This sermon explores the issues of arrogance and immorality within the Corinthian church, drawing parallels to contemporary society. The pastor discusses the importance of church authority, the consequences of deviating from biblical teachings, and the destructive impact of sin, especially sexual immorality and its effect on spiritual life and the church’s witness.
Transcript
Well, if you would open your Bible to First Corinthians chapter 5.
We’ve been talking about authority in the church for the past couple of weeks. And the underlying issue has been the authority. There’s a presumed authority that has come about in the Corinthian church. And so Paul has had to deal with that in these first few chapters, chapters 1 through 4.
So, last week, as we looked at this, we pointed out that Paul ‘nthetically’ confronted the church. That’s the language that the Greek uses here. He made a confrontation. He confronted them with a love that corrects. And so he did that in chapter 4. He asked them, you remember, three questions. He says, “Who considers you superior?” Or “who concedes to you any superiority?” One translation says, “Who made you so important?” And so the question is really saying, you are presuming so much authority, where is that authority coming from? Where do you get the authority? And then he says, “What do you have that you did not receive?” If you’ve received it, why are you boasting, you know, as if you had not received it from the Lord? So, just those three questions is a strong confrontation and it should have settled it, but it didn’t. Apparently. So Paul continues in his letter, and the next section is one that is loaded with sarcasm. He’s pointing out how wonderfully they think of themselves. You have already become rich. You are already kings. And then he contrasts that with the apostles and the apostles’ view of themselves, which, you know, when you think about that in light of the teaching of the Lord Jesus, in his upside-down view of what Christian life is, then it becomes clear. And just to remind you of that, let me read just a few verses from Luke 6:
The Lord Jesus raised his eyes toward the disciples and he began saying, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. And blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be satisfied. And blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. And blessed are you who when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and scorn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and jump for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. For their fathers used to treat the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.”
And so, when with this biting sarcasm, as he compares their perspective on themselves with the actual circumstances and the attitude of the apostles. He really, in the sharpest way, brings about this correction. They have become arrogant, he says. He confronts them for their arrogance.
And as I’ve been thinking about this for the past weeks, one of the things, you know, if you find a person who is conceited, we all have a tendency to dislike that person. That came up in a conversation around the house recently. We’re just talking about television characters and various things. But conceit is something that is repugnant. It’s sort of repugnant. It’s a dislike that you have for somebody who is always praising themselves or something like that. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here in First Corinthians. I don’t think these people are, there’s some of that, they’re bragging about the things that they’re doing, and they certainly think that they’re really well off. They have spiritual superiority. All of that’s true. But I don’t think they’re going around bragging about themselves all the time. He calls this arrogance. And I think the key to understanding the arrogance is that they are assuming an authority that does not belong to them. They’re assuming an authority in the church that, and doing certain things that God has not prescribed. And so as Justin pointed out a few weeks ago, in verse 6, when he says, “so that you may learn not to exceed what is written,” that becomes a key element in understanding this whole, this whole first section of Corinthians, because they, they are doing things that is not prescribed in the Word of God. They’re taking an authority to themselves that is not given and made authoritative through, through the teachings of the apostles. And so they’ve assumed an authority. And as a result of assuming that authority, forming these little groups and things that they’re doing, taking great pride in what they’re producing, they are creating, first of all, this division that’s taking place in the church. So, part of the question, and as a result of that, if you remember these first four chapters, they began to question the apostles’ authority. So, assuming an authority for themselves has led to a discounting of the authorities that God has given and entrusted to the church. So, there’s that issue.
