Excommunication

“For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”—1 Corinthians v. 3–5.

Here we have that awful formula which was supposed to justify all the excommunications of the Middle Ages, and which leads English Churchmen sometimes to complain that the power of excommunication has departed from them. Protestants who cleave affectionately to the name of St. Paul, who have been used to look upon him as the witness against the evils of which they complain, do not like to think that he can have given any warrant for that which sometimes appears to them the greatest of these evils. They try to explain away the words, or to limit them to the times of the Apostle. Neither expedient has availed in the least. Our Conscience rebels against trifling with any words, most of all with the words which we profess to receive as oracles. Our Conscience asks whether St. Paul was not laying the foundation of a fellowship that was to last for ever, and whether the principles of it can change from generation to generation.

I suspect, brethren, that what we want is a more rigid, not a more loose interpretation of St. Paul’s language,—a more fixed determination that we will adhere to it, and not to any comments or glosses upon it. If his meaning had been carefully and honestly extracted from his actual words, the Church would have been warned against her acts of tyranny; if she had taken St. Paul as a guide in her conduct, she would have done more than we can conceive for the moral culture of men, instead of promoting some of their worst immoralities. At all events, let us ask for God’s help, that we may be able to do this.

I. You have heard in the Lesson this afternoon why the words were spoken. A crime had been committed by a member of the Church in Corinth, which was odious among heathens. It was notorious: the Apostle had been informed of it. The event must have made some impression on the Corinthian Christians, but, he thought, an impression not adequate to its seriousness. Other topics, about which they had written to him, evidently occupied them more. They were far more busy in deciding on the doctrines of himself and Apollos and Cephas, than in clearing themselves of this great scandal. St. Paul thought that their solicitude about one subject was a principal cause of their indifference about the other. They were split into parties; naturally they were forgetting what was involved in their common fellowship. While they were debating about the worth of their respective teachers, they were coming more and more to suppose that they had no closer bond than that of allegiance to those teachers. While they were full of their intellectual differences, they did not the least understand how a moral disease, if it began in one limb, might infect their whole body. To teach them what was the right way of dealing with this particular offence, was to throw light on a number of temptations to which they were liable, and on the nature and conditions of their Christian calling.

II. The case alluded to in this chapter at once suggests the thought that the Corinthians had a strong bias to sensuality. All we know of their city conspires with the warnings in St. Paul’s epistle to support that opinion. But we should mistake greatly if we supposed that they claimed high privileges for the body, and thought meanly of the soul. We might be sure that, as Greeks, they would exhibit precisely the opposite inclination: we know that they did, from the notions which they formed about the Resurrection. The superiority of the intellect to the animal nature, of the soul to that which was to be ruled by it, no men could feel more strongly. Here was the excuse for their partisanship. Many thought they had advanced beyond the lessons of St. Paul; they were ripe for the wisdom of Apollos. How attractive, said some, are these Jewish traditions! how delightful, said others, is the deliverance from them! Such feelings indicate considerable activity of mind; they indicate also the want of a sense of a common order, to which all alike belong; they indicate a want of wide human sympathies; they indicate a restlessness which, when it has exhausted itself, is likely enough to find a refuge in fleshly indulgences, as more real than mere speculations of the brain.

III. The Corinthians desired to be spiritual men. They were proud of what they called their spiritual gifts. They rejoiced in the thought that the Spirit of God had awakened in them powers of thought and utterance, which at one time they had not, and which others had not. St. Paul avails himself of this boast. He desires them to be spiritual men. He is thankful for their powers of utterance and his own. He is glad that they come behind in no gifts. But if they wish to be spiritual men, he tells them, they cannot be factious men. The Spirit in man is that which unites one to another. To be divided is to be carnal. The Spirit of God is given to awaken that common spirit in men, to lead it to its true object, to set before it Christ—Who gave up Himself, and was crucified—as the Head of the whole Society; to make them partakers of His Mind and Character, to make them confess His Father as their Father. Owning themselves to be spiritual beings, united in a spiritual fellowship to Christ, they would reverence their bodies. These, instead of being deemed lightly of as prisonhouses of the soul, or temporary tabernacles with which they should soon have nothing more to do, would be treated as temples of the Holy Ghost, which they must ask Him to keep from all defilement.

