Dear Dave,

Thanks for your reply! I can appreciate your feeling a need to maintain a stoic approach to fellowship, having a naturally stoic--the stereotypical taciturn New Englander--personality myself. But I have trouble reconciling that with glimpses we get of Paul:

I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn? (2 Cor 11:28-29)

and

we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. (1 Thess 2:7-8)

and

I wrote to you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you. (2 Cor 2:4)

I can't make Paul seem a stoic, and if he wasn't, I don't want to be one either. Now he was certainly reconciled to the necessity of removal of false professors from fellowship, but if his passion for fellowship was as strong as seen above, I have to believe that there was some temporary grief involved if one who seemed to be standing suddenly fell.

In Christ,
Paul S