It’s a serious, serious issue. Now, when, if you want to, you don’t have to look far for, for finding illustrations that illustrate the problem that we have when God-given authority is minimized. In fact, this morning, here, with the yellow tape in front of marking off this street, it’s a good example. When you think about our recent history politically, and how for a year now, God-given authority, which is law enforcement, has been minimized. And as it’s been minimized, there’s been more and far more violent crime. You know, it’s a, it’s a serious issue. You know, when God, when God gave authority to governments to govern, and he established that through the agencies of government, you know, as it says in Romans 13, it says, “If you don’t want to fear the authority, do what’s good, and you’ll, you’ll have praise from them.” Because that agent, that, that, that magistrate, that police officer, is a servant of God for your good. But if you do what’s evil, be afraid, for the magistrate doesn’t bear the sword in vain. That’s what he’s saying. The police officer doesn’t carry a gun for no reason. We should be afraid of such authority. And when, when that is minimized, when that becomes a minimal thing in people’s mind, when they think, “How dare they have a right to have authority?” Then you end up with the kind of chaos that we’ve experienced. Well, in this, in First Corinthians, the authority that he’s talking about is the authority that is within the church itself. And in the first few chapters, one of the problems that he’s dealing with is that the problem of division that comes about, a divisive spirit, and division that comes about within the body, which breaks the unity of the church. And so now as we move into chapter 5, the issue is that this type of arrogance also often results in immorality. So, with that, let me read the text, the chapter. I’ll just read through chapter 5 and then we’ll explore some of this this morning.
This is God’s inerrant word.
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you. And immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You’ve become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who has done this deed would be removed from your midst. For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you’re assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I’ve decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. I did not at all mean with immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother. If he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
Let me ask the Lord to bless his word as we seek it today. Father, as we approach this passage, as we think about it and meditate on it, we ask Father for your blessing, for your protection. Guide us into your truth and help us to understand a little better this important chapter from your word. And we ask Father, as we, we understand this better, that you would use this as a means of grace in each of us, to help purify us, to protect us, to help us submit to you in all things. We ask this Father for your blessing. We pray Father that you, that you enable us through the power of your Holy Spirit to both comprehend and to apply your truth to our hearts. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, what happens when arrogance leads a church to move beyond the things that are written? Well, moral failure can happen. And arrogance, by the way, I mean this, this pride that they have, which is causing them to assume authorities that are not God-given, that’s a sin in itself. That’s a moral failure of its own kind. But it leads to other kinds of sin. It tends to lead to other kinds of sin. So that’s what Paul does next with this next, this next correction. Verse 1, it says,
It is actually reported, there’s immorality among you. And immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles.
That’s a, the word immorality is the word where we get words like pornography. It’s the word porneia. And it means sexual sin. Usually, the basic meaning is sexual sin outside of marriage, but it can mean any type of sexual sin. And he is confronting an individual in the church in this chapter, dealing with this issue of immorality. Paul is an apostle, founder of this church, and he is makes a judgment concerning this individual. And so he confronts the church, first of all, and he gives his judgment about this individual and the sin that he was involved in. He points out that, in this very direct way, he points out that the sin of this member was not only something that’s forbidden in the Old Testament, the law of, the law of God, such as Leviticus 18:8, Deuteronomy 22:30, and there are others. It’s a sin that wasn’t even accepted in the culture that they lived in. And that’s saying quite a lot, considering that this is being written from Corinth, where the word Corinthianize means to lead somebody into sexual immorality. It was the common thing of Corinth. It was everywhere. They had with all the, the paganism and the prostitution that was part of their worship and everything else that went on in Corinth. And so here is a sin, and the sin was, apparently, he had, he was, he had taken his stepmother and they were cohabiting. He’s cohabiting with his stepmother. And that’s incest. Roman law and laws today. So, it was something that was repugnant. It was sinfully wrong. Something that should have been corrected, and yet it wasn’t dealt with by the church. They seemed to be something of the opposite. And it’s something that was well known. It’s been reported, he said. The news is out there. Paul is a long ways from this city, and he’s getting reports about it. This incredible thing. You have this church that wants to be a witness to the community that they’re in. And there’re, there’re within that church, there’s an individual who’s committing a sin that not even that community would approve of. You can see how that’s a bit of a problem. I think when you have a situation in a church where there are all sorts of structures that might take place in the church, it’s just presumed where divisions began to form, and where authority is questioned, it’s probably pretty normal in such churches where immorality grow up. And I think that’s pretty much the case with the world we live in, in the 21st century in the United States of America.
