Since it’s been a few weeks since we’ve last looked at 1 Corinthians, a brief review is no doubt in order. The church at Corinth was extremely unhealthy, battling division, selfishness, pride, and a host of issues that would cause all of us never to want to join that church. They were suing each other, some denying the resurrection, and others eating up all the food from the Lord’s Supper before others arrived. Again, this is a church that none of us would rate as “healthy” or want to be identified with in any way.
However, Paul begins his letter to the Corinthians in a way that we would never anticipate. Instead of diving into issues about how selfish they were to use their spiritual gifts to build themselves up instead of their brothers, he begins the letter on a very encouraging note. Specifically, in 1:1-9, he tells them that he thanks God for them, specifically that they’ve been gifted by the Spirit as they have and are not lacking in any gift, and trusts that God will sustain them guiltless until the day the Lord returns. These are quite gracious words to a congregation that is so utterly unhealthy and suggests, I think, that Paul wants everything the Corinthians do in response to this letter to flow out of an understanding of the gospel of grace that has saved them through faith.
But Paul doesn’t open the letter this way because he wants to ignore issues going on in the church and push things under the rug. Rather, he begins addressing the division in the church in the middle part of chapter 1, noting that their divisions stem from a wrong understanding of church leaders, a prideful desire to want to lift themselves up above their brothers, a desire to be exalted in the eyes of the world, and a failure to realize that the gospel by design destroys the wisdom of the world and puts us in a place where those whose eyes have not been opened to how glorious Christ is will see us as fools. That argument is found in 1:10-4:21.
Then, in chapter 5, Paul turns his attention to one specific incident going on in the church. It appears that there’s an individual in the church who is involved in sexual immorality with his stepmother, and not only is the church tolerating this sinful behavior, but they’re boasting, it seems, in their tolerance of this sin. And Paul’s call to them on how to handle this situation is clear. Multiple times he makes clear that they are to remove this individual from the church, saying in v. 2, “Let him who has done this be removed from among you,” in v. 5, “You are to deliver this man to Satan,” in v. 7, “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump,” and very straightforwardly in v. 13, “Purge the evil person from among you.”
That’s right, the same Paul who began the letter expressing his confidence that the Corinthians would be sustained guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (1:8) is now telling them to remove from their church one of their members who professes faith in Jesus Christ but won’t let go of his sin. And this probably isn’t like the situation in Jackson, TN in 2014 where being a believer often doesn’t mean significant cost to us economically or in other areas of suffering and where if you’re removed from one church you can likely find one among the other dozens and dozens of churches who will gladly accept you into their membership. To be put out of the fellowship of believers while professing faith in Christ, probably means you find yourself unwelcomed by most of society while also being disciplined by the one church in Corinth.
So, why would Paul call for something that seems so harsh? I want to try to answer this question as I answer a few others this morning. In fact, I want to give you an outline that is simply three questions: 1) What is Paul saying in this text?, 2) Why is Paul saying this?, and 3) What does this mean for Cornerstone? With that, then, let’s launch in to answering the first question:
There are enough odd details in this text that I think it would help us this morning just to work through the details of the text and make sure we all understand precisely what Paul is saying in these thirteen verses. Paul describes the situation that provokes his strong writing here in verses 1-2. He has heard through someone’s report that has been to the church in Corinth and is relaying the information to Paul that there’s a brother in the church at Corinth who is involved in sexual immorality. But the nature of the immorality is even of a kind that unbelievers would look down on. He was involved in sexual immorality with his stepmother.
Now, I say that because Paul writes “a man has his father’s wife” (v. 1) rather than saying, “a man has his mother” or the like. And the thing that has provoked Paul’s strong writing here is not simply that this is happening, though he’s not pleased with the man’s action. What bothers him is that the church is arrogant about this. Instead of mourning that one of their brothers has caught himself in gross sin and is unrepentant about it, they’re arrogant, perhaps even boasting in the very tolerance they’re showing toward his sin (v. 6).
Therefore, Paul declares to them what needs to be done. He says in verse 2a, “Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” And he is a bit clearer on when and how this is to be done in verses 3-5, writing, “For 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. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of the Lord Jesus, you 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.”
Paul wants them to know that as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, though he is not with them, his judgment has been made. This man is walking in sexual immorality, and is not turning from it. Had the man been wanting to repent and turn from this action, Paul’s exhortations would have been different. But Paul knows action needs to be taken, so he wants the church, when they assemble again (on the Lord’s Day) to take the step of officially removing this brother from the church, or in our language we use, remove him from the membership of the church.
Paul says this different ways throughout. We already saw that in 2a he straightforwardly said, “Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” In a few verses later he’s going to use a metaphor of getting leaven out of dough to illustrate removing this brother, by saying, “Cleanse out the old leaven” (v. 7). And he’s going to end the chapter saying, “Purge the evil person from among you” (v. 13) which is a quotation found throughout the book of Deuteronomy when the Lord instructs his people concerning how to deal with those who have committed sins punishable by death and/or are leading the people astray. Again, in most cases when this phrase is found in Deuteronomy it is describing what Israel is doing by exercising capital punishment and killing the person. But under the new covenant, Paul is clearly not commanding that. But this is harsh punishment indeed.
