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Don’t you just love the tabloids? I love the headlines like: “Space Alien Father of Elvis” or something like that.
When they don’t have a juicy story, they usually just make it up. But more often than not, our society’s famous supply enough fodder to feed years worth of the “National Enquirer.”
But what if the headline read – “Christian leader caught sleeping with step-mom”? Or “Christian Church Cesspool of Sin?” That is in a sense what Paul had discovered about the church at Corinth. It shows how immature they really were, and how important it is for us to remain vigilant against sin, while compassionate towards the sinner.
1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?
The whole chapter is summed up in these two verses – there are three main points Paul makes:
1. The Story. “actually reported” is an unusual phrase for Paul – but it essentially means: “People are saying …” The idea is that the story of what happened in Corinth had become front page news in the supermarket tabloids. When Paul was in Safeway he picked up a copy of The Greek World News to read about the latest Elvis sighting – and saw the story on the Corinthian sexual scandal – only it wasn’t a scandal, but a story on how “tolerant” these Christians were being – THAT was the amazing part of the story.
So point 1 – what was happening was so widespread it had reached to Paul in Ephesus (?).
2. The Sin. We’re not talking about cheating on your income taxes to Rome here – but on a kind of sin that even the pagans around would cringe at.
3. The Response. Instead of shock, there is a yawn – no, an acceptance of the sin, even pride in tolerating the sin. Far from tolerating it, the people should have dealt with the sin, and not fellowshipped with this guy until he repented.
The pride of the Corinthians is the same word for “arrogant” used just a couple of verses previous. They were proud of their divisions and proud of their tolerance for sin.
But both attacking on the outside and rotting on the inside both cause death and destruction in the body of Christ. And both must be dealt with.
3 Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present.
In other words – Paul says “I don’t need to be there to know what to do – I don’t need a fact finding mission or to hear this guy’s side of the story – this should be a no-brainer.”
4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, 5 hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
Paul is not calling for a ceremony where someone would say “Okay, Satan, here he is, come get him” – and the Devil would arrive and carry the guy off kicking and screaming to be tortured until he confessed his sin.
But the body of Christ needs to agree that this guy is not to be fellowshipped with. It effectively removes the covering of the church, the insulation – and puts this guy in an atmosphere where the true effects of his sin will come out.
Sometimes when we do things that are in direct disobedience to God’s Word we don’t see the full impact because we are surrounded by other Christians and the atmosphere of the church – which is filled with love and acceptance.
But remove that influence and we begin to see just how depraved we are – hopefully. Paul wants the enemy to have more access to this guy – not so that he’ll be punished, but so that he’ll realize what he’s doing and turn away from it. He’s not going to turn away if the church not only doesn’t let him know that what he’s doing is wrong, but actually accepts it.
I remember a time when I was an assistant pastor at Applegate Christian Fellowship and I counseled a guy who said he wanted to come back to the Lord. I thought this is great – and I talked to the guy and he said that he was a homosexual. He said that he wanted to come back and fellowship with believers – he missed that part of his life – but the catch was that he didn’t want to stop living in the homosexual lifestyle. I told him that wouldn’t work – and he didn’t come back – he wasn’t ready.
You see, its not that we have to be perfect in order to come to the Lord – but we need to be willing to be made perfect. We need to be willing to let go of our sin and let God heal us. If this guy had said that, we would have welcomed him, counseled him, got him some help, and assisted him in coming back to fellowship with the Lord.
Now what would have happened had we just said “Oh, its okay, God loves you and we accept you, you keep being a homosexual and we’ll start having special services for others like that”? What happens is what Paul gets to next:
6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?
Yeast, or leaven in dough, is the analogy Paul uses to describe the effects of sin on a body. Yeast adds carbon dioxide uniformly to a lump of dough by a process of digestion – or putrefaction. The yeast digests the sugar then expels CO2. You put just a little yeast into the dough, and let it sit. That yeast will fill the whole dough with that Carbon Dioxide, and then you bake it and its bread.
Sin, if not dealt with – does the same thing. We’re talking here about open sin – I know each one of us has things that the Lord is dealing with, failures that we have. I’m not suggesting that each of us stand up and admit every weakness we have – I’m talking about sin that everyone knows about. If you fail to deal with it then the enemy can start working in a pattern of sin – “Hey, if this guy did this and everyone is okay with it, then what I want to do or are doing isn’t nearly that bad so why repent?” Pretty soon you have a church filled with sin – and the gospel, which represents a way of escaping sin – becomes useless. If the wages of sin are tolerance by the body, instead of death, why do we need salvation?
It’s the same in our lives – if we let sin go it will start to putrefy other areas in our life and will make us useless for the Lord. So what do we do?
7 Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast-as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
This picture would have been very clear to the Jews in the Corinthian church. In Exodus chapter 12 the Lord told the Israelis – still in Egypt – to go through their houses and get rid of all yeast, then make unleavened, or flat bread.
The Lord told His people that they should do this to remember that He had brought them out of Egypt with a strong hand. The analogy is of sin, and the world. While in the world yeast, or sin, is the natural way of things. But God came to bring us out of the world, and remove the sin, or yeast, from us. It was no small thing that He did – giving His Son Jesus in order to remove sin from us – and so to allow sin to enter back into our lives really mocks the work God did on our behalf.
