—REVIEW—
It is most important to keep in mind that the disfellowshipping offenses that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians chapters 5 and 6 are expressed as nouns and not as verbs. Verbs show what people do while nouns show what people are. This means that Christians should not be disfellowshipped because of their actions but because of their characteristics.
Being a kleptēs (“a thief”) means that a person is permeated by the desire of stealing the property of others — this is his charactgeristic. A person who is permeated by this desire and effectuates it deserves to be disfellowshipped from the congregation.
Paul discusses disfellowshipping offenses in 1 Corinthians 6:9, 10:
9 What! Do YOU not know that unrighteous persons will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be misled. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men kept for unnatural purposes, nor men who lie with men, 10 nor thieves, nor greedy persons, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit God’s kingdom.
We note that the disfellowshipping offenses are nouns and not verbs. Verbs show what persons do while nouns show what people are. All the disfellowshipping offenses are agent nouns (nomen agentis), and Victionary defines “agent noun” in the following way:
(grammar) A noun that denotes an agent (human or nonhuman) that performs the action denoted by the verb from which the noun is derived, such as “rider” derived from “to ride, or “cutter” derived from “to cut”.
Some agent nouns are: “creator, counselor, dancer, gambler, jailer, preacher, swindler, teacher, editor,” and these show the occupation or the characteristics of the persons. Greek agent nouns are alieus (“fisherman”) that comes from the verb alieuō (“to fish”) and hiereus (“priest”) that comes from the verb hierateuō (“to serve as a priest”).
In order to illustrate the meaning of the agent nouns that are disfellowshipping offenses, I use pornē, which is the feminine form of pornos. All the Greek-English lexicons show that this word refers to a prostitute, a woman who has unlawful sexual intercourse as her occupation. This is confirmed in 1. Corinthians 6:15, where NWT13 translates pornē as “prostitute.” In a similar way, a pornos is not a man who has unlawful sexual intercourse one, two, or five times. But a pornos is a person whose life is centered around having unlawful sexual intercourse, a person who is permeated by these actions.
A methysos is not a person who has been drunk one, two, or five times, but a methysos is a person who practices drunkenness, a drunkard.
THE NOUN KLEPTĒS USED AS AN AGENT NOUN
The book for elders “Shepherd The Flock Of God” chapter 12, point 21, says regarding stealing and thievery:
- Stealing, Thievery: (1 Cor. 6:9, 10; Eph. 4:28; w86 11/15 p. 14) Though all stealing is wrong, the body of elders should use discernment in weighting the circumstances and the extent of the involvement in wrongdoing to determine whether it is a judicial matter. –w10 3/1 pp 12-14; w94 4/15 pp. 19-21; jd. pp. 105-106
One of the disfellowshipping offenses mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5:10 is expressed by the noun kleptēs, which is a verbal noun of the verb kleptō (“to steal”). This verb occurs 13 times in the Christian Greek Scriptures. According to Louw and Nida, The Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, the meaning of kleptō is “to take secretly and without permission the property of someone else — ‘to steal, theft.’” One example is Matthew 28:13 (NWT13)
13 and said: “Say, ‘His disciples came in the night and stole him while we were sleeping.’
This means that the verbal noun kleptēs has the same meaning as the verb, but this meaning is substantivized.
The word kleptēs, like all the other nouns designating disfellowshipping offenses, including one substantivized adjective, is a nomen agentis (“agent noun”). It does not show what a person does, but describes what the person is, that is, what the person has become. One example is John 12:6. (NWT13):
6 He [Judas Iscariot] said this, though, not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief and had the money box and used to steal the money put in it.
Judas was a kleptēs because he practiced stealing. That kleptēs is a description of a person and not a reference to particular actions of that person is also seen in the Hebrew Scriptures. I quote Hosea 7:1 (above) and Obadja 5 (middle), and Matthew 27:38 (below) from the NETS translation of the Septuagint.
1 when I heal Israel. And the injustice of Ephraim will be revealed, and the wickedness of Samaria, because they have performed lies. And a thief (kleptēs) will come in to him, a bandit (lēstēs) plundering in his way,
5 If thieves (kleptēs) came to you, or robbers (lēstēs) by night, where would you be cast aside; would they not steal what is sufficient for themselves? And if grape gatherers came to you, would they not leave gleanings?
38 Then two robbers (lēstēs) were impaled with him, one on his right and one on his left.
When Jesus was impaled, two robbers were impaled together with him, and the Greek word used was lēstēs. It is clear that this word does not refer to the actions of the two who were impaled, but the word characterizes the persons. They were persons who had been practicing violations of the law, and we could say that they were “criminals.”
The references to kleptēs in the singular by Hosea and in the plural by Obadja do not refer to one particular person who, on one occasion, stole something, and therefore he could be called a thief. But the references are to unidentified thieves. And these thieves (kleptēs) are paralleled with robbers (lēstēs). So, both the nouns lēstēs and kleptēs are used in the generic sense of persons belonging to a group, persons who are practicing the actions of the verbs kleptō (“to steal”) and lēsteuō (“to rob”) from which the nouns kleptēs and lēstēs are made. Thus, kleptēs is in the same class as the robbers (lēstēs) who were impaled together with Jesus.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The Greek word kleptēs (“a thief”) does not refer to the actions of stealing. But it refers to persons who are practicing stealing, persons who are characterized by stealing. Only such persons deserve to be disfellowshipped from the congregation and not persons who have been stealing one or a few times.
For a thorough discussion of the difference between the actions of a person and the characteristics of the person, between what a person does and what he is, see the article “The nature of the disfellowshipping offenses in 1 corinthians chapters 5 and 6.”
