Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church

Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church

1 Corinthians 5  It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. ²And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

³For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. ⁴When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, ⁵you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

⁶Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? ⁷Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

⁹I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— ¹⁰not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. ¹¹But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. ¹²For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? ¹³God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” ^[1]

The Believers Bible Commentary wrote this about this passage:

5:1 Apparently it had become wide ly reported that one of the men in the fellowship at Corinth had committed sexual immorality. Here it was a very extreme form of sin, one that was not even practiced among the ungodly Gentiles. Specifically, the sin was that this man had had illicit intercourse with his father’s wife. The man’s own mother had no doubt died and the father had married again. So his father’s wife, in this case, would then refer to his stepmother. She was probably an unbeliever, because nothing is said about taking action against her. The church did not have jurisdiction in her case.

5:2 How had the Corinthian Christians reacted to all this? Instead of plunging into deep mourning, they were proud and haughty. Perhaps they were proud of their tolerance in not disciplining the offender. Or perhaps they were so proud of the abundance of spiritual gifts in the church that they did not give serious thought to what had taken place. Or perhaps they were more interested in numbers than in holiness. They were not sufficiently shocked by sin.

You are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.This implies that if the believers had taken the proper attitude of humiliation before the Lord, He Himself would have acted in the matter, taking some form of disciplinary action on the offender. Erdman says:

They should have understood that the true glory of the Christian church consists not in the eloquence and gifts of its great teachers, but in the moral purity and the exemplary lives of its members.

5:3 In contrast to their indifference, the apostle states that even though he was absent, yet he had already judged the matter as if he were present.

5:4 He pictures the church being assembled to take action against the offender. Although he is not present bodily, yet he is there in spirit as they meet in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus had given authority to the church and to the apostles to exercise discipline in all such cases. Thus Paul says he would act with the power (or authority) of our Lord Jesus.

5:5 The action he would take would be to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Commentators disagree on the meaning of this expression. Some feel that it describes the act of excommunication from the local church. Outside the church is the sphere of Satan’s dominion (1 Jn. 5:19). Therefore, “to deliver to Satan” would be simply to excommunicate from the church. Others feel that the power to deliver to Satan was a special power granted to apostles but no longer in existence today.

Again, there is disagreement as to the meaning of the expression the destruction of the flesh. Many feel that it describes physical suffering that would be used by God to break the power of sinful lusts and habits in the man’s life. Others feel that the destruction of the flesh is a description of slow death, which would give a man time to repent and be spared.

In any case, we should remember that the discipline of believers is always calculated to bring about their restoration to fellowship with the Lord. Excommunication in never an end in itself, but always a means toward an end. The ultimate purpose is that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. In other words, there is no thought of the man’s eternal damnation. He is disciplined by the Lord in this life because of the sin he has committed, but he is saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

5:6 Paul now reproves the Corinthians for their glorying or boasting. Maybe they excused themselves by saying that it happened only once. They should have known that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Leaven here is a picture of moral sin. The apostle is saying that if they tolerate a little moral sin in the church, it will soon grow and expand until the whole fellowship is seriously affected. Righteous, godly discipline is necessary in order to maintain the character of the church.

5:7 Thus they are commanded to purge out the old leaven. In other words, they should take stern action against evil so that they might be a new, in the sense of a pure lump. Then Paul adds: Since you truly are unleavened. God sees them in Christ as holy, righteous, and pure. Now the apostle is saying that their state should correspond with their standing. As to position they were unleavened. Now as to their practice they should also be unleavened. Their natures should correspond with their name, and their conduct with their creed.

For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.In thinking about the unleavened bread, Paul’s mind goes back to the Passover Feast where, on the eve of the first day of the Feast, the Jew was required to remove all leaven from his house. He went to the knead ing trough and scraped it clean. He scrubbed the place where the leaven was kept till not a trace remained. He searched the house with a lamp to make sure that none had been overlooked. Then he lifted up his hands to God and said, “Oh God, I have cast out all the leaven from my house, and if there is any leaven that I do not know of, with all my heart I cast it out too.” That pictures the kind of separation from evil to which the Christian is called in this day.

The slaying of the Passover lamb was a type or picture of the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. This verse is one of many in the NT that establishes the principle of typical teaching. By this we mean that persons and events of the OT were types or shadows of things that were to come. Many of them pointed forward directly to the coming of the Lord Jesus to put away our sins by the sacrifice of Himself.

