Sexual Immorality in the Church
1 Corinthians 5
I’ve wrestled with two different and opposing intuitions. I’m talking about when you see a friend making a big mistake that could really hurt them and others. Have you ever felt a nudging that you were supposed to say something? Then on the other side, have you heard that voice in your head saying, “It’s not my business. Who am I to judge anyway?” The issue gets much tougher in a family or on a team. Have you ever been in a position where you knew that an athlete was dragging down the whole team by his bad behavior? In a classroom, when do you remove a student who consistently disrupts the whole class? Have you worked with someone on the job who should have been removed, but was not? When do you vote someone off the island?
Churches face a similar dilemma. Churches are to be full of grace, welcoming to all people, regardless of how sinful they are. And yet the church is to be a holy people, standing for righteousness. At Christ Fellowship we are both all welcome, people of grace and we are all-in, people who hold nothing back in terms of obeying God.
How can a church be both accepting of all sinners and at the same time a holy people? At each extreme lies danger. On one end, the church ignores sin and becomes indistinguishable from the world. On the other end the church becomes harsh and judgmental. Then there is the obvious problem: if we removed all people who sin, there would be no one left.
Our text today, First Corinthians chapter five, addresses this hot potato: How does a church deal with sexual immorality in the church? Why should a church ever remove someone from the fellowship? We are studying Paul’s letter to Christians in ancient Corinth, in which he addresses hot potato issues to show us how to find spiritual wisdom in a foolish world. Fundamentally we are to live out our identity in Christ.
So what was the specific issue in the church in Corinth? Take a look at First Corinthians chapter five, verse one. Paul names the issue. He says in chapter five, verse one, It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife.
Culturally it was common for Romans at that time to marry younger wives later in life so a stepmother could be in the age range of older sons from a previous marriage, much like us today. A man in the church was having sex with his stepmother. The Greek phrase indicates it is an on-going relationship, not a one-time affair. It was a crime of incest according to Roman law. The Greeks would likely have been familiar with the tale of Oedipus, who unknowingly married his mother and destroyed his family. How can the church tolerate what even the pagan society condemns as deviant? Based on this text and others we can assume this man is a believer involved in the church and that the church has appealed to him to repent.
What’s striking is that the man himself is never directly addressed. Rather Paul’s concern is with how the church is mishandling the situation by ignoring it. The burden of chapter five is to explain why the church should remove the immoral person from their fellowship.
In four different ways through the chapter Paul makes this same basic point: we should remove an immoral person from our fellowship. Why? Why should we take such drastic action? In our day we really need to understand the “why” because for most of us this is a very challenging command not because it is hard to understand what it means, but because it is hard to understand the value of doing it.
Comparing the issue with similar situations in other contexts helps me to get it. Picture a family living room, a school classroom, a team locker room, and a work conference room. Years ago, my wife Tamara and I had to exercise tough love with our oldest son. We set clear guidelines for staying in our home which if broken would mean he had chosen to leave. At eighteen years old, a green trash sack in our living room overflowing with beer cans marked the moment that he had to go. We cried many tears. On one of the hardest days of my life, in another green trash sack, our oldest son carried his clothes out the door. It was incredibly painful, but it was the right decision.
As a teacher, perhaps you have had to remove a student from a classroom. Sometimes their behavior is so disruptive the rest of the class suffers until he or she leaves. Maybe you played on a sports team, where one person’s bad behavior wrecked the chemistry of the whole team; sometimes it happens with the most talented player on the team. Or in a work environment, have you endured a co-worker whose negativity or immorality made you not even want to go to work? There are times when an employee needs to be fired; a player released from the team, a student removed from the classroom, and even a child removed from the home. In the church there are times when an immoral member needs to be removed from the fellowship.
This chapter tells us why.
You will have more questions, not all of which this text addresses. For instance, what about legal implications? If we remove someone, could they sue us? Yes. But we must do what is right before God regardless of consequences. We must be wise legally, but never let fear of consequences keep us from doing what is right. Is this text talking about what some call “church discipline”? The phrase “church discipline” is not in the Bible, but provides a title under which to arrange the Bible’s teaching on how churches should handle serious sin. I find the phrase unhelpful and distorting because it conjures in our minds the legal process of a formal organization. Fundamentally the church is people and the New Testament is describing not an organizational policy with legal overtones, but a relational dynamic among close friends in small home churches.
