1 Corinthians 5:6
1 Corinthians 5:66Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?
Witnesses cite "a little leaven ferments the whole batch of dough" as the rationale for keeping the congregation spiritually clean through judicial discipline. Pornography use, doctrinal questioning, or fellowship with disfellowshipped relatives are framed as leaven that must be removed before it spreads. The verse is read as authorising the elders' tribunal, removal procedures, and the practice of shunning former members.
1 Corinthians 5 addresses one specific situation — a man living openly and unrepentantly in incestuous adultery, with the church's acquiescence (verse 1). Paul's response is brief expulsion aimed at rapid restoration; is his follow-up, urging the same congregation to forgive, comfort, and reaffirm love for that same man so he is not "overwhelmed by excessive sorrow." That is a very different machine from a brother privately confessing he is fighting pornography and being escalated to a judicial committee. At the doorstep, grant the seriousness of sexual sin, then ask whether the situation in 1 Corinthians 5 — open, public, unrepentant, with congregational acquiescence — actually matches the situation of a brother in private struggle. The "leaven" warning is real; its application to private confession of struggle inverts Paul's pattern.