In his most explicit teaching on church discipline, Jesus appealed to the Old Testament law of two or three witnesses to establish a matter (Matthew 18:16). Paul argued that an accusation could not be brought against an elder unless the accusation was brought by two or three witnesses (1 Timothy 5:19). References to the law of two or three witnesses can be found in several other New Testament texts (John 8:12-20, 2 Corinthians 13:1-2, and Hebrews 10:28), and this Old Testament law was integral to how the New Testament authors treated the practice of church discipline.
This paper will begin by examining the Old Testament and the law of two or three witnesses. I will advance three claims about the law of two or three witnesses, all of which impact the practice of church discipline today. First, the law of two or three witnesses establishes the parameters for careful inquiry into a matter in order to establish the validity of a charge. Second, two or three witnesses were required to enact a punishment as serious as execution in the Old Testament or excommunication in the New Testament. Third, the two or three witnesses texts in both Testaments help clarify what constitutes acceptable evidence given in support an accusation of sin.
Modern treatments of church disciple often give limited attention to the Old Testament law of two or three witnesses and its specific impact on the practice of church discipline, and commentators have disagreed over whether the witnesses in Matthew were to be witnesses to the sin itself or if they could simply be witnesses to the confrontation over the sin. A study of these Old Testament laws, uses of these laws in Second Temple literature, and their use in the New Testament will help clarify the exact nature of these witnesses and how those witnesses should function in the context of modern-day church discipline.