And the one other way Paul says that I’ve skipped over I want to come back to now. One other description he uses for removing this individual from the church is found in verse 5 when he says “You are to deliver this man to Satan.” The idea here is that the church is an area where we see the Lord’s commands obeyed and fulfilled, the life that comes from walking in the Spirit and edifying one another, and a place where we are built up, helped, loved, encouraged, and strengthened. To go outside the church in the world is to walk in enemy-occupied territory. Satan is called the ruler of this world, god of this age, and prince of the power of the air for good reason. When individuals are unbelievers and, consequently, not part of the church, they’re living their lives following Satan and walking according to the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience as Paul says in Ephesians 2. To not be part of the church is to be removed from a realm of knowing the Lord’s blessing and care and love as poured out by his Spirit through his people and to be put back out in Satan’s domain.
So this isn’t some light discipline. In fact, Paul wants this individual to feel a great loss of fellowship with believers and come face-to-face with the fact that he is no longer walking with the people of God as a part of Christ’s church. Paul speaks very strongly about this in verses 9-11. First, he clears up some confusion about what he wrote in a previous letter, writing in verses 9-10, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not 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.”
Paul wants to make clear that he fully expects them to be around unbelievers who know they’re unbelievers and act like unbelievers. To try to avoid unbelievers acting like unbelievers would mean that they’d need to go out of the world altogether. But, what he is commanding them to do is to not associate with someone who claims to be a believer and yet is refusing to repent of his sin. That’s what Paul is saying in verse 11 when he writes, “But 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.”
See, Paul’s point is not that they’re exhorted to remove this man simply because of the nature of his sin. Paul adds many other sins to the list, making the point that what calls for this expelling action is the man’s refusal to repent of his sin, so that if someone were getting drunk and refusing to repent of that lifestyle, for example, Paul would be calling for their expulsion from the body as well.
And Paul makes clear that once this man is removed, they shouldn’t be hanging out with him in the sense of socializing with him, sharing meals with him, catching the latest sporting events with him, and the like. He needs to feel the lack of fellowship. In fact, from 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15 where Paul also exhorts discipline saying, “Have nothing to do with [the disciplined person], that he may be ashamed,” he adds, “Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother,” I think, meaning when you see him let him know your desire to see him turn from his sin so that he might not face God’s wrath on that final day, we see the kind of thing Paul envisions. Don’t just hang out with the guy, but when you see him, remind him of his need to repent of sin and warn him of the judgment to come if he doesn’t.
And this is different than we relate to individuals in the world who do not profess faith in Christ, isn’t it? Every time we see an unbeliever, we don’t say, “Good grief, you’re walking in sexual immorality, repent.” After all, we expect them to walk in sexual immorality. But when someone professes faith in Christ and is walking in sexual immorality, we’re required not to ignore their destructive sin but to point it out for what it is, call them to repentance, and remind them of the hope of the gospel. It’s this distinction of how we’re required to relate to professing Christians as opposed to professing pagans that Paul is noting when he writes in verses 12-13a, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside?”
So, I hope we’re able to see what’s going on and what Paul is commanding. A professing believer in the church in walking in open, public, sexual immorality with his stepmother, and Paul calls for the church to gather at their next assembly and formally remove this individual from the church, away from the Spirit’s manifest love and care in the church and into the domain of Satan. Moreover, the reason Paul calls for this to happen and is not walking through the steps of discipline like we see in Matthew 18, for example, (where we’re told to try to confront an individual one on one, then if he is unrepentant take a couple of witnesses, then if he’s still unrepentant tell it to the church, and if he won’t even listen to the church then remove him from membership) is because Matthew 18 is dealing with private sin whereas Paul is addressing a public sin here.
If a sin is being done privately so that only you know about it, then ideally you seek repentance with the least amount of humiliation possible, only upping the humiliation (two witnesses and then the church) if it is required to bring about repentance. However, in 1 Corinthians 5, the man’s action is public so that keeping it private is no longer possible. Therefore, we’re already at the stage of dealing with it publicly here in our text this morning. So, that’s what Paul is saying. Now, let’s move on to our second question: why is Paul saying this? Or, we might ask, “Why is Paul saying this action needs to be done, especially when it is such a harsh act of discipline?”
Paul actually gives the Corinthians a number of reasons why they’re to take this action.
Now, this may sound odd, so let me show it to you in the text and show you how I think Paul envisions this happening. Paul wants this man to repent and show himself to be a believer. He doesn’t want the man to continue to walk in sin, continue to walk in unrepentance, show himself not to know Christ, and hear from the Lord on that final day, “Depart from me; I never knew you.” That’s why Paul wants this man handed over to Satan.
Again, as odd as that sounds, that’s what Paul says in verse 5: “You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” So, let me try to explain step-by-step how I understand this. I want to do it by giving you a number of premises and trying to build on each one.
First, by “flesh” and “spirit” Paul doesn’t mean our physical body and our souls. Rather, he uses flesh as a term that represents our nature of rebellion against the Lord. And he uses spirit as a term that represents ourselves as oriented toward God.1 So, Paul’s not talking about part of us verses another part of us but our whole selves oriented away from God (the flesh) versus our whole serves oriented toward God (the spirit). Flesh for Paul represents our sinful rebellion against God.
