Day 137, 1 Corinthians 5
What is purity? How do we obtain it?
The Corinthian church was proud of its “laissez-faire” attitude to sin and especially to sexual immorality. The (human) thinking was that they were demonstrating their maturity in their acceptance of immorality. They are ‘free in Christ’ and the ‘old’ rules no longer apply.
But Paul sees the harm this false maturity will bring, and firmly rejects it. They are to reject the behavior of one famous church member who is having sex with his stepmother. This is a clear repudiation of the loving parameters God set for human relationships, to restrain sin. They are to let the man experience the consequences of his choices and actions (release him to the satan’s side), in hopes that this will help him to change his direction (repent) and move toward God again. Some see this as instruction to excommunicate the man and deliver him to our enemy to experience judgment. A more accurate and balanced translation would have them allowing him to experience the adverse consequences of his sin through withdrawing fellowship from him (in the same sense as our modern phrases “let him learn his lesson the hard way”). ‘The satan’ means an opposer, accuser or adversary. Verse 5 could be translated “so that his materialistic focus can be demolished and his spirit experience being healed, delivered and saved by God.”
Paul then reinforces his correction of compromise with the familiar analogy of yeast: if you leave it, the whole lump gets puffed up with compromise, bitterness and wickedness.
Finally, Paul concludes this chapter with a clarification of what he wrote in his earlier letter (which has never been discovered). He wrote before that they were not to associate with the sexually immoral. Now he clarifies (usefully for us who live in a society with widely divergent sexual identifications) that this does NOT mean to reject unbelievers whose lifestyle is ungodly. We are not to judge those outside the body of Christ who are sinning (because we are also sinners). But we are not to include in the family of God anyone who is still actively an extortioner, a habitual drunkard, one who reviles God or worships other gods, a lover of money, one who steals, or is sexually immoral (having sex outside of God’s design of one man and one woman in covenantal relationship).
Remember that this is a clarification, and we are not to read Paul’s correction as a definitive list of sins that disqualify one from being part of Christ’s body. Remember we all were excluded until He died for us, and are only included because He has given us forgiveness and restored us. Even the man Paul mentioned at the start of the chapter will be singled out in Paul’s second letter for forgiveness and comfort.
So the correction is to keep the church family truly reflective of God’s heart. Free from disunity and without judgment of those outside the Body. That sounds like Jesus to me!
Have a great day!
Mark.