1 Corinthians 5:3

1 Corinthians 5:3. For I verily, being absent in body, but present in spirit, have already (in the exercise of my apostolic authority) judged him that hath so wrought this thing, in the name of our Lord Jesus [1] in whose name, as the unseen yet ever-present Lord of the Church, every act of discipline should be performed, whether in the way of binding or of loosing (Matthew 18:18-20; Matthew 28:18-20).

[1] The word “Christ,” twice in this verse, is omitted by the best authorities.

ye being gathered together (for that express purpose), and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus (resting on you in the discharge of this duty), to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh the depraved inclinations of this offender

that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Corrective, therefore, not destructive, was this severe discipline designed to be destructive only of what would have destroyed the soul of the offender, Most expositors find here over and above bare excommunication some bodily chastisement from above which was to light upon this offender after his expulsion from church membership. In support of this, they refer to the case of Job, whose property, family, and person Satan was permitted to smite; to the case of Ananias and Sapphira; and to that of Elymas the sorcerer. But none of these cases seem to be in point. In the only case which seems strictly parallel that of Hymenæus and Philetus, whom our apostle says he “had delivered unto Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme” (1 Timothy 1:20) no hint is given of what was meant in this act of apostolic judgment, and certainly none of bodily infliction. In fact, the only difficulty in both these cases is the strength of the language employed. But if it be borne in mind that the act of ejection was to be performed at a meeting of the whole church, convened expressly for this purpose; that it was to be done as by the apostle himself, and in the name of our Lord Jesus, as being Himself present; that it certainly carried with it exclusion from all Christian fellowship, and consequently banishment to the society of those among whom Satan dwelt, and from which the offender had publicly severed himself: it will not seem very difficult to understand how, in this first case of severe discipline too long delayed the strongest terms which he could find should have been employed by the apostle. What a caricature of this is the greater excommunication of the Church of Rome, as carried into effect in the darker and palmier days of sacerdotal power! It was performed amid such ghostly forms as were designed to strike terror into the stoutest heart, after which the culprit was tortured by methods of refined cruelty which it was reserved for an apostatized and heartless Christianity to invent, with a view to extort confession of crimes or heresies to which perhaps he was an utter stranger. He was then handed over to the secular power to be put to death, “that the spirit (forsooth) might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”! Such deeds, happily, cannot be done now, but they have died out very slowly, and never has the right to carry them out been renounced; nay, some of the less refined yet ultimately crushing forms of them are still practised where it can be done with impunity.