Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Thessalonians · About this commentary
Withdraw from the Disorderly
2 Thessalonians 3:6
6 Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks in rebellion and not after the tradition which they received from us. · WEB
The letter's one command about church discipline is given in the Lord's name, and the offense is a way of living rather than a doctrine.
Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The formula is the strongest the letter uses, and what follows is not a doctrinal ruling: withdraw yourselves from every brother who walks disorderly, and not after the tradition received from us.
The word is ataktōs G814, a military term for a soldier out of rank or a line broken. It appears three times in this chapter and nowhere else in Scripture, so the chapter is the whole of the New Testament's use of it. English versions render it variously — disorderly, idle, in rebellion — and the underlying picture is of someone who has left the formation while remaining in the army. The man in view is still called a brother.
That is what makes the instruction difficult and keeps it from being expulsion. Withdrawing is a distancing inside the family, aimed at the outcome verse 14 will name — that he may be ashamed — and bounded by verse 15, which forbids treating him as an enemy. The tradition he has departed from is not a rule about work but the apostolic pattern the next verses describe.
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