1 Corinthians - Chapter 5 - Apostolic Authority Over Immorality
1 Corinthians – Chapter 5
The Apostolic Authority over Immorality
Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Sunday Evening Service, September 9, 2012, the Year of Our Lord
This startling chapter reveals how seriously the world was worming its way into the Corinthian assembly. This is a church that prided itself on the spiritual gifts and holding a high place in Christ’s kingdom.
The Apostle Paul exercises the authority of the Office of the Apostle with the power given him by the Lord Jesus Christ. Through the authority of the Office of the Apostle, he judges the sin of immorality in the Corinthian church and delegates the authority to the corporate church to ex-communicate the sinner.
After careful study of this chapter, I believe this delegated authority is just a powerful today in the local church as it was at the time Paul wrote this letter.
The Corinthians boasted of their position and power in Christ, carrying their liberty in the Lord to excess, going beyond anything the pagans would tolerate. So Paul will cite a specific example to show how carnal and powerless they really are. Whether it was their emphasis on worldly wisdom, resulting in division; quarrelling over which group leader was superior; and now the problem of immoral behavior in the church.
And not just immoral behavior, but the worst kind of sexual immorality---a member having sexual relations with his step mother. What hit Paul the hardest was that the church apparently didn’t care, even refusing to deal with the matter. The fact that the Corinthian's were not at all shocked by such immorality was heartbreaking to the apostle.
5:1-2: It is reported commonly that fornication is going on among you that is so evil in nature, the Gentiles don’t practice it: one of your men is having sex with his father’s wife. What’s worse, you see nothing wrong with it and yet you regard yourselves as spiritual. Instead of being sorry about this, you seem proud of the fact that you tolerate it! Your hearts should have been broken over this, you should have expelled the man from your assembly.”
If splintering the church into different parties and the folly of the members relying on worldly wisdom seemed a serious problem, Paul now immediately confronts them with another one that can’t be allowed to go on. This church is a mess which will quickly become a worse mess if a situation reported to the apostle is allowed to continue.
The whole congregation apparently knew what was going on. The apostle doesn’t label the sin as adultery, but simply says the offender had his father’s wife. So, we don’t know if the woman was a widow, or she had been separated or divorced from the man’s father, or if she was one of a number of his wives. We can assume the woman is someone outside the church, for nothing is said about expelling her from the fellowship.
First-century life in the Roman Empire was characterized by loose sex. I believe we can apply that same sin to the United States of America today as well as many nations of the world and the 21st Century church like the Corinthians turns a blind eye.
The responsibility of morality has to begin with the church. There is no other institution other than the family that is capable of raising a standard of righteousness. Again in this chapter the Apostle Paul through the power of Jesus Christ vested in him gives that authority to the local church.
In their pride, the Corinthians saw no need to mourn or be sorry for what was going on in their midst. It would not occur to them to expel the man. This shocks the apostle. Instead of being sorry, they are puffed up over their liberality. To them, displaying a generous attitude toward the man was more spiritual than condemning him. In no way did they view this as a stain on their church. The Corinthian's were blind to the evil. This shows how easily sin can invade a fellowship that is “called to be holy.” In pointing out a sin that would shock even the pagans, the apostle demonstrates how blind they had become.
What would cause the Corinthians to be so tolerant of this situation? It may be due to a mishandling of Paul’s words. We know the apostle cherished the believer’s liberty in Christ. “All things are lawful for me” (6:12), and again, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). It appears the Corinthians put the freest construction on his words so as to indulge themselves in uninhibited sex. At the same time, the apostle taught them they were not to use their liberty to satisfy their carnal appetites: “But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature” (Gal. 5:13).
5:3-5: “Even though I am not there with you physically, I am there in spirit. And with the authority the Lord has given me, I have already judged this man as though I were present. Here is what you are to do: Assemble together and I will be with you in spirit and the Lord’s power will be present to confirm the action you must take. Deliver this man into the hands of Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”
When it comes to removing the man from the assembly, Paul wants the Corinthians to do it as a solemn event under his delegated authority. True he will not be there bodily, but the idea of his being there in spirit and the authority of his office will have the backing of the Holy Spirit.