5:8The feast here does not refer to the Passover or to the Lord’s Supper but rather is used in a general way to describe the whole life of the believer. Our entire existence is to be a festival of joy, and it is to be celebrated not with the old leaven of sin nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. As we rejoice in Christ, we must have no evil thoughts in our hearts toward others. From this we see that the Apostle Paul was not speaking about literal leaven, such as the yeast that is used in making bread, but rather he was using leaven in a spiritual sense to describe the manner in which sin defiles that with which it comes into contact. We are to live our lives with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

5:9 Now Paul explains to them that he had previously written in a letter that they were not to keep company with sexually immoral people. The fact that such an epistle is lost does not affect the inspiration of the Bible at all. Not every letter Paul wrote was inspired, but only those which God has seen fit to include in the Holy Bible.

5:10 The apostle now goes on to explain that in warning them to have no company with sexually immoral people, he did not mean to imply that they should separate themselves from any contact at all with ungodly men. As long as we are in the world, it is necessary for us to do business with unsaved people and we have no way of knowing the depths of sin to which they have descended. In order to live a life of complete isolation from sinners, you would need to go out of the world.

So Paul says that he did not at all mean complete separation from the sexually immoral people of this world, or the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters. Covetous people are those who are convicted of dishonesty in business or financial affairs. For instance, anyone who is found guilty of tax fraud is subject to excommunication for covetousness. Extortioners are those who enrich themselves by using violent means, such as threats of harm or death. Idolaters are those who are given over to the worship of anyone or anything other than the true God, and who practice the terrible sins of immorality that are almost always connected with idolatry.

5:11 What Paul really wants to warn them against is having fellowship with a professing brother who engages in any of these terrible sins. We might paraphrase his words as follows:

What I meant to say and what I now repeat is that you should not even eat a common meal with any professing Christian who is sexually immoral, or a covetous man, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner.

It is often necessary for us to have contact with the unsaved, and we can often use these contacts in order to witness to them. Such contact is not as dangerous to the believer as having fellowship with those who profess to be Christians and yet live in sin. We should never do anything that such a person might interpret as condoning his sin.

To the list of sinners mentioned in verse 10, Paul adds revilers and drunkards in verse 11. A reviler is a man who uses strong, intemperate language against another. But we would add a word of caution here. Should a man be excommunicated from the church if on one occasion only he should lose his temper and use unguarded words? We would think not, but would suggest that this expression refers to habitual practice. In other words, a reviler would be one who is known as being characteristically abusive toward others. At any rate, this should be a warning to us to exercise control of our language. As Dr. Ironside has mentioned, many people say that they are just careless with their tongue, but he points out that they might just as well say that they are careless with a machine gun.

A drunkardis one given to excess in the use of alcoholic beverages.

Does the Apostle Paul mean that we are not even to eat with such a Christian who engages in these practices? That is exactly what the verse teaches! We are not to eat with him at the Lord’s Supper, nor are we to enjoy a social meal with him. There may be exceptional cases. A Christian wife, for instance, would still be obligated to eat with her husband who had been disfellowshiped. But the general rule is that professing believers who are guilty of the sins listed should be subjected to social ostracism in order to impress on them the enormity of their transgression and to bring them to repentance. If it is objected that the Lord ate with publicans and sinners, we would point out that these men did not profess to be His followers, and in eating with them He did not recognize them as His disciples. What this passage teaches is that we should not fellowship with Christians who are living wicked lives.

5:12 Paul’s two questions in verse 12 mean that Christians are not responsible for the judgment of the unsaved. Wicked men in the world about us will be brought into judgment by the Lord Himself in a coming day. But we do have a responsibility as far as judging those who are inside the confines of the church. It is the duty of the local church to exercise godly discipline.

Again, if it is objected that the Lord taught, “Judge not that you be not judged,” we would reply that there He is speaking about motives. We are not to judge men’s motives because we are not competent for that type of judgment. But the word of God is equally clear that we are to judge known sin in the assembly of God so as to maintain its reputation for holiness and so as to restore the offending brother to fellowship with the Lord.

5:13 Paul explains that God will take care of the judgment of those who are outside, that is, of the unsaved. In the meantime, the Corinthians should exercise the judgment which God has committed to them by putting away the evil person from among themselves. This calls for a public announcement in the church that this brother is no longer in fellowship. The announcement should be made in genuine sorrow and humiliation and should be followed by continual prayer for the spiritual restoration of the wanderer.^[2]