1 Corinthians 5--Dealing With a Case of Incest

1 Corinthians 5
New International Version

Dealing With a Case of Incest
5 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.

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.

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.”

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Is I've been saying, 1 Corinthians is largely a letter of correction to the Corinthian church from Paul, specifically about issues of behavior that is "carnal" (giving into the desires of the flesh) whether that be sexual sin, gluttony, lack of self-control over emotions and the use of their words, divisions and cliques in the Church, and more.  Paul addresses one of the most flagrant sins in their midst first and not only correcting the issue itself, but also correcting the church members for not exercising church discipline in this issue (what many have come to know as "excommunication").  Paul will actually have to write another letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians) to tell the church how to handle when people repent of their sin and that it's okay to welcome them back and not to disassociate from the world entirely as the Corinthians thought they got the message, but they really missed it and stopped having the goal of restoration of their brother or sister who was in sin and lost sight of the gospel and the Great Commission.  The problem in this case (and still is a problem today) is someone who claims to be a Christian and is still controlled by his or her flesh and uses the grace they are under to abuse the Law of God instead of living in obedience to it--and in this case doing it openly in a way that is flaunting it for the everyone in the Church and world to see.

Paul is quick to point out that not even the pagans engage in this kind of perverse sexual immorality that is on full display in the Corinthian church.  So what exactly is the problem here?  From the semantics being used (since Paul could have used other words, but chose these), it appears that there is a man in the church who is having sexual relations with his step-mother (notice it says "father's wife" and not "mother"--there would be a different word for this if the two had any relation other than by marriage of the man's father).  This is wrong because the woman was married to someone else and was just as wrong as say Herod Antipas took Herodias, the wife of his half-brother Philip and the condemnation of this was part of what got John the Baptist beheaded.  This however is not that particular situation in that the person in question here is not the evil King Herod involved in the beheading of John the Baptist or the trial of Jesus leading up to His crucifixion--this is supposed to be someone who was a born-again Christian under the authority of Christ and the elders of the church in Corinth, so then why is this person acting in a way as bad or worse than Herod Antipas, and why be unrepentant of such sin and openly flaunt it to both the church and the world with no shame?  And why should the church be so proud of being so "seeker-friendly" and "welcoming" and "forgiving" to allow such a cancer to exist in their body without excising it for the good of the entire Body?

While the understanding and idea of cancer was not as well known then as it is today, I'm going to continue to use that imagery as I think it fits well here.  Cancer cells start off as healthy cells, but something happens to them where they lose important genetic information that helps them have "self-control"--specifically knowing when to stop reproducing so that they don't consume all the food and keep growing beyond the size of the container they are in.  Sin is much like cancer in the way that it will consume everything and grow and grow and grow until it has devoured everything and knows no bounds and will not only affect the one part of the Body where it originates, but will metastasize and spread to the entire Body if not dealt with, and like cancer sin brings much pain and results in death.  The main way to deal with cancer is to cut it out of the body--yes there are other treatments that involve chemo therapy and radiation therapy, but we're going to focus on the idea of surgery here for the sake of this passage.  If the tumor can't be removed safely, sometimes the only option is amputation to keep the cancer from spreading to other parts of the body.  That's where this discussion is headed--only, this situation is different because we think of amputation as something permanent and irreversible, but in the Body of Christ, Jesus, the Great Physician, is able to restore the one who repents back into fellowship and his or her proper place in the Body (again, we'll get into this more in 2 Corinthians).

Paul tells that the church that he in his role as an apostle has already proclaimed judgment on the offender and it up to the church in Corinth to assemble for what Southern Baptists might call a "business meeting" (that probably makes some of shudder) to deal with "handing this person over to Satan" (excommunication).  Remember though, the goal of all of this is repentance and restoration, which the Corinthian church members missed, they just thought they were supposed to kick the person out of the Church and never let them back in.