We have all sorts of problems in with, you know, since the word is porneia, and I need to, we need to think about it how we apply this to ourselves. We have all sorts of problems here in our country with this, with this issue of sexual immorality in the church. We have a problem with it as a nation, of course. I mean, pornography in the United States is, it’s, it’s more than a 13 billion dollar industry just here in the United States. That’s, if you take, you know, the NFL and the NBA and Major League Baseball, it’s far more than that. The porn industry, last year, you know, worldwide, it’s about 44.8 billion. And a huge amount of that is made in the United States. The porn industry made more last year than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix, and EarthLink combined. Think about that. It’s just an incredible industry. And it destroys marriages. It causes all sorts of problems. In fact, one of the terrible problems that this has resulted in in the United States, is that young people, young men seeking, you know, when should they get married, whether they’re not getting married. But when they do get married, they have difficulty pursuing a normal relationship in their, with their wife, because their mind has been so conditioned by the pornography. They can’t function. And that’s a fact. And that’s a serious, serious problem. I mean, just think about that as a problem for a nation to have. So pornography is a problem. It’s a problem for all kinds of, of kinds of reasons. And the sad thing is, when you look at the evangelical church, or just people who identify as Christians, it’s hardly any better. There’s, a Barna Group, in, in their surveys, discovered that there’s virtually no difference in the monthly pornography use of non-Christian men versus Christian men. Non-Christian men, about 65% use pornography once a month. Uh, Christian men use pornography, about 64% of them use pornography once a month. And that’s a problem. For people who profess to be Christians. You don’t hear a lot of confrontation about this. It’s, it’s a devastating thing. It’s a serious problem. A sociology professor, his name is Samuel Perry, did a great deal of research on the impact of pornography, using 3,000 people over a six-year period of time. And he says, among other things, there’s, there’s a lot of things, but any porn use, he said, and this is somebody from the outside really, any porn use is associated with a decline in religious commitment and behavior, like praying or going to church, and an increase in religious doubt. Now, I, dealing with people over my lifetime in counseling situations, I can tell you, when somebody comes to you with questions of doubt, it’s not necessarily that there’s sin in their life. But one of the things that you really do need to explore is whether there are some prevailing sin that is, that is causing, that is at the bottom of the thing. Because when people become involved in sexual sin in particular, it really leads to, to religious, to Christian doubt. It leads them doubting of God. They are committed to their sin. And so like the Corinthian problem, they begin to doubt the authority of God and question the, the, the deity and, and the authority of God. So, all you have to do, if you’re Satan at work in this thing, to try to get people to stop going to church, is increase the pornography use. And so, you know, it, it, it results in a decline in religious commitment and behavior, such as tending services and prayer, increases religious doubts, and as a result, people, even the ones who attend, continue to attend church, are less willing to do things within the church, to submit. So, it’s a problem. It’s a problem. So, he confronts it directly. He, he points out the issue, and he makes his judgment of this individual. He says,
It’s actually reported that there’s immorality among you. And that immorality of such a kind that does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.
So, he spills that out. And then a little later he tells them what his judgment is about it. But then he deals in verse 2 with the even more serious issue. That, that’s an incredibly serious issue, but there’s an even more serious issue. And that is that they have become arrogant in this. And so, let’s go back to that same idea of what arrogance is. They’re acting in a way that is contrary to what God has provided. So, they’re becoming arrogant in their church practice. And, and I mean, in this sense, it’s an example of heterodoxy, where Paul has told them exactly, they’ve had the instruction of an apostle, exactly what to do in a situation like this. And instead of doing that, they’re going to, they do something else. In this case, there’s, first of all, a lack of any action. They’re not responding. They’re not, they’re not acting. They’ve become arrogant. So, they’re not, they’re not going to deal with this issue. He says, you’ve become arrogant and have not mourned instead.
You should be mourning over this.
