1 Corinthians 5:1-13
1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife!
2 And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you.
3 For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed.
4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
5 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.
6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.
8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9 I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people.
10 Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.
11 But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.
12 For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside?
13 But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “PUT AWAY FROM YOURSELVES THE EVIL PERSON.”
There is a very clear presentation of Paul’s perspective about the dangerous effects of sexual perversion, but also the tolerating its blatant practice among members as if there’s nothing wrong. He makes a clear distinction between those who are outside the body and those who claim to be a part, but there is no patience, no grace, no mercy being shown for how this should be dealt with. It would seem that there is a prevalence of this needed correction where there is a desire to just make everyone feel like they belong, without judgment or transformation, in a place that should be set apart for holiness, having been bought by the precious blood of Jesus. Paul wouldn’t fit into the big tent, coexisting mindset, where those who identify with willful transgression and those who accept them as members are judged righteous by the same grace that should be purifying and sanctifying them. His previous confronting judgment according to outward performance seems to take a turn here as practiced wickedness apparently is evidence of an inward evil that cannot be associated with in the least.
Embracing an identity of love and mercy must come with humble submission to a standard in the holy presence of the Father that disallows any filth that would corrupt and disable access. Some special insight on universal acceptance will never alter the truth of the Father’s unchanging holiness and the extent to which He has gone to deliver us from its opposing wickedness.
I had not really thought about these letters being to the church in a while! He is admonishing them for so many things including sexual immorality and all the while he is speaking to the church!
Many times we hear arguments from Christians as to why they should fellowship with people that are in bars or living in sexual sin or whatever else they are caught up in in the world, but this is a great reminder that we are to reach the world, but not fellowship with it…. But also those in the church that are living as the world, we should not fellowship with. Not because we don’t love them, but because we are to live a life set apart, not influenced by.