Second: the church is a glorious gift of the Lord. Being a part of a church allows you to be part of a people who can exhort you daily so that sin doesn’t deceive you and harden your heart, being a part of a people who can stir you up to good works, and being a part of a people who will help carry your burdens, rejoice with you, mourn with you, serve you, love you, and aid you in walking in a way that honors the Lord and is good for you.
Third: being outside of the church and walking in the ways of Satan is walking in a path of self-destruction and torment. When someone is removed from the church and is removed from the glories of the church to pursue their sin, they will be walking in a life of self-torment. When the drunkard, for example, is removed from the church because he will not repent of his lifestyle of drunkenness, not only does he miss out of the glories of being part of the church, but he will not find himself with inner joy and delight. The drunkard, if he is honest, will tell you that he is living a life of self-torment and self-destruction.
Therefore, putting these things together, Paul’s hope is that removing this professing brother from the church and putting him out into the domain of Satan where he will pursue his sin will actually lead to this man having a prodigal son-like experience where he realizes the futility of his ways, the destructive nature of his life, and how desperate he is for Christ’s people. Paul describes this coming to the end of himself, if you will, as the “destruction of the flesh.” That is, the destruction of his rebellious nature that has led him to the Lord. Then, at this point, Paul’s hope is that the man will repent, will be restored to the fellowship of the church, and will hear “Well done my good and faithful servant” on the final day of judgment. That’s why Paul exhorts the church to discipline this man, because Paul longs for this man to be saved, and he knows that it’s going to require this major step if the man is going to turn.
Paul makes this clear in verses 6-7a that he wants the man removed so that his corrupting influence doesn’t spread to others. He writes, “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.
When making bread, it was common to keep back a bit of a dough from a batch and allow it to ferment. Then, you could take that bit of fermented dough (leaven) and add it to the next batch you make so that the leaven would affect the entire lough. This is the same kind of practice we use if you ever make sour dough bread. Well, Paul is saying that if this man’s sin is not addressed, it could lead to the corruption of the rest of the body just as that bit of fermented dough affects the whole of the new batch if added to it.
One of the dangers of allowing public sin to go unaddressed in the church is that you risk sending the message that this action is okay for others to do as well. That is simply unloving to the church, and it is one other reason why Paul wants this man removed. He loves the man, and he loves the church that the man’s sin threatens. And there’s one other reason I want to note in this text concerning why Paul insists on this man’s removal.
Starting in the second half of verse 7 and continuing through verse 11, Paul changes the metaphor a bit. He notes what would happen with the sacrifice of the Passover lamb as the Israelites would celebrate the Passover festival under the old covenant. When the Israelites would sacrifice the Passover lamb, they would not be allowed to have leaven in their house for a week.2 What this symbolized is that the shedding of the Lamb’s blood had removed their sin (symbolized with leaven) so that they were cleansed and forgiven.
In verses 7a-8, Paul reminds them that something more has been done for them. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed so that we really are forgiven and cleansed. Therefore, Paul adds in verse 8, we should turn away from sin like malice and evil and be characterized with sincerity and truth. That is, we should bear witness to one another and the world that we have been forgiven, cleansed, and been made holy. It doesn’t mean that we’ll be marked by perfect obedience. We’ll never be perfectly obedient this side of eternity. But, being sanctified by Christ means that though Christians will not be marked by perfect obedience, we will be marked by repentance when we sin. And our desire for obedience and repentance when we sin bears witness before the world of the powerful work of our perfect Lord, a witness that is compromised when we allow members of our church walking in unrepentant sin to continue walking as if all is fine. It sends a message to the world that Christ’s forgiving and transforming work really isn’t that powerful after all.v
This, then, is why Paul commands discipline. He longs for the salvation of this man. He doesn’t want sinful corruption to spread in the church. And he wants the church’s witness to Christ not to be tainted. So, then, let’s briefly answer our third question:
What this means for us is that we will love the Lord and his church enough to obey this text and practice church discipline when required. We will do it knowing that if we refuse to walk in discipline, we cannot claim to love the Lord (who says, if we love him we’ll keep his commands), the one walking in unrepentant sin (whose salvation we should desire), the church (whose corruption we would be risking), or the world (who needs us to bear witness to Christ’s holiness and powerful redemptive work).
But this also means that we will give ourselves to keep any of us from getting to the point of needing this step of discipline as well by holding up the gospel to one another – reminding one another of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for us – for the gospel is the greatest motivator to obedience, by committing ourselves to preaching and teaching the word, by trying to bear one another’s burdens and encourage one another in areas like our small groups or corporate prayer time on Sunday evenings, by watching each other like hawks just waiting for opportunities to pounce with encouragement and love and care, by praying for one another and praying that the Lord would gift us by his Spirit to edify and minister to one another. In short, let us be the glorious church that Christ has made us to be by his sacrifice for us. And let us be driven to faith, repentance, and good works now as we remember the gospel by coming to the table. Amen.