I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.
– 1 Corinthians 5:9-11 (NIV)
The mission of the Church is to “go” into all the world, in order to make disciples. By necessity we will encounter those who are not believers. We will need to converse with, eat with, and build relationships with people that do not share our values or moral behavior.
This is not the case as it relates to the Church. If one professes to be a Christian, then they should be hungry for instruction; they should desire to be transformed. If someone professes to be a Christian and insists on permission to live in sinful ways, then the Church has a responsibility to discipline this individual.
We expect this kind of behavior everywhere else in the world: on the job, in school, and in the family. But for some reason, this is deemed unacceptable behavior inside our current church culture. This is usually protested against by appealing to the language of love; as if it is unloving to point out and discipline wrong behavior. I know at this point, some people will have reservations because of past bad experiences. Without question, there have been church leaders that have acted poorly in this regard. They have acted more like a cult leader than a biblical pastor or elder. However, we cannot dismiss sinful behavior from any member of the body; this includes all leadership and the pastor.
What we see in our current Christian culture is a permissiveness to engage in all sorts of behaviors that are not permissible to God. We see entire churches being formed around doctrinal ideas that blatantly oppose the truth of Scripture. Perhaps this is one reason we find it difficult to discipline within our ranks—because we do not know what is true and right.
One of the egregious things taking place in American Christianity is the number of church leaders and pastors who are caught in the sin of sexual immorality as mentioned in Paul’s words above. We have people who are being hurt by wolves, not is sheep’s clothing, but in shepherd’s clothing. It is imperative that we as the body of Christ know the Scriptures, know the God of Scripture, and hold an expectation that a follower of Christ will live accordingly, and so much more from our elders, leaders, and pastors. We must have such a high expectation that we are willing to cut them off if they refuse to repent, and in some cases get help, We cannot allow members of the church to continue in blatant or public sin.