Open your Bible to First Corinthians chapter five so we can walk through the text line by line discovering three compelling reasons why we should remove an immoral person from our fellowship. The first reason is for him, because it may save him.
FOR HIM – because it may save him
The first reason we should remove this person is for his own benefit.
Our aim is to help him. It is for his good. Follow with me.
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? 3 For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit.
As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. 4 So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord
Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. 1 Corinthians
5:1–5
Paul is shocked not only at the sin but also at the attitude of the church. They are proud. What sense does this make? What are they proud of? Are they proud of the sin? That hardly makes sense because it was a criminal offense under Roman law and condemned by the Romans, Greeks and Jews. Go back to the first four chapters where Paul has already commented on their pride. They think they are mature and really spiritual. Paul is saying, “You are tolerating serious sin in your church and you are proud of your spirituality?”
Are you kidding?! How could they think they are so spiritually mature when they are ignoring serious sin?
There is also one other option that connects to pride and a possible reason why they were not addressing the incest. Remember status was very important to the Corinthians. It is possible that this man was wealthy. Let me be blunt. You do not want to tick off a wealthy donor. Maybe this man hosted the church in his large home and was an influential person in the city. They may have excused their inaction much like we do today by saying: everyone is doing it, or what’s done is private is no one’s business, or we all have our own sins, or grace covers all sin. Because of who he was they may have been slow to address the embarrassing situation that would shame a powerful, wealthy person. This happens on athletic teams. You hesitate to release the superstar. In work environments, it might be the super-smart engineer. In a classroom, it is the daughter of the principal.
Instead of being proud, they should have mourned. Mourning implies not just feeling, but actions. Rather than saying, “we’re fine, we’re great,” they should have faced the sin, filled with anguish over what the man was doing and how it was hurting the church. That mourning should have led them to put the man out of their fellowship. The recent debacle at Penn State is a poignant reminder of what happens when you ignore sin. That was not a church, but college football.
Look at verse three where Paul says he has already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a clear case to him and the church needs to move on it now in the authority of the Lord Jesus in whose name they exist. So in verse four he instructs them to do this when they assemble. They are not to act in their own strength or name, but in the name and power of the Lord Jesus. Notice the repetition of the title, “Lord.” They take this action with Jesus’ authority.
Notice this is not a decision Paul makes alone nor do the leaders act alone, but as a gathered fellowship. It is important to see the communal context of this action. Think about a family. Sometimes when one family member is in serious sin, the whole family and friends will come together for an intervention. An intervention is not a legal decision, but an act of love by those who are closest to a person and love them the most. I’ve been involved in several interventions that have literally saved someone’s life. A man in our church has thanked me over and over for loving him enough to meet with his family and friends to confront his alcohol and drug abuse that was killing him and destroying his family. It is powerful when a whole team together confronts a teammate over his bad behavior and says it must quit or you are off the team.
Take a look at verse five to see the clear statement of the first compelling reason why we should remove an immoral person. Paul says, 5 hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. We should remove an immoral person for his benefit, so he may be saved. While the overall redemptive point is clear, what does it mean to hand a person over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh? That sounds really scary, and it is. The point is not that a person is being given to Satan, but that they are being put out of the church back into the world, Satan’s realm, unprotected by the fellowship of believers. The phrase to hand him over to Satan is another way of stating the main point: remove him from your fellowship.
This handing over to Satan’s realm is part of the redemptive process with the hope that the destruction of his flesh will draw the man to repentance. So what does “the destruction of his flesh” mean? It does not mean that he will die or else how could he be saved? The flesh here does not mean his physical body, but rather the sin-bent, self- oriented person. In Paul’s thinking “flesh” and “spirit” often refer to the whole person looked at through a different lens. Flesh is the person oriented away from God and spirit is the person oriented to God. So the hope is that being removed from the fellowship, a person will hit rock bottom, and then return to the Lord and the church. What Paul hopes will be destroyed is the selfish, self-sufficiency of the person.
I can remember how scary it was to walk my son out the door because I know how tough the world is. I knew how safe our home is and how hard it might be out there away from home and our loving protection and support. Our hearts were broken; we prayed and cried. Like the father of the prodigal son, Tamara and I hoped and prayed that facing life outside our home would cause him to wake up and return, repentant. Some months later he did return.
