Off the Rails

“I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is … a reviler …”

To say churches these days are full of unhappy people would be saying way too much: some are, some are not. To say most churches have their resident sourpuss, however, is no exaggeration. Spend a year anywhere and you will almost surely meet at least one man who disagrees with everything his elders are doing and can’t wait to tell you all about it. The question is this: When does a man’s personal unhappiness with his local church reach the point where his congregation is better off without him?

That one’s a little harder.

Not to Associate

There’s no question the New Testament speaks of people with whom not just individuals but entire churches are obligated not to associate. Their conduct has sunk to such a level that the word “evil” legitimately applies. Theirs is not just a potentially bad testimony when their pattern of behavior becomes public knowledge, but a cancerous presence that demands excision from the local body, whether we want to call that disfellowshiping, excommunication, “reading out” or any other popular euphemism.

Paul variously calls it a purge, a removal, a cleansing, an end of association and a delivery to Satan. You will note that while he says this sort of spiritual surgery needs to be performed for the benefit of the evil person “so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord”, many of the terms he uses to describe it imply that the local body benefits from the expulsion as acutely as the sinning individual requires it. Purges, removals and cleansings are primarily for the sake of the host, not the invading species of pest. (I use the word “pest” advisedly, as we will see later.) Churches that refuse to self-sanitize become nests of nastiness. A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

An individual sinner may or may not repent, but at least the choice is his when confronted straight up about his sin. But a local church that harbors and coddles him instead of rejecting him contaminates itself and cripples its ability to perform its primary functions before God.

Six Categories of Chronic Sin

In 1 Corinthians 5, the apostle lists six categories of chronic sin that make drastic action on the part of a local church necessary. These are sexual immorality and greed (both conduct-related), as well as four descriptive nouns — idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler — that clearly identify the chronic nature of sin-problems that demand public judgment. One night on the tiles does not make you a drunkard, one bad priority choice does not make you an idolater, and a single misappropriation of funds promptly confessed does not make you a swindler. These are words we use of people of whom a particular sin has become a defining characteristic.

There are degrees of difficulty in describing what these sins look like in action. Sexual immorality, swindling and drunkenness are by far the easiest: either you engaged in the acts at certain places and times or else you did not. Either you repented or you didn’t. These sins leave behind evidence like credit card statements, forged records, injured parties, eyewitnesses, accident reports and insurance claims, grumpy ex-girlfriends and out-of-wedlock children. The presence of such evidence demands explanations, and a confession of some sort is usually the result. At very least, guilt becomes apparent beyond any reasonable doubt, and the guilty party must now decide whether to reject or embrace his sinful behavior.

Greed and idolatry are a little harder to pin down since they are primarily attitudinal, but even attitudes leave evidence over time, and at least we are in no doubt what such sins involve; a pattern of life that involves putting money or some other beloved objective ahead of one’s responsibilities to God and man.

Identifying the Reviler

A reviler can be a little tougher to identify, especially if you’ve never thought about what reviling involves. Many Christians have not.

The word translated “reviler” in my ESV admits of a number of interpretations and nuances. The NIV has “slanderer”. The traditional KJV rendering is “railer”, a word that means nothing to the average millennial and predisposes even the knowledgeable reader to picture a man childishly out of control. Other candidates for best English equivalent are the NASB (“is verbally abusive”) and the CEV (“or curse others”). Most of the most popular twenty-something translations in English Christendom go with one of these or a variant. What’s clear is that the problem is speech related and the offense is ongoing.

The Greek word all these English equivalents are attempting to capture is loidoros; literally, a maker of mischief, contentions, contradictions and disputations. The ancient Greeks used the root word from which it comes to describe house pests, though its etymology is the subject of scholarly debate. Still, Christians can get a fair idea what it means from the way the New Testament writers use it and its variants. Careful attention to the Greek usage suggests a reviler may actually be quite calm and apparently agreeable in his self-presentation. Some revilers throw tantrums, some do not. What all have in common is the poisonous self-will behind their words.