IV. Regarding themselves as spiritual beings, and ruled by God’s Spirit, it would be impossible for them not to look upon the evil which assailed them as spiritual. They were tempted to do unrighteous acts; but they were first of all tempted to be unrighteous men. The citadel was invaded. Malice, Pride, Covetousness, Hatred, Impurity, were trying to master them, to get possession of them, to hold them in captivity. Every man was engaged in this battle. None could evade it. Every man must take his side. He must say, “I submit myself to the Spirit of Good, of Truth, of Charity; I acknowledge myself to be His servant.” Or, “I invite His enemy to come and reign over me; I promise to do his behests and to work his will.” People might state the case differently, might prefer one nomenclature to another. But somehow or other they must come at last to this issue. Obedience to good or to evil; obedience of the spirit to a spirit of good or evil; this was the alternative. But the Church had already made its choice. Its existence meant that the God of Truth and Charity was the God; that He had sent His Son into the world to claim men for His children, to endow them with His life. Its existence meant the renunciation of the Devil and of his works. Supposing one of its members had been convicted of one of his works,—not one about which there was any question, but one condemned by the conscience of all mankind,—what was to be done? St. Paul has no doubt. He pronounces his decision clearly and awfully. How does he frame it?

1. He explains what the Society is. “He is gathered together with them.” “Though absent in the body he is with them in spirit.” These are not random or metaphorical expressions. They are consistent with all that has gone before and all that follows in the Epistle. It is a spiritual body. As spiritual creatures they have entered into it. Conditions of time and space do not circumscribe it. He in Athens, Ephesus, Rome, is still one of them. He cannot separate himself from them. And this is his only security for pronouncing rightly in such a case as this. He could not trust his private judgment in the least. He might be the victim of partial, local, temporary impressions; his individual temperament might make him unjust. His confidence is that the Spirit of Truth will lift him and them above their own haste and vanity, will not allow them to follow their own conceits, will enable them to act as members of a Society of which Christ is the Head.

2. Having that confidence, he decides that “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when they are gathered together, and his spirit, they should deliver such an one to Satan.”

I do not wish in the least to mitigate the force of this expression. I do not even at present quote what follows it. Taken as it stands, it seems to me precisely what we should expect from the Apostle, precisely what he must have said, unless he retracted his previous teachings. The man by this act of his has solemnly made his choice. He has said that our Master is not his. He has declared who is his master. To that master we must leave him. We have no right to claim from him the renunciation of a service to which he has devoted himself. We have no right to claim of him a profession which is manifestly false. We owe it to ourselves that we should not. For we are not a set of units thrown together by chance, with no principle of cohesion, with no relations to each other. We affirm ourselves to be a living body, every limb of which is affected by the well or ill doing, the well or ill being of every other. We are a body set in the world to be witnesses of what God would have His world to be, of what it is when it has confessed its true Centre, and moves in its proper orbit.

3. This reason he enforces in the words which follow soon after. “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.” But now he gives another reason. He says that this was a duty which they owed to the offender himself. “He was to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.” We say continually, “What foolish tenderness you are showing to that man by overlooking his offences, by suffering him to escape the consequences of them. Do you not really know that he must be made to feel his folly, to taste the wormwood, before there is any hope of his reformation?” The admonition is sound. We all recognize it as sound. It points out how cruel much of our mercy is; what mercy may be at the bottom of severity. The maxim applies to our dealings with children and with wrongdoers. If we are to believe the Prophets, it applies to God’s dealings both with men and nations. St. Paul acts upon what he understands to be the divine principle. In fact he does not conceive that it is his own action at all. He has no power to cut off a man from God’s Church. The Corinthians have no power. All he or they can do is to ratify what the man has himself done. And this, believing it is the way of defeating the man’s madness, and of finally triumphing over his seducer.

There is indeed a breadth and a boldness in the Apostle’s speech which we cannot pretend to reach. It is not the part of it which refers to the giving up “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” that confounds us; experience may tell us all too well what that language imports. Not by the act of Churches or Apostles, but by their own act, do we see men given up to a dark and malignant Spirit, yielding to his suggestions, becoming more and more his instruments. Not by the decrees of Apostles or Churches, but by their own decree, do we see the flesh which they have pampered and brutalized gradually perishing through its own excesses. What we wonder at, what sounds too good to be true, is the hope that is contained in the other clause. To think that even by such tremendous processes the spirit may be brought out of its bondage,—that even in this way the man may be restored and the Tempter defeated; this, notwithstanding all we have dreamed of the infinite storehouse of God’s wisdom and loving-kindness, might utterly stagger our feeble faith. The words stand written. St. Paul did not consider them dangerous to utter, even at such a moment, to such a Church, of such a man. I do not suppose we are pious and judicious in being more cautious than he is. I suspect that the more we meditated on the encouragement he holds out, the more we should feel of humiliation and of awe.

