1 Corinthians 5: 12-13 After all, it is none of my business to judge
outsiders. God will judge them. But should you not judge the members of your
own fellowship? As the scripture says, “Remove the evil person from your group.”
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My meetings usually
ran smooth, but this one wasn’t going so well. I had a guy who insisted on
interrupting and asking antagonizing questions. Usually my approach was to
request to hold questions until the end, but this was not going to happen with
this guy. I stopped the meeting and told him to leave.
- There have been rare times when I had to kick someone out.
- There have been rare times when I needed to let someone go.
- There have been rare times when I exceeded the capacity for patience and had to tell a person to leave.
Paul addressed a
person, perhaps a self-acclaimed church leader, who was boastful about his sexual
escapades. He implies that the guy also acted greedy, worshipped idols,
slandered people, was a drunkard and a thief. It seemed like the guy was not
going to surrender his life to following JESUS any time soon. The best thing to
do was to tell him to leave.
- GOD wants me to be able to tell a disrupter to leave.
- GOD wants me to recognize when a person is not following CHRIST but serving their own lusts.
- GOD wants me to remove the evil person from the group as a rare but necessary action.
Judge not lest you
be judged still applies when considering kicking someone out of a fellowship. I
mean, any group can segregate themselves and make up rules to keep their
fellowship looking and acting like themselves.
That is not what is
going on here. In a diverse group of people, there may be a person who clearly
is not following JESUS and is harmful to spreading HIS message of love and
forgiveness. Such a person is spreading evil versus love. This person needs to
be removed from the group. I am grateful GOD forgives and restores.
- Do you have a person who is being disruptive in your group?
- Has that person exceeded everyone’s patience regarding the love of CHRIST?
- Is the person spreading evil and focused only on worldly conversations?
- Will you prayerfully remove this person and hope he or she will be restored by GOD someday?
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