Paul uses the idea of yeast/leaven, which is often used as a picture of sin in the Old Testament and New Testament, in much the same way that I talked about cancer earlier.  If you put any little amount of yeast in the lump of dough, it will grow and work it's way through the entire lump of dough and the whole lump will be ruined if your intent was to make unleavened bread.  In fact, it is much harder to "cut out" yeast from the dough than it is to cut out a tumor from the body--you had to be very careful to remove all yeast from the house and completely clean the house and cleanse yourself before the Feast of Unleavened Bread (associated with Passover) so as to be careful to not accidently contaminate the unleavened bread that we know was to be a symbol of the Body of Christ that was broken for us.  But aren't we, the Church also called the Body of Christ?  So then, shouldn't we too be "unleavened"?  That is the image that Paul is giving here.  We need to throw away the old batch of dough that was leavened with sin (our old way of doing things when we were controlled by the flesh) and let God make a new lump of dough that is unleavened (without sin and controlled by the Spirit that is made in the likeness of the Son, so that we are the Body of Christ).

Paul seems to have written to the Corinthian church previously (even though this is the first letter that we have recorded in the New Testament) as he references a previous letter here where Paul told them not to associate with the sexually immoral person (probably dealing with this same situation we just discussed and others that will be addressed later in this letter).  Where Paul was meaning this to only apply to those who called themselves "bother" or "sister" in Christ and were living sexually immoral lives, the church in Corinth thought Paul meant all sexually immoral people, including those in the world--sexual sin was big issue in Corinth because of the pagan temples there where prostitution, orgies, and pederasty (relationships between adult males and children usually teen or pre-teen males were all part of normal culture to them, and even part of what they considered "worship" to be--Paul will have to address some of these issues later as the church in Corinth is starting to bring some of these pagan practices into their church services--maybe because they didn't know better (I doubt that from the way Paul talks to them about it as if he's already talked to them about this and they should know better) or maybe because they are trying to be a "seeker-friendly" or "emergent" church like I was saying before--again, "new" ideas ore really usually old ideas that have been repackaged and renamed.  Compromising on the gospel in order to gain more membership and be more popular with the world is something as old as the Church itself, and something we much battle in every generation.

Paul said that if we were not to associate with any immoral person (the greedy, the swindlers, the idolaters, and so on), they would have to leave the world because we won't escape from the presence of sin until we reach heaven and God makes the New Heavens and the New Earth so that we will be in communion with Him and free from the very presence of sin when all the ungodly and even Death and Hell will be thrown into the Lake of Fire.  Paul makes it clear though to not have any fellowship--not even to share a meal (especially the Lord's Supper) with a brother or sister whose identity is in their sin and is controlled by the flesh and not by the Spirit.  Why? I think that it is for their correction as we talked about before, for they should desire communion and should do whatever is necessary to be in communion with believers again, but also it is for the protection of the Body as God's discipline or maybe even some of His wrath may be poured out on the life of this person, and you don't want to get caught up in that.

So then, are we to try to make all the immoral people outside the Church try to be moral so that we can can associate with them?  Certainly not!  Paul says it is not for us to judge those outside the Church, nor should we expect a bad tree to produce anything other than bad fruit, and to give them the impression that Christianity is about being morally good and that somehow that puts them in right relationship with God and the Church is a false gospel that so many hear and accept as they continue in the vein of those that tried to build The Tower of Babel and make their own way to the god of their own making (really worshiping themselves) in Genesis 10.  We cannot build any foundation or tower of good works that good enough to get us to heaven or make God accept us, we must be born again by dying to the flesh and letting the Spirit give us new life like in the Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel.  We do a disservice to the Church and the world when we go back to a system of legalism (remember, we studied this in the book of Galatians already) and leave the power of the gospel behind.  The Law never saved anyone in the past and can't save anyone now--but if we love God we will keep His commandments.  There are many verses that say this, but in the interest of time I'll point you to 1 John 2:3.  These people that are living in rebellion to God and His commandments do not love God and probably don't really belong to Him.  We've studied much of this already with 1 John, but maybe go back and read that again as it has much to say on this very issue.  We are to expel the immoral brother (or sister) from among us so that they may hopefully repent and return to us one day, but if not so that their sin will not spread throughout the entire Body of Christ.  Like a cancer or necrotic tissue, sometimes surgery is needed to excise the diseased part for the good of the entire body.  It's a painful process and only God is able to heal and restore in ways that we can't in regular medicine, but we'll see that is exactly what will happen in this case when we get to 2 Corinthians as Paul instructs the church to welcome back this brother who will repent.