No doubt this letter was read to the congregation. The words, “I have already passed judgment” settle the matter. The man is to go.
Paul’s solemn judgment bears the authority of the name of Christ as will the assembled church bear the stamp of Christ’s power.
The phrase “deliver unto “Satan” is best understood as putting the man out of the fellowship and committing him to Satan “for the destruction of his flesh, for the salvation of his soul.”
Committing a person to Satan includes the idea of asking God to take His hands off of the sinner, leaving a man to his own devices and the influences of Satan, through his old nature, is the worst thing God can do to any man. As the victim sinks deeper into sin and its consequences, the result is inner torment as well as physical suffering, both of which are intended to bring the man to repentance.
Later we’ll find this same man repentant and restored to the fellowship. The punishment was effective in his case.
Paul recognized his “thorn in the flesh” as a “messenger of Satan” (2 Cor. 12:7). In Paul’s case it was to restrain him from undue pride as a result of the awesome revelations he had received.
In Chapter 3, Paul told us about the natural man who had misspent his life building the wrong things on the wisdom of the world. At the judgment he was wiped out. The judgment fire took away everything, leaving him nothing to show for his time on earth---yet the man himself was saved (1 Cor. 3: 13-15).
Those who are truly born of God have his indestructible life and righteousness. Since their souls already belong to God through the spiritual birth process, Satan cannot have their eternal soul. God possesses them and “neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand” (John 10:28).
The incident of the sinning church member should be considered along with the case of the natural Christian who built the wrong kind of life on natural wisdom. His future was totally wiped out by the judgment fire, yet his soul was untouched. He was a child of God and nothing can change that. A mother who has two children, one becomes a doctor and a blessing to society; the other becomes a hardened criminal and ends up in prison for life. Is the doctor more his mother’s son because he is a doctor? Is the criminal any less his mother’s son because he goes to jail? What they have done with their lives does not change who they are.
If a person is born of God, he is God’ child. This is not to say how much time the sinner will spend in God’s wood-shed and there will be consequences for an evil life.
5: 6-8: “Your glorying Is not good”. It is terrible that you boast about it. Don’t you realize that just a little yeast works its way through the whole batch of dough? Purge out the old leaven that is working through your fellowship. Remove that wicked person from your midst that you may remain an unadulterated body of believers (new lump). Our Passover feast has already begun. Christ the Lamb was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us observe the feast, but not with the yeast of the old life of sin and immorality, but by feasting on Christ who is the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
The figure of yeast is used in Scripture two ways:
(1) to picture evil as it permeates the life of an individual or a group, as referred to here.
(2) To picture the influence of the gospel as it spreads across mankind to call out those who have a heart for God (Mt. 12:33; Luke 13:20).
In the present case, Paul regards the presence of the man in the assembly as yeast, a dangerous threat to the church. As it takes just a tiny bit of yeast to leaven a good sized lump of dough, so just one evil man can corrupt the whole fellowship if he’s allowed to remain in their midst.
Notice that Paul does not say you ought to be unleavened, but that, “you might remain unleavened or unadulterated.” Christians are truly unleavened. Having received the Lord Jesus they are as righteous as He (2 Cor. 5:21). This is what makes it possible for them to live with a Holy god. That being the case, they have no business being involved in the old yeast of sin and immorality. When they received the Lord, they received His righteousness.
That’s what makes them unleavened or unadulterated. Now they are to live as though they are dead to sin (rom. 6:11). The Passover season was apparently at hand, so Paul draws on the Jewish ritual of getting rid of all yeast before the Passover feast.
To the Corinthian Christians he is saying, get that old yeast out of your church so that you can eat the sacrifice, which is Christ. Jesus was God’s Passover Lamb for us. Using the Passover Feast as a symbol, he is saying, “Don’t eat any more of that sin stuff, that yeast of the old life, Instead feast on Jesus, Who is the truth and the Life.” He is the living bread (John 6:51).
