1 CORINTHIANS 5
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. 4 When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.– 1 Corinthians 5:1-5
1 CORINTHIANS 5 DISCIPLINE AMONG THE CHURCH
A poem by ILMA inspired by these verses
As members of the body of Christ, we have unity
Each part of the church is required to stay pure and holy
When a member continually sins, they need to be confronted
Without rebuking the sinner among us, the body will be affected
Like cancer cells, they need to be removed to preserve the rest
We need to address the compromised act so they can be saved.
In this letter, Paul confronts the sexual sin of someone in the Corinthian church that is so blatantly minimized by the rest of the church. The person who is talked about here had sexual affairs with his father’s wife. I am assuming it is not his own mother, but probably a stepmother. In 2 Samuel 16:22, Absalom (David’s son) actually did the same thing with his father’s wife (who is one of David’s concubines) to spite his father.
Why didn’t Paul minimize this situation? He is disciplining the believer because it defies the law of God not to covet another man’s wife. Paul explains in the next chapter that sexual sin is a sin against the person’s own body. So, when a person acts on their own fleshly desire to satisfy their sexual cravings, they are defiling their whole physical well-being. It was important to cut off this man from the church because it will create a demoralizing effect on the rest of the body. When we have cancer cells, we deal with it so it doesn’t spread and contaminate the whole body. This is the same concept.
REFLECTION
- Do you think Paul was punitive or loving when he said verse 5? Why or why not?
