The third thing for which a believer can be kept away from the fellowship of a local church is the committing of gross sins and living in these sins, not being willing to repent of them and forsake them (1 Cor. 5:9-13). A person who commits gross sins in this way should be removed from the fellowship of the church. But once such a one would repent and forsake his sins, the church should forgive him and receive him into the fellowship of the church, that we may not be taken advantage of by Satan (2 Cor. 2:5-11). In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul charged the church in Corinth to remove a sinful brother from the fellowship of the church. Later, this one repented, and the news came to Paul. Immediately, Paul wrote the second Epistle, charging the church to forgive this one and to receive him back. If we do not do this, we may be taken advantage of by Satan in that he might devour such a repentant one.
In dealing with the divisions that have separated themselves from the genuine local churches and have broken the unique fellowship of the Body of Christ, I would like to present to you my proposal, and I believe that this is according to the holy Word.
First, we should consider these divisions as divisive sects, like the denominations, not according to their condition but according to their standing, their ground. If you were to go to a meeting of the divisive ones, as a pretense they might behave in a very spiritual way. This kind of behavior is a matter of their condition. In this book I have used the illustration of marriage. Marriage is based upon the chastity of the wife, not upon her niceness. A wife may be very nice, but if her husband is Mr. Smith and she begins to call herself Mrs. Jones, regardless of how nice, humble, and submissive she may be toward her husband, the base of her marriage will be annulled. The base of a marriage is not the wife's condition but her chastity. If a wife is chaste, even though at times she may not treat her husband nicely, that is, even though her condition may be somewhat poor, she still has the proper standing as a wife. Concerning today's situation among us, we need to exercise the proper discernment. We must discern whether a certain group of believers is a genuine church or a division, not according to their condition but according to their standing, their ground. Regarding one's condition, it is possible to pretend, but concerning the ground on which one stands, no one can pretend. We are either on the proper ground or we are not. Just as a woman cannot pretend to have one unique husband, we cannot pretend to be on the proper ground of the church in the unique fellowship.