Don’t count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.
admonish him as a brother--not yet excommunicated (compare Lev 19:17). Do not shun him in contemptuous silence, but tell him why he is so avoided (Mat 18:15; Th1 5:14).
Yet count him not as an enemy,.... As an enemy of Christ, and the Christian religion, as the Jews and Pagans were; or as an enemy of all righteousness, as Elymas the sorcerer was; as one that has an implacable hatred to good men, and a persecutor of them, and has an utter aversion to them and their principles; nor deal with him in an...
Verse 15. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. This shows the true spirit in which discipline is to be administered in the Christian church. We are not to deal with a man as an adversary over whom we are to seek to gain a victory, but as an erring brother--a brother still, though he errs. There was necessity for this caution.