The, the word there is used for grieving over the death of someone. And really, if you think about that, that’s Paul’s point. Somebody in your church falls into a sin and they’re persistent in that, and they will not repent of that, that’s a point of, you need to be grieving over that person, because you’ve lost that person from your congregation. And so, you should be grieving over the loss of that person. You should care so much about this that it brings you to grief. You should, you should be sorrowing. Instead, they’ve become arrogant. They have, and even more exaggerated sense of, of, of this sense of authority. You know, that God has not actually given to them.
So, Paul gives his judgment in verse 3. He says,
For I on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.
Paul is doing this according to the authority that God has given him. And he, even though he is not there, which is a pretty good excuse not to act in one of these difficult situations. And by the way, there’s hardly anything that a pastor or a church, or the leaders of a church, least want to do than to confront somebody with their sin and then follow up on it in the way that Paul is instructing, to bring about church discipline. Nobody, it’s not something anybody would want to do. And Paul is not there. And that’s a great excuse not to deal with it. He didn’t have to deal with this. And yet, he does have to deal with it. He’s going to submit to the Lord. So, he says, even, even though absent in body, present in spirit. I, I think that especially means conveying this message through the letter that he’s, he’s sending to them. I’ve already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present. And then, this question of authority in verse 4. You see his authority.
In the name of our Lord Jesus. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus.
So, that’s, that’s the apostle’s authority. He’s appealing to the name and the attributes of our Savior, the Lord Jesus, the one who commissioned him into the apostleship that he has. And he’s appealing to the authority and the power that comes through the Lord Jesus. And he says in verse 5,
I’ve decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
So, he says, “Hand him over to Satan.” And that’s a, that’s a startling thing to come to, when you come to this passage, when you get to verse 5. He says, “I’ve decided to deliver such a one to Satan.” You know, it’s a phrase that you don’t find often in the Bible. In fact, the only, only other place I think that it occurs is in First Timothy 1:20. When the apostle Paul is in that letter, to Timothy, and he’s explaining how people have abandoned him, his co-workers and helpers have abandoned him. He said,
Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.
So, it happened there.
What does it mean? What does it mean to be handed over to Satan in this way? You’re a member of the church. You’re caught up in a sin. What does it, what does it, what happens here? Well, one thing that is pretty clear in this passage is the person is excommunicated from the church. He is, he is excluded from the church, participation in the church. And you can see that, you know, back in verse 2, you know, when he tells them, you’ve become arrogant and not mourned, so the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. And you can see it, you know, in verse 7. You can see it at the end, the very last verse here, when he says,
Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
He’s talking about excommunication, first of all. And as he, as he’s talking about that, I think that he is, you know, here’s a situation where you have a person who is unrepentant. They’re, they have stubborn unrepentance. They’ve been confronted with their sin. It’s escalated to the place where it’s very clear, made public. And so, you have to treat them as Jesus said in Matthew 18, as, treat them as an unbeliever. Treat them as someone, you know, like a Gentile. You know, an interesting thing, there’s something very interesting that I find in this, in this section, because Paul assumes, probably, he’s an apostle, he probably knows that this man is a believer. I think that’s pretty clear here. But in an actual church situation, when you go through something like this, and somebody falls into a pattern of sin and they will not repent of that sin, and they’re confronted by the church leaders, or it, it leads to that, and they still refuse to repent, and the thing is brought before the church as, as the instruction is in Matthew 18. And they still refuse to repent. You know, a person like that, you don’t even know if they’re a believer or not. There are unbelievers in the church. And so, what Jesus is instructing them to do in Matthew 18 is, you treat this person as if they’re an unbeliever. They’re, they’re an outsider. You’re among those who, in this passage, Paul says, “God judges those people on the outside.” And so, they’re sent out into the world. And they’re removed from the church, and they’re placed in the domain of Satan, really. That means that they’ve lost the protection of the church. First John 5:19 says, the apostle John said,
We know we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
