“For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.” (2 Corinthians 2:6-8)
Jesus gives instructions on how to treat people within the church body that are sinning in Matthew 18:15-20. The church has named this practice “church discipline” or “excommunication.” In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul gives us an example of how this is enacted, when he calls out a sin problem in the Corinthian church. He says that there is a member of the church that is practicing sexual immorality. He instructs the church to remove the person from the church. Furthermore, Paul instructs the church “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler – not even to eat with such a one.” (1 Cor. 5:11)
Now, in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul again addresses the interaction of the church with the sexually immoral person. This time, he encourages the church to welcome him back, restore him to fellowship, to forgive and comfort him. For, if he isn’t welcomed back, he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
What are we to learn from this? First, that church members that are practicing sin and not willing to recognize or repent need to be separated from church fellowship. The purpose of this separation is to cause the person to recognize the seriousness of their sin, so that they change their behavior and can be welcomed back into church fellowship. In this passage, Paul is concerned that the sinning brother has not been welcomed back into fellowship.
We see a wonderful attribute of God in this passage. While God is unwilling to overlook sin, he kindly urges the sinner to come to repentance. Paul writes in Romans 2:4, “God’s kindness is intended to lead us to repentance.” May we be obedient to God’s commands, so that we are not subject to church discipline. But, also, be willing to follow God’s instructions when dealing with a brother or sister that has a sin problem.