4:21. I can remember as a boy in the church when the church organist took off with some woman. Nobody knew quite what to do, and eventually nothing much was done.
- Some unrepentant sins require church discipline.
- 5:1-2; Lev.20:11. Cicero mentions it as an evil. In Sophocles’ Oedipus (Rex) the issue is raised as a tragedy, which is terribly destructive.
- Matt.18:15-17. When a church tolerates serious and known sin in a member, it is sin for the church as well as that member – Rev.2:20. Denying the physical resurrection of the body warrants action – 1 Tim.1:20; 2 Tim. 2:17-18.
- The aim is to reclaim the sinner.
- 5:3-5; the New English Bible even has ‘the destruction of the body’, but it refers to the destruction of sin.
- 1 Timothy 1:20. Augustine: ‘We must always keep charity in our hearts, even when we are obliged to do outward things which seem harsh to men, and to strike them with rough but salutary severity; for their profit must come before their pleasure.’
- 1 Cor.11:29; but there is grace abounding in 2 Cor.2:5-8.
- Church discipline only applies to the church.
- 5:9-13. In Matt.11:19. Jesus eats and drinks with gluttons and drunkards and sinners, not to encourage them but to reach them. You can eat with whoever you can cope with.
The Church is to reflect the holiness of God and the grace of God.