And what Paul is saying, you know, you, you exclude them from the church, and they’re, they’re out in the world, where Satan has dominion. So, that, we might understand, the next part is a little more difficult. For the destruction of the flesh. And there’s a couple of possibilities here. I mean, it could be that he’s talking about the destruction of the flesh in the sense of the, uh, sinful pattern of life that an unsaved person has, you know, when you become a Christian, you still have those old habits and patterns and things. For that to be eliminated. You know, and then they can be restored to the church. That, that’s a possibility. It’s hard maybe to see how sending them out into the world would do that, but that may be a possibility. But it’s far more likely that he’s talking about the physical consequences. That too is, is, you know, a challenging thing for us to think about. But, uh, if the person is a believer, it’s highly probable that God will allow Satan to bring judgment against that person. He will, to bring them to repentance, and to bring them to him. That’s a, that’s a real possibility. So, you have that with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. You might remember the blindness of Elymas in Acts 13. And even Paul talks about his thorn in the flesh. And when he talks about that, he says it was a messenger from Satan. So, that’s an interesting thing. It’s a different situation. It’s an interesting thing. He makes that connection with, with the suffering, the physical suffering, and connecting that with Satan. So, he’s, I think he’s saying that this is likely to result in physical consequences. Being withdrawn from the church, where there is protection, grace, and mercy. Then, he says, “so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.” That means he believes that he will be saved in the day of the Lord. So, the assumption here is that you’re dealing with a Christian who is caught up in this. Maybe, didn’t know much better. He’s a new believer. But, when confronted and corrected, he didn’t repent. That person needs to be put out, in order to suffer the consequences of that removal of grace, so that to bring about a repentance. And, as a result, one way or the other, that person may be saved. And it is talking about real salvation, because he’s talking about saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Not just healed or some other use of the word saved. Ultimate salvation.
So, that, you know, we might understand the next part is a little more difficult. For the destruction of the flesh. So, that this is likely to result in physical consequences. Being withdrawn from the church where there is protection, grace, and mercy. Then he says,
so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.
That means he believes that he will be saved in the day of the Lord. So, the assumption here is that you’re dealing with a Christian who is caught up in this. Maybe, didn’t know much better. He’s a new believer. But, when confronted and corrected, he didn’t repent. That person needs to be put out in order to suffer the consequences of that removal of grace, so that to bring about a repentance. And, as a result, one way or the other, that person may be saved. And it is talking about real salvation, because he’s talking about saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Not just healed, or some other use of the word saved. Ultimate salvation.
So that’s Paul’s judgment of the individual.
Then he deals again with the church. He says, you’re boasting about this. That tells you something of their attitude. I don’t know what was going on there. I mean, I really don’t know, but it seems to me in some way it must have been some type of antinomian idea that, “Look, the grace of God is so rich. We have this person who, look at the terrible sin that they’re in and yet they’re saved. They’re part of us. Isn’t it wonderful?” Something like that must have been going on because he calls it boasting. Your boasting about this is not good. And then he corrects it. He says, “Don’t you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?”
For about at least 600 years when preachers preach this, they’ll usually talk about apples. But I actually came across something that was several hundred years old using the same illustration. You know, you put apples together and you have one bad apple. The next apple, touching it, soon the corruption spreads from one to the other to the other. He says, a little leaven — take a little pinch of leaven and work that into the dough a little bit, pretty soon, that whole lump of dough begins to expand with the effect of leaven.
And so he’s saying, “Clean out the old leaven.” He says, “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump just as you are unleavened.” I think maybe for me, one of the most surprising, in some ways one of the most surprising verses in this text in this chapter, is that verse. Because he’s saying, the Corinthian church — and I think we probably need to change our thinking about the Corinthian church. What we tend to do is we think about the Corinthian church and they are a church with all these problems and they do have all these problems and Paul is confronting them with problem after problem. It’s easy to think, “Well, glad we’re not like the Corinthian church.”