As Paul says, the reason to remove him is that he will be saved on the day of the Lord. We do not know if any person is saved or not. Only God makes that determination, but open, public, continual sin is not a good sign. Some people profess to be Christians when they really are not. Our prayer is for the person to be saved, so that on that final day before the Lord, they will pass into eternal life, not eternal death. The purpose of our action is redemptive and restorative, not vengeful or vindictive. We hope he comes to his senses, sees what he is doing and repents.
The first of the three compelling reasons to remove an immoral person from the fellowship is for him, for his benefit, because it may save him. The second compelling reason is for the fellowship, because he will damage the group so the group must act.
FOR THE FELLOWSHIP: because he will damage the group
Paul uses metaphors from the Old Testament to express the second reason. He pictures the church as the purified house from which the old leaven has been cleansed, and as the new batch of dough. Follow in verse six;
6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? 7 Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 1 Corinthians 5:6–8
Once again he points out that their spiritual boasting is ridiculous.
They need to drop the pride and deal with sin in their midst. The image is vivid. A very small amount of yeast leavens the whole batch of dough, so the sin of one person negatively affects the whole group. We say one bad apple spoils the whole barrel. The mold on one apple will spread to the rest. A common faulty idea is that my sin only affects me. Our sin always negatively impacts those around us.
Paul’s metaphor here looks back to Israel’s Passover celebration. Each year before Passover they were to remove all leaven from their homes. Once again Paul expresses his main point with metaphoric language: get rid of the old yeast. In other words, remove the immoral person. The second reason is so that the whole group is not damaged or contaminated. They are a new batch of unleavened bread through Jesus Christ so they should live as new people. Jesus frees us from sin, so we are to become who we already are. The imperative is built on the indicative: because of what Jesus Christ has already done for us, we can live Christ-like lives.
In fact, Jesus Christ is at the center of this chapter in a beautiful image that prepares our hearts for communion. In verse seven Paul writes,
For Christ our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. In our study of Exodus last fall we learned that the Jews put the blood of a lamb on their doors so that the angel of death would pass them by. Hundreds of years later during Passover season, Jesus put his blood on a cross so that we could be saved from death. It is through the sacrificial blood of Jesus that any person is saved. You are saved by trusting in Jesus Christ that he died for you. If you trust in Jesus Christ you will be saved on the day of the Lord. In communion we eat and drink to remember his blood, the blood of the Lamb. Christ gave his life for us not just to give us passage to heaven, but to re-create us in his image personally and as his body, the church. We represent him by how we live. We are to live transformed lives, to become what we have been made to be in Christ: unleavened bread, living holy lives.
So the second compelling reason to remove an immoral person from our fellowship is that he will damage the group. Some people caught in sin object “it’s my private life and none of your business, none of the church’s business.” If you are part of the spiritual family, then it is the family’s concern. In terms of the church, the whole group will be less holy and honoring to God, the whole group’s testimony to a watching world is damaged. Others in the group can be tempted to sin. We can see a similar dynamic in other groups. In a classroom, when an incredibly disruptive student is allowed to remain, the education of the rest of the students is damaged. The teacher is frazzled, unable to help other students because she is consumed with the one bad apple. This also happens on teams in work environments. One person can torpedo an entire team, board or committee. This is especially painful in a family when mom or dad realizes that one child is hurting all the rest, putting them in danger, or at least diverting so much attention that the rest are being neglected. In all those cases, once a person has been removed, I’ve seen the entire feeling of a workplace, home or classroom change.
Usually the group had no idea what a heavy cloud laid over them until the person is removed and everyone feels lighter. They laugh more easily and smile more often.
Paul’s third and final compelling reason comes in verses 9-13 that close this section by clarifying an apparent misunderstanding, or possibly even a deliberate misrepresentation, of Paul’s previous letter. Not only are we to act for the person’s sake and for the group’s sake, but also for God’s sake, for his honor. God tells us to judge those inside.
FOR GOD: because you are to judge those inside
Paul says in verse nine;
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. 11 But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. 12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? 13 God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.” 1 Corinthians 5:9–13
Paul’s point has nothing to do with people outside the church, but only with those inside. Your relationship with your own kids is very different from your relationship with the kids down the street. You are responsible to discipline your own kids. In fact, Paul explicitly says that it is not our business to judge those outside the Church.
