In the body of Christ, believers are called to restore one another in a spirit of gentleness when they see a brother or sister straying from the faith. As Galatians 6:1 instructs, this restoration should be done with humility, recognizing that we ourselves could also fall. Jesus taught in Matthew 18:15-17 that the process of correction should begin with private confrontation, and if necessary, progress to involvement of the church community. The goal, as expressed in James 5:19 and 2 Thessalonians 3:15, is to bring the erring believer back to the truth, not to condemn or judge them, but to reclaim them in love.
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Brothers, if someone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.
If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, regard him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
If your brother sins against you, go and confront him privately. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.
My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back,
Now I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who create divisions and obstacles that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Turn away from them.
But those who persist in sin should be rebuked in front of everyone, so that the others will stand in fear of sin.
Reject a divisive man after a first and second admonition, knowing that such a man is corrupt and sinful; he is self-condemned.
Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction.
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this? Although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth. I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.