1 Corinthians 5:2
1 Corinthians 5:22And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this?
JWs cite 1 Corinthians 5 as the primary scriptural basis for disfellowshipping. The command to "remove the wicked person from among yourselves" (v. 13) is applied broadly to anyone who commits a serious sin and fails to demonstrate sufficient repentance before a judicial committee of elders. The congregation's failure to act in verse 2 ("you did not mourn") is used to argue that tolerance of sin is itself sinful.
First Corinthians 5 addresses a specific, extreme case: a man in an ongoing incestuous relationship "of a kind not even found among the nations" (v. 1). The congregation was boasting about their tolerance (v. 2). Paul's instruction was corrective for this extraordinary situation. Crucially, shows the outcome: Paul urges the same congregation to "kindly forgive and comfort" the man, because "the reproof given by the majority is sufficient." The discipline had a defined purpose (repentance) and a defined endpoint (restoration with comfort). The Watchtower's shunning policy has neither: reinstatement can take years, social contact remains forbidden during the entire process, and even after reinstatement the stigma endures. Paul's model is restorative discipline with a short arc toward reconciliation; the Watchtower's model extends isolation indefinitely as institutional punishment.