What he’s saying here is, you are an unleavened lump. Paul is saying that God has done a work bringing you out of this culture. He has saved you and you’ve become new creatures in Jesus Christ and you are unleavened. That’s who you are. There’s a difference between you and the community. You’re an unleavened group. I think when we begin to see that we — it’s easier for us to identify with these sins because they may not be things we do the same thing and not think anything about it, but these are the kinds of sins that bring about division, that bring about immorality. We need to be careful, we need to apply this to ourselves. You’re a new lump, in fact unleavened, for Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
Christian life, all of the Christian life is a celebration of the Passover. “Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.” And he gives that illustration to them knowing that they know exactly what it means. In the Passover celebration, in the time of the Apostle Paul, when they practiced the Passover celebration they would remove all of the yeast from their home for days, days before the Passover. Sometimes they would hide a little bit of yeast in the house and all the kids would search for that little bit of yeast to remove. I think that might be how we ended up with Easter egg hunts, but I’m not sure.
But it was important that the yeast be removed before the Passover sacrifice in Jewish practice in Paul’s day. You get all that yeast out of there and then comes the Passover sacrifice. And Paul says, “Remove the yeast. Our Lord, our Savior has already been sacrificed. Our Passover has already been sacrificed. Don’t bypass removing the yeast. Get this yeast out from your congregation, from your people, remove this, deal with this. We are in fact an unleavened lump and so we don’t want to introduce any yeast in our midst.” Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
By the way, just as a little quick aside, it’s interesting when you’re looking at this that my Bible says “Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.” But many passages, if you look at the ESV at the end, it just says “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” Just as a little side, that word “lamb” isn’t in there. It’s not even a variant. It’s just supplied in so maybe you’d understand better, but that’s sort of wrong because you don’t have to sacrifice a lamb for the Passover sacrifice. You can sacrifice a goat as a Passover sacrifice. Paul didn’t use either one of those, he just simply said, “Christ, our Passover has been sacrificed for us” and everybody understands it means the Passover sacrifice.
So he goes on and says, “Clean out the old leaven, just so you may be a new lump. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed, therefore, let us celebrate the feast.” A life-long celebration, not with old leaven, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
All right, I think one of the things that occurred to me some time ago, a little bit ago, thinking about the book of First Corinthians. And it occurred to me, I don’t think I’ve seen this word in First Corinthians so far and the word is “joy.” And so, I looked up the concordance and look at it and the word “joy” is not found anywhere in First Corinthians. Not one place. We go to Second Corinthians and it shows up a few places including Paul saying, “I’m working for your joy. I’m not trying to rule over anything in you, I’m a coworker working for your joy.”
I think the Christian practice in the First Corinthians church was probably all kinds of celebrations, especially with the description of chapter 11, with the way they participated in the Lord’s table, which was probably enjoyable in all kinds of ways — though it’s called problems and made some of them sick, apparently, because of the judgment of God. But you had that kind of emotion going on in the church, but probably the most significant emotion, because of their sinful patterns, was broken up. They weren’t experiencing the joy that they should have had.
The Christian life is a Passover celebration. It’s a place where we know that Jesus Christ died for me, because He died for me I’ve been made right with God. I’ve become a new creation and I have a place in heaven. I’ve got a relationship with Him that is eternal and there should be incredible joy in that. It’s a celebration. And there’s joy in that. “Let us celebrate the feast!” But let’s not do it with anything sinful. Let’s exclude the sinful things. Not with leaven or malice or wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Truth is important here.
And then in these last verses, He talks about a letter that He had written to them, not to associate with immoral people, which was the instruction they should have followed in the case of this man. And this is a letter, a previous letter, before First Corinthians. There are a handful of people who try to say that this is that letter, but it’s highly unlikely.
And He says, this is what I said, then He gives an explanation. He says, “I’m not talking about don’t associate with immoral people up in the world because you’re not going to be able to do that. There’s no way in the world you’re going to remove yourself from all the sinful people, immoral people, and all the people on the world. But don’t associate with somebody who’s calling themselves a Christian and behaves this way. Because if you do, then you’re leavening the church.”
