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Reading of 1 Corinthians 5. “This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.”
Sin complicates our lives.
Julia Sheeres is a writer and a parent. She wrote an article called, “Raising Chldren Without the Concept of Sin.”[1] In it she tells the story of her 9-year old daughter who asked her, “Mama, what is sin?” She was shocked. But then she thought about her own fundamentalist Christian background in Indiana.
Where she grew up she said, “Actions, words, even thoughts weren’t safe from scrutiny. The list of sinful offenses seemed infinite.”
Her solution was to avoid the term and concept altogether. She was raising activist children, so they had a moral code. But they didn’t even know the word “sin.” On this pleasant afternoon with her daughter, she decided an explanation could wait.
We can sympathize with Sheeres. If you’ve experienced a community where too many things were declared “sinful,” it’s tempting to throw out the label altogether.
But sin doesn’t disappear just because you get rid of the label.
The series is “Being God’s People.” This morning we’ll see that “being God’s people” means taking sin seriously.
One common temptation with the sin of others is, “Who are we to judge? After all, we’re all sinners.” At times that’s just the right thing to say.
But if that becomes the only thing we say, we’ve really lost our way.
Sermon: Taking Sin Seriously: Rebuking the Church (5:1–5); Protecting the Church (5:6–8); Judging the Church (Church Discipline) (5:9–13).
Prayer
Impossible to miss that this chapter is a rebuke. Paul is rebuking the church for failing to act like it should.
We’ll lose our bearings in this opening paragraph if we miss couple things in this paragraph.
And a second thing we need to keep in mind to see this whole paragraph rightly is the holiness of God.
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” (Isa 6:1–7)
When the Bible wants to communicate that something is the MOST of something, it uses the triple repetition. God is the MOST holy being.
Holy means both “set-apartness”—completely other and distinct from all creation. And it means moral perfection—impeccable righteousness, complete sinlessness.
Isaiah was Israel’s greatest writing prophet. For all practical purposes, he was the best we’ve got. And yet this holy prophet was here standing in the presence of God—God who is “holy, holy, holy.”
It’s critical that as we launch into this passage we have the right bearings.
Paul is rebuking the church because they’ve lost sight of these—God’s holiness and the seriousness of sin.
He’s also rebuking them in a very particular way: They have completely failed to call out a scandalous sinner.
The man is guilty of “sexual immorality” in a horrible way.
Verse 2 – They do this and still they’re “arrogant”! They boast of their spiritual maturity and do this.
Paul calls for radical action.
Similar to 1 Tim 1:20: among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Tim 1:20)
But the goal is punishment. The goal is salvation:
Application: Take sin seriously.
Next verse tells us why.
These verses remind us why it’s so important to respond rightly to sin. It’s because of the effect of sin. We take sin seriously to Protect the Church.
To make his point, he uses a metaphor: Leaven and bread.
Paul is saying that’s what sin can do in the church.
Paul keeps going with this metaphor.
Verse 7 and “Become what you are”
“Unleavened” = “a fresh start” (Thiselton, 405).
How did this happen? How is it that we became “unleavened,” a fresh start?
The blood of the Passover lamb, splashed upon the lintel of the door of the redeemed household, marks the identity of those who are about to enter a new freedom from bondage to a new purity of service as God’s own holy people.
Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians[2]
Application: The “THEREFORE” of the gospel.
As I said earlier, a common reaction when we hear about the sins of others is, “Who am I to judge? After all, we’re all sinners.” But this passage reminds us that there are certain kinds of judgments we are called to make.
And certain people—1 Cor 5:12–13a. We judge those “inside” the church. God judges those “outside” the church. This passage develops that idea.
1 Cor 5:9, note the reference to “my letter,” so this not his first to Corinth.
In that letter he had said they shouldn’t “associate with” people who were sexually immoral.
Paul writes to clarify here that he means people in the church who were living that way (1 Cor 5:11).
“Not to assocate with” means something like “not thinking about who you’re with, not thinking about whether it’s right to be with them or not.”
In general, this kind of “associating with” others is just right in the church. We don’t want to divide over sinful things: James 2 and sinful partiality.
Paul has something specific in mind here—look at verse 11.
Let’s look at the behaviors:
But these aren’t a limited list of sins or sinful lifestyles. Paul says not to eat “with such a one,” “people like these people.” Other sins could have been put on the list. This type of person is one you shouldn’t even eat with.
If there’s any question whether we should tolerate such people in the church, he closes with a direct quotation from the book of Deuteronomy—look at 1 Cor 5:13b.
The final exhortation: “Purge the evil person from among you” (LXX Deut 17:7; 19:19; 21:21; 22:21–22, 24; 24:7, but especially 22:21–22)
This is a vivid reminder that Paul sees the OT as speaking directly to Christians. As one commentator said, in this case “the rules of the game haven’t changed,” Deuteronomy still commands our behavior (Richard Hays).
Paul is really describing the final step of church discipline here: excommunication.
REMOVE THE SO-CALLED BROTHER:
“Let him who has done this be removed from among you” (5:2).
“Deliver this man to Satan” (5:5)
“Cleanse out the old leaven” (5:7)
“Not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of...” (5:11)
“Not even to eat with such a one” (5:11)
“Purge the evil person from among you” (5:13)
This means there are three categories of people:
This passage doesn’t give us specific steps for how to practice church discipline. For that we would turn to Matthew 18:15–20. But this shows us the same kind of process:
Steps of Church Discipline from 1 Cor 5:
This gives us important principles. If you want to see our church’s actual process for church discipline, it’s under “Member Resources” on the website.
I joked earlier about the Chinese spy balloon incident. But it illustrates something helpful. At first there was a pretty bad under-reaction. If it was even picked up on radar, it was assumed not to be a big deal.
Turned out it was a big deal, so then radars got super-sensitive and picked up all kinds of things that fighter jets blew out of the sky. Well, turns out those were harmless balloons likely by researchers and hobbyists.
When a church responds to sin we want to avoid both of these: don’t ignore it and just watch sin happen; don’t send fighter jets when something isn’t even sin.
God help us.
Prayer and Closing Song (“Only a Holy God”)
[1] Julia Sheeres, “Raising Children Without the Concept of Sin,” NYT, June 25, 2019.
[2] Thiselton, NIGTC, 406.
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