5: 9-11: “I wrote you in a previous epistle, not to associate with fornicators. Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go outside this world. What I meant was you are not to keep company with anyone who calls himself a Christian and who is living in openly sin, who is greedy and swindles others, who has a foul mouth and is a drunkard and a thief. If you have a close association with believers of that sort, you must break off the relationship at once. With such a one do not even eat.”
We wouldn’t know that Paul had written an earlier letter to the Corinthians had he not mentioned it here. Apparently he didn’t specify in his earlier letter that his instructions applied only to those inside the church.
One might expect that in a church located in Sex City and made up of people drawn from a free sex culture; this is a matter Paul had to clear up right away.
If “Don’t associate with immoral men” were applied literally, that meant they couldn’t go to the shoemaker, the food store or any of the merchants in town. How could you avoid immoral people in an immoral city like Corinth? If we applied it literally today, we couldn’t buy gas for the car; go the bank or post office. We surely have to be even more careful what we watch in the theater and on our television screens.
Paul’s focus was on those inside the church. Stay away from any church member who is scandalizing the gospel with his conduct. He also feels that any believer who sees such a thing going on has the responsibility to do something about it. If he did nothing, he would be permitting the man to bring dishonor on the Lord and His Word. The church must set its own house in order.
These are hard scriptures. However, if we are to be honest brokers, we must preach the full gospel.
5: 12-13: “It is not our place to judge outsiders, what they do is none of our business. But it is our business to judge those inside our own fellowship? Those that are outside, God will judge. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.”
We all know if we got rid of everyone in the church who had sin in the life, then the only person left standing would be the one doing the judging. However, as God’s people we must assume the responsibility for the mental health and well being of those who are affected with sexual immorality or sexual additions. In accordance not only with this passage written so clearly by Paul, but also in accordance with the preamble of the constitution, we have an obligation to “promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”
Paul indicates the way outsiders live is of no concern to the Christian family. However, unless the church raises the standard of Godliness, the world does not have a standard. I am persuaded that the Lord gives baby Christians a time of grace to be conformed to the Lord and His way through the good example of Godly Christians. If we ex-communicated all of the Christians who have not overcome sin, then that would be all of them.
I consider it a serious matter to ex-communicate a church member. I will bend over backwards to give a person every opportunity to grow in Christ, thereby leaving behind their pagan life style.
God’s work is redemption and the ultimate aim of Christian discipline is restoration. Being restored into fellowship means true repentance from evil-doing and evil-speaking; turn one’s heart and life to the Lord walking in unadulterated purity.
I believe the judgment of Paul here is to be addressed to the church of the 21st century that is very lax with regard to the spiritual condition of many congregations.
I wrote a paper in 1990 on pornography which is applicable to this passage.
“Dianna Scully, sociologist, conducted a study of 114 rapists. She discovered that scenes depicted in violent porn are duplicated in rapists’ crimes.”
“It is obvious that the incessant preoccupation with pornography is related to dysfunctional, destructive and even bazaar behavior. No longer is this habit confined to a few degenerates. All segments of our society are affected by this preoccupation. To paraphrase John Steinbeck, its victims are prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and crooks, by which he meant everybody. He might just as well have said saints, pastors, senators, businessmen and teachers.
Indeed some of those “juveniles and unwilling adults” dismissed so casually by Chief Justice Burger are now pastors, senators, businessmen and teachers. They are also parents of another generation.”
The unchecked immorality of our nation has now brought forth a generation of sexual addictions, homosexuality, adultery, fornication, and immoralities unprecedented even in the Sex City of Corinth.
How did this happen? Paul gives us the solution in this startling chapter. The church must assume the authority given to it in the Holy Word of God to raise a standard against sexual immorality.
“A healthy, functional society identifies its problems, addresses the problems and follows through until the problems are solved. We are responsible for the general welfare of “juveniles and unwilling adults”. Apathy and denial of the destructive behavior associated with pornography and all immoral addiction can no longer be tolerated by our churches and our society by turning a blind eye.”
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
Scripture from K.J.V. I entered into the labors of C. S. Lovett’s Lights on 1 Corinthians and a paper written by Carolyn Sissom, March 7, 1990, Pornography, a Symptom of an Obsessive, Compulsive Addiction.