Does the Parable of the Wheat & Tares Teach that the Church Should NOT Discipline Sin?

Written by Trevor Mouw

There are a small number of pastors in the CRCNA who have recently suggested that Jesus’ Parable of the Wheat and the Tares in Matthew 13 should lead the denomination and individual churches to put up with up members in unrepentant sin and not enact church discipline that could potentially lead to excommunication.

(Even more disappointing are those who decry “church discipline” without any attempt at justification from Scripture, other than some common public misconception of “Judge not”.)

As one pastor said, “I would suggest that in ripping out those “tares” (aka “anyone who advocates or lives in a Christian same sex marriage” {his words.}) A lot of good grain is being uprooted as well, not least in the CRC.”

The general argument thus states that this parable “suggests that judgment is God's, not ours.” (emphasis mine, words someone else’s)

Indeed, God alone will judge the living and the dead. But the New Testament repeatedly states the necessity of accountability and discipline from officebearers in the church. We should not read this parable as saying "holding each other accountable in life and doctrine is overstepping God's authority and pulling up weeds yourself."

God Himself demands that we hold each other accountable in His church, especially through the officebearers.  This much is unmistakable in Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 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. (Matthew 18:15)

To insinuate that Jesus is against accountability in the life of the church is a serious error! This denial of Church Discipline as the 3rd Mark of the True Church is unfaithful and unhealthy.

John Calvin, in his commentary on this passage, agrees that this passage cannot be used as a justification for avoiding discipline and accountability in the church.  I’ll quote him at some length:

This is, no doubt, a very distressing consideration, that the Church is burdened with the reprobate to the very end of the world; but Christ enjoins on us to exercise patience till that time, that we may not deceive ourselves with a vain hope. Pastors ought to labor strenuously to purify the Church; and all the godly, so far as their respective callings enable them, ought to lend assistance in this matter; but when all shall have devoted their united exertions to the general advantage, they will not succeed in such a manner as to purify the Church entirely from every defilement. Let us therefore hold that nothing was farther from the design of Christ than to encourage pollution by lending countenance to it. All that he intended was, to exhort those who believed in him not to lose courage, because they are under the necessity of retaining wicked men among them; and, next, to restrain and moderate the zeal of those who fancy that they are not at liberty to join in a society with any but pure angels.

Indeed, this is a parable about God, first and foremost. To "pull up", in this parable, is to literally remove human beings from this world. This parable is about God withholding His Day of Judgment until His appointed time AND showing Common Grace mercy upon the "weeds" by not destroying them for their sinfulness immediately. (This makes us think in general terms about God’s withholding of a second "flood", a second literal destruction of all human beings. And in specific terms that God does not immediately destroy each of us individual humans every time we commit a single sin.)

Thus, it would be impossible for us to "pull up the weeds".
This is a supernatural act done by the supernatural.

The potential application to us should first be "Let us make sure that we are wheat and not weeds!" (Knowing that it is God who works within us, “both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:13)

And as the community of God, working together to spur one another to faith and holiness, this certainly involves admonishing and correcting one another when one falls into sinful beliefs and practices. It involves church discipline as a mark of the true church.

Finally, conversations about the bounds of orthodoxy with a single denomination are quite different from saying whether a person is saved or unsaved, whether a wheat or a tare.

We are not called to judge whether a person is a “wheat” or a “tare”, but the ordained leaders of the church are called to use the means of Church Discipline up to and possibly including excommunication. Yet even in this, we hold onto the hope of repentance and reconciliation for the disciplined person, knowing that God, in His Wisdom and Providence, can and does at times use Church Discipline to lead wayward sheep back to repentance and life in the Good Shepherd.

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Trevor Mouw teaches Bible and Theology at Unity Christian High School in Orange City. He is also an MDiv student at Calvin Theological Seminary and a member of Faith CRC in Sioux Center.