V. Here then is the precedent. Would it have been a dangerous one for Churchmen to follow? If men had been taught that Christ has called them to be members of His Body; that He is awakening their spirits by His Spirit to claim their fellowship with Him and with one another; that so far as they yield to that Spirit, God’s laws will be written in their hearts, they will be able to follow Him and to resist that which fights against them,—would not this have been the greatest witness that could have been borne for true, practical, human morality,—the greatest protest that could have been borne against the artificial, exclusive, sacerdotal morality which Churchmen so often have cultivated? If men had been taught that the Devil is not in any sense their master, but that they make him so by distrusting their true, righteous, loving Master, by ceasing to depend upon the help which He promises them every day and hour; that no man may know when they withdraw their allegiance from Him and give it to another, but that God knows, and that God will enable them to know, and will bring them back to Himself; but that if they show openly that they have broken loose from God’s law, and accepted the Devil’s law, it may be needful to let them understand by bitter trial what that is which they have forsaken, what that is which they have preferred,—would not this be the best witness that the position of men in the Church is not determined by the judgment of any priests, or bishops, or popes; that it is God Who places them there and not men? would it not be the greatest protest against the notion that it is right or safe for ecclesiastics to make inquisition into the secret thoughts or opinions of their fellow-men, or to determine anything respecting them except by their conduct? If men were taught how careful the Apostle was not to separate himself from the general body of the Church,—that he was only confident of his own judgment because he felt himself one of them, guided by the same Divine Spirit Who guided them, would not this be a mighty encouragement to every Christian to hope for the help of that Spirit in hours of doubt and temptation? Would it not be the greatest protest against the arrogance of doctors and priests, who have fancied that they possessed some gifts and faculties, not that they might minister to their fellows, but that they might be raised above them? If men were taught that Excommunication is the slow, solemn, reluctant confirmation of a judgment which the wrong-doer has already passed upon himself, would not this be the greatest witness that Communion is what is meant for human beings and that to hold forth Communion with God and Communion with men as the privilege which Christ has won for us, is the chief duty of His ministers? Would it not be the most effectual protest against the notion that the power of cursing is the great power of Churches, which those that possess it should eagerly hold fast and exert,—which those should covet who have lost it? If men were taught that St. Paul recommended and inflicted no outward penalty on him whom he desired the Corinthian Church to cut off, that he could inflict none, that the excluded man might, if he pleased, return to heathenism, leave all the perils of a persecuted position, become a persecutor himself,—would not this be the greatest witness for the entirely spiritual nature both of Communion and Excommunication, the greatest witness against those who have made or would make exclusion a plea for injuries to body or to estate? If men are taught that the worst fear is of their becoming servants of the Spirit of Pride and Malice and Hatred, will not the Excommunicator tremble, lest he should in the worst sense be excommunicating himself? If men are taught that the Prodigal may at last be brought by his riotous living, by eating the swine’s husks, to think of his father’s house,—that the very end of Excommunication is that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord,—who will not see that its whole purpose has been inverted when it has been used as an instrument for cutting men off from God’s forgiveness, for driving them to despair?

VI. But, brethren, it was not only or chiefly for the purpose of commenting upon the misuse of this Excommunication in other days, or in ours, that I have called your thoughts to this subject. I do not think that purpose unimportant, for our feelings about ordinary history and about Scripture are often greatly confused, from our not seeing how far the acts of men that are recorded in one, really correspond to the commands which are found in the other. But I should rejoice far more if I could impress the conviction upon your minds and upon my own, that Excommunication is fearful, because Communion is the real foundation of our lives, because the exercise of it is the reasonable, healthy condition of them. Various opinions and habits that are prevalent among us, make it very difficult indeed to entertain this faith; yet we do confess it, in a number of our ordinary phrases, to be the true one. We confess that we cannot live without a daily renewal of life. We confess that we cannot separate our life from the life of our kind. Consider earnestly what is involved in that acknowledgment. See whether it does not mean that every faculty of sense, feeling, perception, is awakened in us by an impulse from above; see whether every such faculty does not remind us that we must go out of ourselves if we would be truly ourselves. To be always going out of ourselves, always in fellowship with the Source of all Good and Truth, always communicating what we receive from it to those about us, this is the highest perfection we can dream of; this is the life of Christ; this must be the life of those spirits who have fought the fight, and finished their earthly course. To be receiving nothing, to be communicating nothing, to be altogether shut up in self, this is that Excommunication which we can hardly dream of; this must be the condition of devils.

We stand between the two. At every moment something reminds us that we may sink into the worst. At every moment there is a voice beckoning us upwards to the nobler. Let each of us understand that that is the Voice of Christ, saying to him, “In thyself lie the capacities of an ever-deepening Death; I have come that thou mayest have Life, and mayest have it every day more abundantly.”