You've got to remember that the Apostle Paul is talking in the context of a situation of church discipline.
Those who are under church sanctions are to be partially-shunned by authority of the elders in certain cases. See . This is not to be done without the authority of the elders.
You do not have the authority to engage in some kind of informal discipline of your own.
Treat your friends and relations in Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy as those who are idolaters and probably - almost certainly - unsaved, who happen to be within the bounds of Christendom.
Try to win them for Christ by your behaviour and gracious debate and argumentation about salvation and how we are saved. I know this can be very difficult.
Richard,
In Matthew 18 are you referring to this:
15"If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
16"But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED.
17"If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
If not which and would you please show how this is in the context of of the elders of the church?
I understand that the argument will be that Paul is speaking in the context of church discipline that is exercised by the leaders of the church, but I don't see that in the text.
Would you please go into a little more depth on how the text supports the claim?
I Corinthians 5:1-8 is talking about the need to discipline a member of the church who was having relations with his father's wife - his stepmother. In II Corinthians the Apostle says the man should be restored.
I Corinthians 5:2
And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. (ESV)
He is removed and put into Satan's realm, not by preventing him attending church, but by preventing him taking the Supper and by not having Christian fellowship with him. Christ has promised to back up such action by His Spirit where it is properly done.
See also e.g. the texts in the Gospels about the keys of the kingdom being put in the hands of Apostles and their successors the elders, and about what is bound or loosed on Earth, being bound or loosed in Heaven.
This is the context in which to read I Corinthians 5:9-13. It is about Church discipline authorised by the elders.
Apart from that, in the cultural context, eating with someone meant that you were completely reconciled to them and their views. Eating with someone had a profounder meaning than today.
You could eat with your relations, and yet make clear to them that you didn't view them as brothers and sisters in Christ, that you disapproved of idolatry and wanted them to exercise faith in the true Christ and repent.
If you believe you can't eat with brothers and sisters who are engaging in certain flagrant sins e.g. idolatry, fornication, covetousness, greed, swindling, reviling, drunkenness, without tacitly supporting or condoning their behaviour then don't.
But I think if you make clear to them that you don't view them as brothers or sisters in Christ, and/or you dispprove of their idolatry, you've cleared yourself.
By the way, does anyone know, the nature and severity of the covetousness, greed, swindling and reviling, spoken of here by the Apostle as subject to church sanctions?