After removing the yeast then the people would kill a lamb and eat it – putting the blood on their doorposts. This kept the Angel of death from killing their first born. It was a picture of the Lamb of God – Jesus Christ – who was killed for us. If we put His blood on the doorposts of our heart by making Him our Lord, then we are spared the death that comes to all because of rebellion against God because anything that is not pure cannot live in the presence of God.
8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.
I think Paul here is trying tie chapters 1-4 with chapter 5. The Israelis celebrated a Festival for God’s deliverance – in a sense that what we do every time we gather together – we celebrate our deliverance from sin. What is that celebration to be like, Paul asks.
These people celebrated that Festival with malice and wickedness – malice referring to the divisions and backbiting going on – wickedness referring to their tolerance of open, unrepentant sin.
That’s not the right way to celebrate our deliverance from sin and death. We should celebrate without the sin we supposedly left behind in the world – sincerity in our relationships with our brothers and sisters, truth in our relationship with God.
9 I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people-
Paul apparently had previously written to this church – we don’t have that letter – but isn’t it odd that he had already spoken to them about the issue of fellowship with people committing open sexual sin?
Its almost like he could say “I told you so” on this – they can’t plead ignorance. Those of us who have heard God’s Word are also without excuse. If God is putting His finger on something in your life – you can’t just ignore it and say “Gee, I didn’t know.”
It should be common sense, but Paul has to once again treat the Corinthians like babies – to clarify what he means.
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 you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.
The Christian life is not expected to be lived in a monastery. Like Jesus, we are expected to mix with those who are not saved – people who are still in sin. No, we shouldn’t say to them: “what you do is great – I’m so proud of you.” No, our message is “God loves you and doesn’t want you to suffer the consequences for your rebellion against Him so He made a way to rescue you by His Son Jesus.” That’s not condemning, nor is it tolerant – it’s the gospel.
But if one of your brothers is openly sinning – opening rebelling against he revealed will of God in His word – then our actions should be different. This person should know better – we should avoid them. “Hey, I’m headed down to the bar to get really wasted after Bible Study, why don’t you invite a bunch of people from the Fellowship and we’ll go there together.” No. Again, its not saying that everyone has to be perfect – but that open rebellion against God will infect you if you let it.
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 man from among you."
The world accuses the church of judging them – condemning them. That’s wrong. We’re not the ones to condemn, we’re the ones to bring the good news. The world confuses God’s judgment of sin, which is anything that is not in line with God’s character, with our judgment because we bring to them the information about what God will do to sin.
But even as we don’t judge or condemn those on the outside of the church, there is a responsibility to judge what’s going on in the church. Another way to say this verse is “Its none of my business to judge what people do outside the church, but it is my responsibility to judge what goes on inside.
Paul quotes from various passages in Deuteronomy where God talks about what to do regarding false prophets and others who openly sin and rebel against God:
Deut 19:19-20 You must purge the evil from among you.
The Lord told the Israelis to purge the evil from Canaan or it would influence them. They didn’t purge and were influenced greatly by the culture.
And that’s what happens in the church if open, unrepentant sin is allowed to fester – or even worse – is embraced.
So then – how do we do this? How do you tell the difference between identifying and rooting out sin in the body and not behave like witch hunters and become divisive?
Conclusion
1. Differentiate between fleshly acts and sinful acts.
I know this is a bit of a fine line – but Paul seems to suggest that you treat the situation differently if someone is sincerely trying to serve God, but their fleshly nature is getting in the way and they are acting arrogantly or divisively.
In that case his encouragement is for us to complement each other, not compete against each other – and to act humbly, knowing that it is the Lord’s work we are together trying to accomplish. But you don’t disfellowship. So first determine the nature of the problem.
2. Restore then Remove
Paul wrote to the Galatians: 6:1 Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.
The word “restore” means to repair. When someone is caught in a sin – the more mature Christians should try to repair the brother or sister – talk with them, share lovingly with them, encourage them to seek help and seek God. That is always our first course.
In this case, though, no one was seeking to “restore” the brother – they were almost celebrating the sin! “Living with” denotes a continual commission of sin – not a one time act. So when someone is “caught up” in sin – its different than when they are embracing sin. In that case you let the leadership of your fellowship handle it – and eventually they may have to ask the person to no longer attend.
It doesn’t mean anyone’s being condemned to hell – Jesus paid for ALL our sins. But it may mean there is no benefit to the individual by staying, but the potential of great harm if they don’t go.
3. How do you identify and deal with sin your own life?
There is also application to our own personal lives. Ask yourself – what is reported about me? When people talk about me when I’m not around, especially non-Christians, what do they say about me? If it would be hard for someone to recognize you as a Christian without you telling them – perhaps its time to go on a “sin hunt.”
It’s kind of like the hunt for yeast that the Jews go through each year at Passover. Ask the Lord to honestly assess your life – then when He identifies sin, ask for forgiveness and healing.
He won’t lay the whole thing on you at once – and He isn’t condemning you either – but like David prayed:
Psalm 139:23-24 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Finally notice that this did work for Corinth – 2 Corinthians Paul tells the church to welcome the guy back.
