Immoral behavior and what Christians should do about it
5
📚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. 2 📚And you are puffed up 📖. You did not mourn greatly, so that the one who did this deed might be put away from among you. 3 📚For indeed I, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already reached a decision (as though I were present) about the one who has done this deed.
5:3 Is it the business of Christian leaders or the church as a whole to judge individual Christians? Yes. It is their duty to keep the church pure, to rebuke sin and judge behavior contrary to the holy way of life Christ taught. See vs 12,13; Matt 18:15-17; Acts 5:1-11. This is not the same thing as one individual judging another (this we should not do – 1 Cor 4:3, 5; Matt 7:1-5; Rom 14:4, 13). This is a church matter, a matter of who is worthy to be in its fellowship, of what standards a church should have.⚜
4 📚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, 5 📚I have decided to hand this one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh 📖, so that the spirit may be saved 📖 in the day of the Lord Jesus.
5:4-5 Discipline must be taken in the name of the Lord Jesus, in His presence, by His power. He is the great purifier of the Church and its Head and Lord. Local churches should act on His authority. Handing the sinning Christian over to Satan means to put him out of the church and to have nothing more to do with him until he repents – vs 11,13. And, it seems, it means to give Satan a chance to afflict him. Outside the Church is the world which is Satan’s realm (John 14:30; Eph 2:2; Col 1:13; 1 John 5:19). Satan has the ability to afflict men’s bodies (Job 2:4-7), and he has the power of death (Heb 2:14. Notes on Satan at 1 Chron 21:1; Matt 4:1-10).
Handing over to Satan is a terrible and painful discipline indeed. But here Paul reveals a good purpose for it. He wanted the man’s flesh to be destroyed and his spirit saved.⚜
6 📚Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little yeast permeates the whole lump?
5:6 Verse 2. He means that sin may have small beginnings in a church but spread all through it. This is one reason why it is so important to deal with it immediately and firmly. If the church does not do so, people in it may get the idea that sin is unimportant, and that they can get away with anything they wish to do.⚜
7 📚Therefore, purge out the old yeast 📖, that you may be a new lump, since you really are without yeast. For truly Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. 8 📚Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old yeast, nor with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the yeastless bread of sincerity and truth.
5:8 Of course, keeping the “Feast” does not mean literally observing the old Jewish feast of the Passover. Christians were never taught to do this. The Festival of believers is a continuous “feasting” on the truths concerning Christ their Passover. It is fellowship with Him in a new life. Pride, factions and quarreling, immorality, dishonesty, etc, are to have no place in this “Feast”.⚜
9 📚I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, 10 📚but not at all meaning with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy, or extortioners, or with idolaters. For in that case you would have to leave the world. 11 📚But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who is called a brother if he is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, and not to eat with such a person.
5:9-11 Believers must not treat fellow Christians who sin as they treat people of the world. Believers live in the world and cannot avoid its sinful people. But someone sinning “who is called a brother” is a different matter altogether. Here is a plain command that we are not to associate or eat with such a person. See also 1 Thess 3:6.⚜
12 📚For what business do I have judging outsiders also? Do you not judge those who are inside? 13 📚But God judges those who are outside. Therefore put away that wicked person from among yourselves.
5:12-13 Verse 3; 1 Cor 6:1-5; 11:31. Though individuals do not have the right to judge and condemn other individuals, the church has the right to judge who can be in its fellowship. And they must exercise this right. When wicked men are expelled, the church can grow in purity and power. When they are not expelled, disaster waits at the door. If adulterers and adulteresses, thieves and dishonest persons, etc are permitted to remain in fellowship, then God, in large measure, will withdraw His blessing. There may be many spiritual gifts in such a church and seeming success in the ministry, but the rottenness there will rob it of true spiritual life.⚜