Be sure to check out Sam Storms recent blog on church discipline here.
This is why he says we need to practice church discipline in our churches. “So, secondly, why is discipline necessary? To be brief, there are several reasons: (1) to maintain (as far as possible) the purity of the church (1 Cor. 3:17; Eph. 5:25-27); (2) because Scripture requires it (Mt. 18:15-20; 1 Cor. 5; etc.); (3) in order to maintain a proper witness to the world; the church corporately, as with the elder individually, is to have a good reputation with “outsiders” (1 Tim. 3:7); (4) to facilitate growth and to preserve unity in the body (Eph. 4:1-16); (5) to expose unbelievers (1 John 2:19); (6) to restore the erring brother/sister to obedience and fellowship (1 Cor. 5:5; 2 Cor. 2:6,7,10; Gal. 6:1; 2 Thess. 3:14-15); (7) to deter others (1 Tim. 5:20); (8) to avert corporate discipline (Rev. 2:14-25); (9) because sin is rarely if ever an individual issue: it almost always has corporate ramifications (2 Cor. 2:5); the whole of the body (or at least a large segment of it) is adversely affected by the misdeeds of one member; and (10) evidently Paul believed that the willingness to embrace the task of discipline was a mark of maturity in a church’s corporate life (2 Cor. 2:9).”
