Sin In The Church

Alba 4-27-2025

SIN IN THE CHURCH

I Corinthians 5:1-13

There was a flock of wild ducks headed south for the winter. One of the ducks looked down and sees domesticated ducks in a barnyard and the easy life that they have. He decides to leave the wild ducks to spend some time with the domesticated ducks figuring that he would join back up with the wild ducks when they flew north again in the spring.

Over the next several months, the wild duck enjoyed his time in the barnyard eating cracked corn and Duck Chow. But he began to look forward to the time when he could rejoin his old friends. Sure enough, right on schedule, overhead they flew – the wild ducks headed north.

The wild duck in the barnyard began to flap his wings but all of the cracked corn, Duck Chow, and the lack of exercise made him too heavy to fly. The only thing he could manage to do was to get off the ground, cruise at a low altitude, and then crash into the barn. He was embarrassed and ashamed of his lack of ability to fly with his fellow wild ducks. So, he made plans. He decided to lose some weight and exercise his wings so that the next time the wild ducks flew over, he’d be ready to take his rightful place. Every fall and spring, the wild ducks flew overhead and the wild duck in the barnyard never could get off the ground. Eventually, he no longer paid any attention to the wild ducks flying overhead. He hardly even noticed them. After all, he had become a barnyard duck.

The lesson here is that when someone is caught in a sin, there is danger in allowing them to remain in their sinful behavior. It is because they soon become comfortable with it, and then never have the desire to leave it behind. Every one of us needs to understand that we’re all susceptible to sin. But also every one of us also needs to know that there is hope if we leave that sin – because we can be restored.

That was the apostle Paul's plan for a man in the church at Corinth. But before restoration could occur, both the church and the man needed to do some things. The situation was actually horrid to think about. And yet it was happening in the church, and it seemed to be accepted by the congregation.

Chapter five of First Corinthians deals with the problem, so lets read all thirteen verses of this chapter. “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife! And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

“Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep 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 to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore 'put away from yourselves the evil person.'”

The Easy-to-Read Version may give us a better understanding of Paul's reaction to what is going on in the church. The first verses of this chapter read this way: “I don’t want to believe what I am hearing—that there is sexual sin among you. And it is such a bad kind of sexual sin that even those who have never known God don’t allow it. People say that a man there has his father’s wife. And still you are proud of yourselves! You should have been filled with sadness. And the man who committed that sin should be put out of your group.”