Unrepentant Sin Can't Be Tolerated Among Us (1 Corinthians 5:1-13) Series

Starting in chapter 5, Paul begins addressing specific issues in the Corinthian church. Some of these issues have been reported to him by members of the church. Other issues are questions that the church has brought to him.

And so Paul works his way through the questions, one at a time.

In chapter 5, Paul appears to address a problem in the church that was reported to him. There's no evidence that this was an issue that the church was wrestling with, or uncertain of what to do about. But the church, quite simply, is handling this completely wrong. And so Paul has to address it.

Now, this was a very adult problem. I will do my best to handle this tactfully. But there is only so much I can do.

Paul begins in verse 1 by raising the issue:

(1) Everywhere it is reported that there is sexual immorality among you,

and of such a type of sexual immorality

which isn't even among the Gentiles,

so that the wife of his father someone has,

There is a man in the church who "has" the wife of his father. This woman is not herself part of the church, or Paul would've addressed her as well. She is "outside" the church; the man, though, is "inside."

Who is the woman? Paul calls her, "the wife of his father." This woman isn't the man's mom. It's his step-mother.

So what exactly is the situation? There's really only two possibilities. The first, is that his father has died, and after his father died, at some point he and his stepmother became a thing. The second possibility is that his father divorced his second wife, and it's at that point, that the man and his stepmother became a thing.

Now, I'm guessing-- hoping-- that most of us find ourselves cringing. This is icky. We instinctively find ourselves thinking, this is gross. Ew.

And this reaction is normal. Paul says, "This type of sexual immorality isn't even found among the... who?

This type of sexual immorality isn't found, even among the Gentiles."

When a Jew looks at the world, he sees two different types of people. The world is a very simple place, really. There are Jews, and there are Gentiles. And Paul is a messianic Jew.

But the Corinthian church is not made up of people who were all Jews by birth. Most of the church would have been Gentile by birth (Acts 18:6). This is a church made up of people who used to worship idols. Let's turn to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous[b] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,[c] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

First century Jews committed many sins-- just like Gentiles-- but idolatry and homosexuality were not two of them. Those sins were unthinkable abominations. And chapter 6 is just one of the proofs that the Corinthians are a mix of Jew and Gentile.

So when Paul talks about people outside the church as Gentiles, and makes it sound like no one inside the church is a Gentile, what is he doing?

Paul doesn't unpack this language here, probably because he's already taught the Corinthians this. But the answer is found in Romans 2:

28 For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. 29 But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

The true Jew is one who has received the inward circumcision of the heart, through the Holy Spirit. Christians are the true Jews. You are the true Jews. Gentiles are outsiders-- people who haven't received the circumcision of the heart that comes through the Holy Spirit.

And so what Paul says here is that even the Gentiles-- people who have hard, calloused, sinful hearts, and aren't part of God's family, and don't have the Holy Spirit-- even the Gentiles know that this is wrong.

Paul continues, in verse 2:

(2) and you, puffed up you are, ["puffed up" is focused in the Greek by fronting it]

and shouldn't you rather have mourned? ,

in order that the one doing this work would be removed from your midst?

How have the Corinthians responded to this sin? They boast. They are puffed up, proud. They brag that they have this kind of person in their midst, as part of their body.