• Disfellowshiping—How to View It
    The Watchtower—1981 | September 15

    • 10, 11. Why are Christians to act differently toward a sinner who has been expelled?

      10 In the next verse Paul contrasts this situation with how Christians should conduct themselves toward one who had been a Christian “brother” but who was expelled from the congregation because of wrongdoing: “But now I am writing you to quit mixing in company [“not associate,” TEV] with anyone called a brother that is a fornicator or a greedy person or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even eating with such a man.”​—1 Cor. 5:11.

      11 The expelled person is not a mere man of the world who has not known God nor pursued a godly way of life. Rather, he has known the way of truth and righteousness, but he has left that way and unrepentantly pursued sin to the point of having to be expelled. So he is to be treated differently.b Peter commented on how such former Christians differ from an average “man on the street.” The apostle said: “If, after having escaped from the defilements of the world by an accurate knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they get involved again with these very things and are overcome, the final conditions have become worse for them than the first. . . . The saying of the true proverb has happened to them: ‘The dog has returned to his vomit, and the sow that was bathed to rolling in the mire.’”​—2 Pet. 2:20-22; 1 Cor. 6:11.

      12. (a) Why is “disfellowshiping” an appropriate term? (b) What does history show as to how those professing Christianity dealt with sinners in early times?

      12 Yes, the Bible commands Christians not to keep company or fellowship with a person who has been expelled from the congregation. Thus “disfellowshiping” is what Jehovah’s Witnesses appropriately call the expelling and subsequent shunning of such an unrepentant wrongdoer. Their refusal to fellowship with an expelled person on any spiritual or social level reflects loyalty to God’s standards and obedience to his command at 1 Corinthians 5:11, 13. This is consistent with Jesus’ advice that such a person be considered in the same way as “a man of the nations” was viewed by the Jews of that time. For some time after the apostles died, those professing Christianity evidently followed the Biblical procedure.c

  • Disfellowshiping—How to View It
    The Watchtower—1981 | September 15

    • b In line with this Bible teaching, Adam Clarke highlights the difference, stating: “Have no communion with [an expelled sinner] in things sacred or civil. You may transact your worldly concerns with a person that knows not God, and makes no profession of Christianity, whatever his moral character may be; but, ye must not even thus far acknowledge a man professing Christianity, who is scandalous in his conduct. Let him have this extra mark of your abhorrence of all sin.”

      c Ecclesiastical historian Joseph Bingham writes concerning the early centuries: “The discipline of the church consisted in a power to deprive men of all the benefits and privileges of baptism, by turning them out of the society and communion of the church, . . . and every one shunned and avoided them in common conversation, partly to establish the church’s censures and proceedings against them, and partly to make them ashamed, and partly to secure themselves from the danger of contagion.” “ . . . no one was to receive excommunicated persons into their houses, nor eat at the same table with them; they were not to converse with them familiarly, whilst living; nor perform the funeral obsequies for them, when dead, . . . These directions were drawn up upon the model of those rules of the apostles, which forbade Christians to give any countenance to notorious offenders.”​—The Antiquities of the Christian Church, pp. 880, 891.