And then He further explains, “I’m not about judging those people outside. God judges those people.” And then He just drops this prescription home again and says, “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.”
So it’s an interesting passage. It’s an interesting passage about judging rightly in the church. It comes in contrast to his instruction earlier that says, “Making no judgments until the coming of Christ” — different subjects, different issues. He’s talking about evaluating a brother in Christ’s work or Christian ministry’s work. “Don’t make any judgments about how wonderful that is until Christ makes those judgments.” That’s what He’s saying there.
Jesus says, “Judge not lest you be judged.” And in the next verses, He says, you will know the truth. And so He’s saying judge rightly. Don’t judge anybody by a standard that you don’t want to be judged by. Don’t have hypocrisy in your judgments. Judge according to the word of God and obedience to the word of God because every church has to make judgments. In order to be obedient to God’s word, they have to do evaluations and they have to minister to people in a way that actually works.
And so Paul is concerned about the church and he’s concerned about this individual. And his heart goes out to this individual who has allowed sin to stride and have his life ruined by his immorality. And so he wants that person called back in or at least delivered to Satan so the church protects itself. It’s a ministry of love.
When Jesus introduces this in the book of Matthew, when that story is introduced about bringing judgment and the method of church discipline, the thing that comes right before that is the shepherd who leaves his ninety-nine sheep to go after the one that walks away. It’s a message of love. So there’s a procedure and the care is for that person. “I want to bring this person back. I want this person to be restored.” And out of that heart God brings unity and purity in His church.
We live in a time when people believe that we can do pretty much anything we want to in our church. I think that as a result it’s led to all kinds of immorality within the church. Look at all the scandals that you read about. And the damage that that’s done to the church — people aren’t going to church. I mean the leaving of the church is incredible these days because of all of these things going on.
We need to take a passage like this one seriously to heart. I mean that not just corporately as a church but as individuals. Whenever you see a confrontation of sin in scripture it’s a great opportunity for each one of us to examine our own heart. Are we doing things that are immoral secretly? This was a public sin and it was dealt with publicly. God calls us to repentance for sins that are private. They’re destructive. They’re destructive to the body of Christ and destructive to families.
Some people these days — it’s hard for me to comprehend it — but they introduce pornography as couples in their marriage. And when that happens, as you would expect, the chances that they will become involved in extramarital relationships multiplies, like 320%. It’s way higher than something that’s already pretty high.
So it’s destructive. Any type of immoral sin like this is destructive. God calls us, the Lord Jesus calls us to recognize that these things flow out of our heart. So when we introduce these things into our mind, cultivate them in our mind, it carries and brings about all kinds of consequences.
So it’s a warning to us. This generation has been brought up with the internet, has been brought up with internet pornography and it’s prevalent and it’s destructive. We’re beginning to see the effects of this destructiveness on the whole church of God. That’s one of the things that’s bringing about this decline. So let’s, to whatever degree it may be true of any of us, it’s a good time to turn to the Lord in repentance of these things personally, and let’s pray for the church. Let’s pray for strength, for purity, for a church that has unity that’s based on the truth that God gives and the love that Christ has. Those two things. Let’s do that right now.
Father, as we reflect on this very serious passage of scripture, we ask Father that Your Holy Spirit would evaluate us, search for Your word as the psalmist prays. Try me. See if there’s any evil way within me. We want, each of us, to do this now. Lord, help us individually to do this. Are we being practical and obedient? Are we being carried away into immorality that leads to a destructive pattern of life? Father, let us look that up to You now for repentance. If we have addictions in these areas, You give us help. You can change us by Your Spirit and You certainly can change us as we deal with these things together. We ask Father for Your grace in this.
Lord, I pray for the unity of this church. I ask that You do a work of grace here and bring us into unity and that the love of Jesus Christ will be evident among all of us. And I pray that You help us to have a heart that is willing to reach out and to bring back the stray and to bring restoration and blessing. Thank You Father for Your care, Your mercy. We ask for Your help and blessing. In Jesus’ name, Amen.