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Red Hat members are not allowed to sell products at club meetings and must not leverage their membership as a way to get others to buy. Members can't use their membership in the Red Hat Society as a launching pad for their personal businesses.
School band members are expected to show up for practices, even when the practices fall during the evening hours at inconvenient times. The student who misses too many practices won't be allowed to perform and embarrass the rest of the band with their mistakes.
The same principle holds true in each organization: If you're part of the group, you're must live by the group's standards. Churches can be no different. When one becomes a follower of Jesus, one agrees to live by Jesus' standards and should expect to be corrected when willful sin occurs.
Sadly, that doesn't always happen. Preacher Andy Stanley says, "The Church is notorious for policing behavior of those outside the church and doing a very poor job of policing those inside the church." Stanley is right.
While churches picket abortion clinics, Christians seek abortions at almost the same rate as the population at large. Christians often speak out against strip joints or "gentlemen's clubs," but half of Christian men view online pornography at least once a month, just like men in the general population.
Hypocrisy is neither attractive nor Godly!
In 1 Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul confronts a situation in the church at Corinth: A man is involved in a sexual relationship with his father's wife (probably his step-mom). Paul calls this a kind of immorality that "even pagans do not tolerate" (1 Corinthians 5:1, NIV). Paul notes that while the conduct itself is disturbing, it's even more lamentable that the Corinthian church hasn't done anything about it. Instead of correcting the man, the Corinthian congregation seems to be congratulating themselves on their tolerance and acceptance. Paul responds, "...Shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?" (1 Corinthians 5:2).
Paul cites two reasons for removing this man from the church. First, it is for the man's own good, intended not to punish but to rescue. The church is to "hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 5:5). Only two kingdoms exist in the spiritual realm -- the Kingdom of God, and that of Satan.
When this Christian man is "handed over to Satan," he will see that his eternal future is in jeopardy; he must overcome his lust or face the consequences on Judgment Day.
The church must also remove the man from membership because his actions can negatively affect others. If the sin isn't confronted, other weak Christians might engage in similar sinful behavior themselves.
The world, watching to see if believers practice what they preach, will see the church's hypocrisy, teaching that actions are sinful while tolerating the sin in their midst. Everyone in the congregation stands to lose because one believer fails to live up to the standard.
Paul expands on his command in 1 Corinthians 5:11-13: "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.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. "Expel the wicked person from among you."
John Fluharty, a member of the Buck Run Church in Frankfort, KY, credits that kind of discipline from his church with saving his life. After becoming a Christian, Fluharty had secretly run up a $250,000 gambling debt, stealing from his employer to finance his bets.
When the employer discovered the theft, Fluharty was fired and his wife told their pastor what had happened. The church disciplined Fluharty and prayed for him to get his life turned around. Instead of anger, Fluharty responded to the discipline with gratitude. Fluharty says, "You should be embarrassed about sin; you should be ashamed about sin." Fluharty wants to tell others his story so that churches can help other believers defeat sin by disciplining them when appropriate. "If I tell this to 10,000 people and one is helped, it's worth it," he said.