TRANSLATION MATTHEW 18: 15

“If your brother sins, go and expose his fault to him, one to one.If he listens, you have regained your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others with you, so that the whole matter can be settled by the verdict of two or three witnesses. If he pays no heed to them, tell it to the Assembly, and if he pays no heed even to the Assembly, let him be to you like the gentile or the tax collector.”

In its present form, as a rule of practice of the Christian Assembly, this is unlikely to have come directly from Jesus. In any case the use of gentile and tax collector as beyond the pale, contradicts Jesus’ own recognition of these people.

Jesus might more likely have taught, “If your brother sins, do nothing and shut up, for you are not his judge.”

On the other hand, Christian assemblies may have found communal discipline necessary, to prevent scandal, and a graded form of it desirable to limit gossip. As such it is simple, just and doubtless effective. The withdrawal of fellowship is very powerful as witness the evidence of people “de-fellowshipped” by the Jehovah’s Witnesses in our own time. The same evidence should urge caution in the use of this procedure, which protects the integrity of the Assembly at the cost of refusing responsibility for a sinful member.