After my last post on justice, a good question was raised about the jurisdiction issues raised by the multitude of churches, presbyteries, and so on. The principial answer to this is easy — but the devil, as they say, is in the details.
Christ requires us to be striving for like-mindedness. This does not mean clone-like conformity (we worship a triune God, after all), but neither does it mean the “all over the map” pandemonium that is frequently characteristic of “all the churches in the yellow pages” (the Lord our God is one God).
I should begin with the most important acts of other churches that we ought to honor and accept, and that would would be their sacramental acts. Christian churches ought to honor one another’s baptisms, for example. Contrary to the assumptions of many, acts of church discipline are not at the center of our identity as Christians, while baptism is.
We should also reject the notion that acts of government should be honored or not honored on the basis of that other church’s similarity to us in their polity. If a man left his wife, and was disciplined by his Baptist church or his Anglican church, and fled to us for refuge, we would honor the discipline even though it wasn’t “presbyterian” discipline. We honor baptisms that are not presbyterian, so why not honor the lesser thing?
The only real question about discipline is whether it was just or unjust. If a church with a confession and polity identical to your own disciplines a man unjustly, then (after appropriate investigation) that disciplinary decision can be set aside. And if a man was disciplined for adultery (of which he was truly guilty) after a prophetic word exposed him down at Knee Deep In Glory Worship Center, that discipline should be honored. Of course, the ideal ought to be to have godly biblical procedures serving the intended outcome of those procedures, which is justice. So if the “prophetic word” was the only basis for the conviction, and the man involved denies his guilt, then that judgment should be overturned as well.
You can’t make a good omelet with rotten eggs. It does not matter how good the recipe is, how good the cook is, how expensive the pots and pans are, or how high-tech the stove is. If the men involved are unjust men, they will just use a first-rate kitchen as their instrument to stink up the place. All this to say that we have to confess that rotten eggs can and do make it into the glorious kitchen of presbyterianism, and all the BCOs in the world can’t alter the outcome.
One other thing should be noted about refugees fleeing from one church to another. Often the refugee knows enough to cast his appeal in terms that are flattering to the church he is appealing to. Suppose a man gets disciplined for his use of child porn, and the elders who disciplined him hate the federal vision, which in no way prevents them from having a biblical take on child porn. So they excommunicate him. He flees to us and tells us a story about how the real trouble was his sympathy with the federal vision. Among other things, this kind of approach is flattering, which is why a lying flatterer would use it. At the same time, there have been godly Christians railroaded out of churches by ungodly sessions on the basis of that session’s wild speculations and doctrinal incompetence.
So the rule of thumb ought to be this. If someone comes to you from another Christian church, and they are under some kind of cloud, admonition, rebuke, suspension from the Table, or excommunication, what this should mean is that the burden of proof has shifted. An individual in your own church is innocent until it is proven that that they are guilty. Guilt has to be established, and it has to be established beyond any reasonable doubt. But if another church has taken disciplinary action of some sort against one of their members, and then that member comes to you, the burden should be on him to demonstrate and prove that an injustice was done to him. If he can do so, and all the principles of justice outlined in this series are remembered (with the former body is given full opportunity to present its reasons), then there is no problem (in principle) with a receiving body overturning a judicial decision by another church.
In short, if Christ has not withdrawn His fellowship from someone, then neither should we. If Christ has bound in heaven what was bound on earth, then we should not try to untie it. Honest sessions and presbyteries discipline liars who run off to other churches and tell lies. So be careful. Dishonest presbyteries frogmarch godly saints to the door and heave them out. So be careful not to honor judicial outrages. The list of saints who have been royally screwed by ecclesiastical assemblies is a long and honorable one.