Excommunication is widely misunderstood. It's very different from shunning, in which the other person is "dead" to you. Excommunication's goal is reconciliation and healing. The nominal separation is only a recognition of what is already true, just as amputation of necrotic flesh is a recognition of cell death. Romans 11:23 talks about this reconciliation in this way: "And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again."