Troublemakers in the Church

In general, reviling involves public accusations made with ill intentions. A reviler causes trouble, and he means to. His object is to stir up others and get them to take his side. 1 Corinthians 4:12 implies reviling is the opposite of blessing; it’s verbal abuse. There are different ways to be a reviler, which is probably why so many different English translations of loidoros exist.

• Reviling may be false, as in the accusations made by the Pharisees against the Lord Jesus. You will remember they accused him of Sabbath breaking, having a demon, planning to tear down the temple and any number of other evils that were demonstrably untrue. We must remember that frivolous accusations are no laughing matter. Under the Law of Moses, a false witness was to receive the same punishment he had tried to inflict on another. This served as a disincentive to reviling, at least in its most formal aspect.
• Reviling may also be true but inappropriate. Paul himself was accused of reviling the high priest by calling him a “whitewashed wall”. The apostle responded that he had not known Ananias was high priest when he told him God was going to strike him down. There was no intention to revile. However, once informed who he was speaking about, the apostle would have been publicly defying spiritual authority if he had continued his harangue. Accordingly, he ceased, even though Ananias was a hypocrite. He recognized the judgment of Ananias was up to the Lord to sort out.
• Reviling can be obvious or subtle. David had two different kinds of revilers to deal with in his years of rule. First, there was the Benjamite Sheba with his rebellious lies, an obvious verbal abuser. Then there was his son Absalom, subtler than Sheba but far more dangerous in his long-term, calculated undermining of the kingdom. Nobody saw Absalom coming, but the net effect of his work was far greater division and chaos than anything Sheba produced.

The Reviler at Work

So then, a biblical reviler may not scream out his accusations like a madman. Many are too calculating and image-conscious for that. A reviler may whisper his poison into the ears of the faithful one by one in the most devout language and with the most pious affect. He may be the con artist to end all con artists. There were certainly times the Lord’s opponents lost their composure, but in many of their encounters the railing accusations of the Pharisees were probably delivered in the unctuous, patronizing manner of the self-styled superior.

How can we identify a reviler in the church? He will be an obsessive troublemaker. He will have bad things to say about the church’s leadership or direction, things he cannot demonstrate or substantiate, but insists on bringing up publicly at every opportunity. A reviler may be clumsy or slick, but he will not be deterred by little inconveniences like lack of evidence, lack of support or lack of an appropriate subject to target: he will just keep right on accusing in hope of getting a hearing for his case. A reviler is more concerned about achieving his objective than about the damage he is doing to the household of God.

A man this bent may not listen to a local church that puts him out, but at least their consistent, caring condemnation of his behavior will testify against him and vindicate the church of harboring malcontents enslaved to the spirit of Korah, whose reviling of Moses and Aaron brought judgment on 14,700 men in addition to himself.

Nobody wants that, and anyone who thinks the risk of divine judgment is worth getting the opportunity to air his half-baked opinions about his fellow servants is seriously mistaken.

Witnesses, the Church and the World

The incident in Acts with Paul and Ananias is a reminder that God has insulated the men he calls to leadership with an extra level of protection from people who just don’t like authority. Even in the church, a charge against an elder, either whispered or shouted, is not to be entertained except on the testimony of two or three witnesses. So then, accusations of sin against leadership that cannot be biblically substantiated need to be discontinued. Charges that cannot be proven should never be repeated.

The teaching of Matthew 18 about dealing with personal offenses is consistent with this principle. Before you take an accusation public and risk becoming a reviler, it is necessary to bring one or two others along to substantiate the charges against the person who has allegedly wronged you.

Say, for example, you cannot find a single person willing to affirm that the sin that so troubles you has actually been committed. In that case, it is wise to drop the matter and recognize that even if you might be technically correct in your own mind about what has gone on or the evil intent behind it, the Lord has not provided sufficient evidence for your accusation to proceed further. A man who takes his accusation “to the church” (the third step in the process) without those necessary supporting witnesses has become a reviler. He is trying to make trouble, and trouble will probably find him.

A man who takes unsubstantiated accusations to the world, as is now common on the internet, is condemned further by Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6: if it is sinful to file suit against believers in the courts of this world, then surely it is just as sinful to rake them over the coals in the court of public opinion.