God will do that. Our responsibility is to love those outside the church, to serve them with the gospel of Jesus, to share his love and hope. Our mandate is not to press biblical morality on those outside the church. While we are to be strict inside the church so our lives do not contradict the gospel, we are to refuse to judge anyone outside the church. Our problem is that we do the opposite; too often we are lenient with ourselves and judgmental to those outside the church. Paul is only talking about judging those believers involved in the church. We are not to judge those outside the family.
He says we must not associate with one who claims to be a “brother,” but engages in serious sin. What does it mean to not associate?
Remember this is one more way Paul is making his one main charge: to remove the immoral person from your fellowship. Of course the church is not a building or an organization, or a worship service, but a community of people. You are the church, so removal must involve not associating. This does not mean you do not say “hi” to a person you meet in the store. Rather it refers to associating in a close way, joining with another person.
Paul clarifies what he means when he says we are not even to eat with such a person. In the culture of that day eating together formed a social bond. It conveyed that you are part of our group, sort of like lunch tables in high school. If you sit at certain tables, you are associated with that group. At the least Paul is referring to eating communion, the Lord’ Supper, together.
For what sins should we take this drastic action to remove a person from our fellowship? In verse eleven Paul lists sexual immorality, but then adds five more sins: greedy, idolater, slander, drunkard and swindler. Several of these might be surprising. Our culture turns a blind eye to greed, but Paul lists it right next to sexual immorality.
Greedy people are driven by self-interest, getting an edge over others that often leads to swindling. In another church setting I had to confront a man who was selling illegal investments to people in the church. How often have you heard in the media about some financial scheme that runs through a church where people are taken advantage of? A slander or gossiper mocks spiritual leaders and engages in verbal abuse. What about drunkards? Don’t we have
Celebrate Recovery and often hope for alcoholics? Yes, of course. But if an alcoholic will not admit their problem and work on it, at times they must be confronted and removed. This happens in a family intervention. Years ago in our church, a friend came to Christ at Christ Fellowship, but fell off the wagon back into drunkenness and then refused help. His Life Group became aware and tried everything to intervene, but he never took the necessary steps for full healing.
Eventually removed from his friends, out on his own, he died from alcohol abuse. Sadly he never repented and returned. Sins related to money and the tongue can also destroy a church, as well as idolatry with false doctrine.
Paul concludes the chapter with his clear action for us: “expel the wicked person from among you.” This line quotes the book of Deuteronomy where Israel was given similar instruction for God’s holy people back then. For God’s sake we are to judge those inside the church. This is our delegated responsibility from the Lord. God will judge those outside, but we are to take responsibility for sin in the family. Think of your own kids verses others’ kids.
So what are we to do given what God tells us in First Corinthians chapter five? Remember the case is a professed believer involved in the church who has not repented after multiple appeals. We are to remove an immoral person from our fellowship for three compelling reasons, for him because it may save him, for the fellowship because he will damage the group and for God because we are to judge those inside. We remove the person for their sake, the sake of our group
and for God’s sake. Our heart must be to help the person and for the good of the group. Ultimately we do it for God, for his honor before a watching world.
So how would this actually happen? Remember Paul is describing a relational dynamic among close friends in a small home church, not an organizational policy or legal process. You can see Matthew 18 for specific steps from Jesus. In your group or Bible Study, when you are aware of serious sin among of the people in your group, you should talk to the person about it. Then a few of you might talk to the person together, expressing your love and concern for them. Only after a
long time of appealing to person with no change do we get to the point of removing a person from our group. This is a last resort of tough love with the purpose of redemption.
Since we all sin, for what sins should we take this action? Think through the reasons Paul gave. Is this sin destroying the person? Is this sin damaging the group? Is it harming the reputation of Christ? (This often happens when the sin becomes public). Is the person unrepentant, unwilling to confess it as sin and repent of it? Only then do we consider the final step of removing a person.
Let’s be the kind of church that takes sin seriously because we take Jesus seriously. We know that he died for our sins, so we want to live as the holy people he has made us to be by his Spirit. We welcome all people as people of grace. At the same time we take sin seriously. We have the courage to show tough love because we love we love our brother, we love our fellowship and most of all we love Jesus. We are committed to being holy people for Jesus.
Endnote:
Blomberg, Craig L. The NIV Application Commentary from biblical text…..to contemporary life: 1 Corinthians.Grand Rapids. Zondervan, 1995.
