1 Corinthians 5
5
The Mystery of Sex
1-2I also received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn’t be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you’re so above it all that it doesn’t even faze you! Shouldn’t this break your hearts? Shouldn’t it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn’t this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with?
3-5I’ll tell you what I would do. Even though I’m not there in person, consider me right there with you, because I can fully see what’s going on. I’m telling you that this is wrong. You must not simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own. Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master. Assemble the community—I’ll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power. Hold this man’s conduct up to public scrutiny. Let him defend it if he can! But if he can’t, then out with him! It will be totally devastating to him, of course, and embarrassing to you. But better devastation and embarrassment than damnation. You want him on his feet and forgiven before the Master on the Day of Judgment.
6-8Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that. Yeast, too, is a “small thing,” but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this “yeast.” Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient. The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast. So let’s live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread—simple, genuine, unpretentious.
9-13I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn’t make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous. I didn’t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of that sort. Or with criminals, whether blue- or white-collar. Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter. You’d have to leave the world entirely to do that! But I am saying that you shouldn’t act as if everything is just fine when a friend who claims to be a Christian is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory. You can’t just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior. I’m not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don’t we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers? God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
1 Corinthians 5
5
Immoral Church Members
1It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality # 1Th 4:3 among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated # Other mss read named among the Gentiles # Gl 1:16 — a man is living with his father’s wife. # Lv 18:8; Dt 22:30; 27:20 2And you are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief # Lk 6:25 so that he who has committed this act might be removed from your congregation. 3For though I am absent in body but present in spirit, # Col 2:5; 1Th 2:17 I have already decided about the one who has done this thing as though I were present. 4When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus with my spirit and with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, # 1Jn 5:16 so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord. # Mt 25:13; Ac 2:20; Php 1:6
6Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast # Lk 13:21; Gl 5:9 permeates the whole batch of dough? # Lk 13:21 7Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch. You are indeed unleavened, for Christ our Passover # Ex 12 has been sacrificed. # Other mss add for us 8Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast or with the yeast of malice and evil # Mk 7:22; Rm 1:29 but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Church Discipline
9I wrote to you in a letter not to associate # 2Th 3:14 with sexually immoral people. # 1Co 6:9; Eph 5:5; 1Tm 1:10; Heb 12:16; 13:4; Rv 21:8; 22:15 10I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy # Eph 5:5 and swindlers # Lk 18:11 or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. # Jn 17:6 11But now I am writing # Or now I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer # Lit anyone named a brother # 2Th 3:6 who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard # 1Co 6:10 or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12For what business is it of mine to judge # Lk 6:37 outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves. # Dt 17:7 # Dt 17:7
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