What sounds to us like a message of exile ("treat unrepentant sinners as you would a Gentile or a tax collector") completely falls apart when you remember how Jesus actually treated Gentiles and tax collectors: warmly, hospitably, with great hope for their conversion. pic.twitter.com/d8WOKZQaxM
— Catherine Addington (@caddington11) September 6, 2020
Is this how that sentence is normally understood? Exile? (Or excommunication?)
Is such a consequence completely unwarranted?
The English translation of the pope's Angelus address gives a better translation of the passage in question, Matthew 18:17. Pope Francis may give a better explanation:
And Jesus says: “and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (ibid.). This expression, seemingly so scornful, in reality invites us to put the brother in God's hands: only the Father will be able to show a greater love than that of all brothers and sisters put together.
But the alternative explanation offered by Francis is unwarranted by the text, unless one is reading into it -- if one is no longer to consider the unrepetant sinner a brother or sister in Christ, but an outsider, does that mean we are to scorn him or her? No. Does that mean we stop living them with agape? No. But a sinner's offense may be so serious that it does require that we no longer include him in the community -- exile or excommunication. Excommunication or exile is not incompatible with agape. Regardless of whether someone is included in the Church or not, how can the Body of Christ have a greater agape love than that of God Himself?
Let us remember that Christ did not force Himself upon those who rejected Him, tax collector, Gentile, Pharisee, Saducee, Samaritan, etc. He did invite people to repentence but He also made it clear that repentence for sins was necessary for forgiveness.
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