February 17, 2009 1 Corinthians 5

Wickedness in the Church ~1 Corinthians 5~
It is actually being said that there is sexual sin among you. And it is a kind that does not happen even among people who do not know God. A man there has his father's wife. And you are proud! You should have been filled with sadness so that the man who did this should be put out of your group. I am not there with you in person, but I am with you in spirit. And I have already judged the man who did that sin as if I were really there. When you meet together in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I meet with you in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus, then hand this man over to Satan. So his sinful self will be destroyed, and his spirit will b esaved on the day of the Lord. Your bragging is not good. You kno the saying, "Just a little yeast makes the whole batch of dough rise." Takle out all the old yeast so that you will be a new batch of dough without yeast, which you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. So let us celebrate this feast, but not with the bread that has the old yeast--the yeast of sin and wickedness. Let us celebrate this feast with the bread that has no yeast--the bread of goodness and truth. I wrote you in my earlier letter not to associate with you those who sin sexually. But I did not mean you should not associate with those of this world who sin sexually, or with the greedy, or robbers, or those who worship idols. To get away from them you would have to leave this world. I am writing to tell you that you must not associate with those who call themselves believers in Christ but who sin sexually, or are greedy, or worship idols, or abuse others with words, or get drunk, or cheat people. Do not even eat with people like that. It is not my business to judge those who are not part of the church. God will judge them. But you must judge the people who are part of the church. The Scripture says, "You must get rid of the evil person among you."

In this passage, Paul is talking about the sinful/evil people within the church. The sin focused on in this chapter is sexual sin. Whether it be homosexuality, cheating, affairs, having a sexual relationship with your stepmother, or etc. These are all the things that Paul saw within the Corinthian church, and he was very displeased. Although he says he's not there in person to see these things happening, he still knows that these things should not be happeneing, so he's telling the Corinthian church to get rid of these sins. Before Paul had mentioned it to them, the Corinthian church did not see this as a big sin, rather, they were pretty careless about this sin. They thought of it as, look, we're accepting and loving this brother who is doing such sin.

Paul teaches them that they're showing love in the wrong way. They shouldn't tolerate with these kinds of actions. Instead, they should be trying to fix the problem. Instead of judging those who aren't christians, expecting them to do the right things, we should focus on those who are already christians. Those within the church who are bringing such actions to the church...we need to fix that first.