Church Discipline

"Expel the wicked man from among you." (1 Cor. 5:13b)

Our church family is working through the New Testament and today's reading is 1 Corinthians 5 which tells about the man having an incestuous relationship with his stepmother. There seems to be a lot of confusion about church discipline. Churches seem to go from one extreme to another. Either they don't do it at all, and anything and everything goes. Or it becomes abusive because it is applied when it should not have been.
A few things stood out to me as I was reading this passage and I observed two main purposes in putting someone out of the church fellowship:
1. To restore the one who is the offender. Verse 5 states, "Hand this man over to Satan, so that his sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord." The purpose here is that hopefully by putting him out of the fellowship it would cause him to repent. In 2 Corinthians 2: 5-11 (assuming it's the same person) when the man does repent Paul says to bring him back in to the fellowship.
The second reason is to keep the church body from being infected.
Verse 6 in chapter 5 says, "Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?" This man's sin had become an infection that was harming the rest of the body. It says they were boasting and in an earlier verse it says they had become proud.
So it appears that two purposes are to hopefully bring the immoral brother to repentance while at the same time protecting the rest of the fellowship.
When should a person be disfellowshipped?
Matthew 17:15-17 gives a pattern of going to the person privately first, then take one or two witnesses. If that doesn't work take it to the church. The last part of verse 17 says, "If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or tax collector." It is to be done only when all else has failed. It is NOT to be done to someone who is struggling with a stronghold in his life. It is when he REFUSES to listen.

I'm going to go out on a limb here somewhat but I DO NOT believe that this applies to criminal activity. I have personally experienced where a church used excommunication to deal with a child molester. If it is criminal activity it needs to be dealt with by the governing authorities. Romans 13:4 says that those in authority are there by God's design; (vs. 4b) "He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer." A church body does not have any authority to deal with criminal activity. And if they attempt to do so, they could be charged with harboring a criminal or being an accomplice -- or forcing others into that position. Obviously, putting a criminal out of fellowship likely would be fitting but then bring in the governing authorities appropriately.

These are my thoughts on this subject. I hope it makes sense and I hope you all have a very blessed day.