in putting them to death for their idolatry (13:9). Their death was to serve as a witness or warning to all of Israel in order to prevent this kind of evil from happening among the people in the future (13:11).

This story is likely rather jarring to many Christians today. How could God command people to put their own family members to death, and what can this law have to do with Christians today? This law teaches us something very similar to what Jesus said in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (ESV). If we refuse to obey the commands of God related to the discipline of the church because those who have broken God’s commands are our family or close friends, we are placing friends and family above God. This is a form of idolatry.

So the biblical command here is that we should not show partiality in how we obey God’s commands. If one of our friends or family members is causing problems in the church, teaching false doctrine, engaging in unrepentant sinfulness, then we should actually take the lead in expelling that person from the church if he or she refuses to repent. One of the reasons that church discipline is not practiced today is that church leaders are often afraid that if they deal with a certain person’s sins, then their parents or grandparents or children or friends, will be upset and leave the church because the church is “picking on” one of their family members. But here we see that family members or close friends should not oppose the discipline of those close to them, they should not shield them from that discipline, but they should actually take the lead in making sure that the discipline is carried out.

Another important principle from this section is found in Deuteronomy 13:11. The death of this idolator was to serve as a warning to the rest of the people so that they would be afraid and not engage in such evil. So the expulsion of a member from the church is to serve as a warning to the rest of the church. Paul makes the same point in 1 Timothy 5:19-20 in reference to church elders found to be in sin. If church leaders are found to be in sin, they are to be rebuked publicly “so that the rest might be afraid” (5:20). In other words, church leaders found to be in sin should not be fired discreetly, but they should be publicly rebuked before the church as a warning to the rest of the church. Here we see in both the OT and the NT that this act of capital punishment in the OT, now acted out through removing members from the church in the NT, is to be a warning or sign to the rest of the church that will hopefully keep them from similar kinds of evil.

Finally, Deuteronomy 13:12-18 deals with a situation where word has gotten out that an entire town has been given over to idolatry. Here Moses says that a thorough inquiry should be undertaken to make sure that these claims of idolatry are true (13:14). In other words, the people were not to act based on gossip or rumors, but they were to test the claims to determine if in fact that town was full of idolatry. If the claims of idolatry were substantiated, then the entire town was to be destroyed. They were to completely destroy the entire city so that God’s burning anger might be turned away from the land (13:17).

This text is slightly more difficult to make specific application because we have to ask what the modern parallel of this other town in the land would be. One possible application could be the relationships among churches today. Certainly some groups that call themselves Christian churches have been given over to idolatry. The are not worshipping the God revealed to us in His Word but some god they have created in their own image. I think Deuteronomy 13 would suggest that our churches must take pains to disassociate ourselves from these so-called churches that have become nothing more than houses of false teaching and idolatry. For some, this may mean disassociating from churches with which their church has a long-standing history when the other church begins to move away from God’s Word and obedience to God’s commands. God’s judgment will ultimately come on churches and pastors who are peddling false teaching and encouraging rebellion against God’s commands, and we should want to have nothing to do with alliances with those kinds of “churches.”

Finally, let me close with why I would write on a topic like this. First, I am preaching through the book of Deuteronomy, and much of this information simply comes from my recent sermon on Deuteronomy 13. But second, I think we as Christians need to be reminded of the unchanging nature of God, the continuity between the Old and New Testaments, and the continuing ability for God’s law to show us what godliness looks like. We are too prone to ignore much of the OT today, particularly the law, and we do so too our detriment. As I have been preaching through Deuteronomy, I have been reminded of the unchanging nature of God, and I have seen how an emphasis on the OT law can help us see what godly living looks like in the church and in our own lives. If our love for God is demonstrated by our obedience to His commands (John 14:15), then we certainly ought to want to know what His commands are and what obedience to those commands might look like today.