Immoral Church Members
1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality t among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles u—a man is sleeping with his father’s wife. v 2 And you are arrogant! Shouldn’t you be filled with grief w and remove from your congregation the one who did this? 3 Even though I am absent in the body, I am present in spirit. x As one who is present with you in this way, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who has been doing such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, y so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. z
6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little leaven ,a leavens the whole batch of dough? b 7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are. For Christ our Passover lamb c has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, d but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Church Discipline
9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate e with sexually immoral people. f 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy g and swindlers h or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. i 11 But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister j and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard k or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what business is it of mine to judge l outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13 God judges outsiders. Remove the evil person from among you. ,m
B. A report of immorality, arrogance, and improper judgments (5:1–6:20). 5:1–2. Up to this point in the letter, Paul has dealt with a report about different allegiances. But Paul has also heard that Corinthian pride has expressed itself in an even more damaging way. It is actually reported that “a man is sleeping with his father’s wife” (5:1). The words of the text indicate more than a single immoral act. In addition, we can perhaps infer, because Paul does not speak of adultery, that the man’s father is deceased; from the lack of reference to incest we can infer that the woman is this man’s stepmother; and from the failure to mention her in 5:5, we can infer that she is probably not a Christian (see also 5:12–13). Marriage or cohabitation with such a person was forbidden to Jews (Lv 18:8; 20:11) and was also condemned by several prominent Greco-Roman moralists. Before addressing the question of proper discipline, however, Paul confronts the laissez-faire attitude of a prideful church that, because of a self-centered and permissive individualism, has failed to respond with appropriate grief and censure (5:2).
5:3–5. Then, counting on the Corinthians to act together with him when they meet, making the word and the power of Christ manifest in the church in exactly the way that he would if physically there, Paul prescribes judgment (5:3–4). The man is to be handed over to Satan by expulsion from the church (5:11), which will deliver him back into the kingdom of this world, which Satan rules (5:5; cf. Eph 2:2). The purpose of the action is not punitive, however, but redemptive. [Excommunication]
5:6–8. Again, Paul’s mind turns back to the church. A body of believers that can boast of its achievements and ignore its obvious failures clearly has not yet learned that “a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough” (5:6). Paul employs a proverb he has used before (Gl 5:9), and one commonly used in Jewish circles, to denote the way in which any moral evil eventually permeates its host.
5:9–13. In 5:9–6:11 Paul reminds the Corinthians he has written to them before that they should not associate with “sexually immoral people” (5:9). His counsel, however, has been misunderstood by the church, which took it to mean that contact with the “immoral people of this world” (5:10) was inadvisable, and therefore the church neglected it as an impossibly rigorous and impractical standard. Adherence to such a standard would involve the Christian community’s complete withdrawal from the world, and this possibility Paul does not even pause to contemplate.