The Seriousness of Sin: Part 1

INTRODUCTION

Good morning and welcome again to First Christian Church. I am so excited you are here with us this morning. It is a great morning to be in the house of the Lord, and I am honored that we have all gathered today to worship our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We will be in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 this morning, and I would ask you to turn there with me.

I have always found it interesting just how the jewelry industry works. You take a rock or stone, clean it up, put it in a ring or necklace, and suddenly it is worth thousands of dollars. One interesting thing, though, is the pearl. A pearl is a treasured piece of jewelry. A Tahitian or South Sea pearl, just one pearl, can sell for $100,000! But a pearl begins as an irritant is introduced into an oyster. Its natural defense is to secrete the same substance used to create its shell around this irritant, which will take the form of a pearl. As the pearl grows, though, it also causes the oyster to have to grow and produce more shell. This one little irritant causes a world of difference in the life of an oyster. And for us, it creates a prized pearl that ladies wear.

Isn’t it interesting that one little irritant can have such a huge impact on something? Today in 1 Corinthians 6, we are going to look at how Paul describes the seriousness of sin, and how one small thing can have a huge impact on our lives, and even the life of a church.

Would you join me in prayer this morning?

PRAY

Not only was there division in the church because of pride and the people choosing to follow after one leader or the other, but there was a problem of sexual immorality happening as well. Chapter 5 is all about this sexual immorality that has occurred in the church and how to deal with it. Let’s look at what Paul says in chapter 5 in order to get the setting of chapter 6:

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.

1 Corinthians 5:1–2.

There is sexual immorality happening at the church that Paul says even the pagans would not tolerate, yet it is happening at the church centered around Jesus. Paul makes the suggestion here that this person is to be removed from the body. He even carries on this idea a few verses later:

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 5:4–5.

This sin is enough of a problem that Paul is telling the church to not only cut ties from the person, not allowing them into the community, but to hand them over to satan for the destruction of his flesh.

At face value, this seems very harsh. And that is because it is. But it is also showing the Church, both at Corinth and the Church today, the seriousness of sin. When the sin that this man has committed is allowed to just fester in the church, it does nothing good for the body. It should also be noted that the language used here indicates that this person has been confronted with their sin and is unwilling to repent of that sin. We see the biblical standard for church discipline laid out for us in Matthew 18:15-17

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Matthew 18:15–17.

The standard that Jesus gives us is first, you go one one-on-one, if they will not listen, you take one or two more with you. If they will not listen, you then take it to the church body, and finally if he will not listen, he is to be cut off from the community of the church. While this feels hard, the goal of this discipline is reconciliation. It is to reconcile the church, the person committing the action, and the one sinned against. Because Paul is speaking plainly of the sin that has happened, it would seem that the church has already been made aware, and so the final step is to let the person out to the realm of Satan. Still, the hope is reconciliation. That while cut off from community, they would see the need to repent from their sin and come back to the fold.

Church discipline is something that should be used in a church, but it is a humbling and difficult situation. Not one taken lightly. And from the writing in 1 Corinthians it had been practiced, but it was now time to go to that final and difficult step.

This step of discipline will likely come with a big fat question: why? Why would we remove someone from our church? Wouldn’t it be better if they stayed around and hopefully heard the gospel more? Wouldn’t their presence here be better for them? And I would want to give a yes answer, I wouldn’t want to send them off to the world, but Paul anticipates that question and gives us an answer at the end of chapter 5:

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

1 Corinthians 5:9–13.

They have already been encouraged not to associate with sexually immoral, not those who are not believers, but those who claim to be a follower of Jesus but are marked by sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, drunkenness, or swindling. The call is not to avoid people that are marked by sin, we all have been marked by sin to some extent, the call is that we should not be in community with people who claim to know Jesus, are being ruled by sin, and will not give even a glimpse of wanting to repent from that sin.

This is why sin is so dangerous in the church. Just like that irritant that gets into an oyster and causes the oyster to pull apart, even a small amount of sin can cause a huge mass of disaster and damage.

I want to be clear, I am not saying that you have to be 100% sinless to be a part of our church. That is not the point Paul is making, and if that were to be the truth, every church would be empty. It is more of our heart posture toward our sin. That is where the issue has occurred for the church. We all will sin, our new nature that seeks to be more and more like Jesus will always be in conflict with our sinful nature that still wants to poke its head up. This is why the Bible tells us to do things like deny ourselves, pick up our cross daily, to be a living sacrifice that is daily renewing our minds as we follow Jesus. It is a battle we will fight, but we already know who won the war.

This is a call to understand, as followers of Jesus, the seriousness of our sin, and recognize that when we sin, we cannot allow it to simply go unchecked. We have to deal with it. Because when we let sin just sit and fester in our lives, it only brings death. Like an infection that we never get medicine for, even as believers, sin wants to bring death and destruction. And it is why, for the health of the body, we cannot allow it to be undealt with. Paul is telling the church that the unrepentant “brother” needs to be removed because it will only bring harm to the church body. Yes, it feels hard to release someone to the world, but our prayer is that their heart would change, and we would see growth in them and in our own body.

This idea of cleaning out the unclean from our body, but taking the Gospel to the unbelieving world, continues in chapter 6. Look what 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 says:

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11.

If we could boil down these two chapters, 5 and 6, we could give them a title that says sin is serious. Sin is serious both for the unbeliever and for the church. Why would we say this?

First, it is serious because it brings death with it. Romans 6:23 tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” What does that mean? That sin simply brings about death with it. What does sin earn us? Death. And death is defined as eternal separation from God. It is not some peaceful eternal rest when we die in sin. It is separation from God, and when we look to Revelation and the future for those who do not follow Jesus, it is eternal torment.

Our culture wants to downplay anything that we would call sinful. Even the church culture does this. We want to categorize sins and make some palatable and ok. It will be called a life choice, or someone’s ‘truth’. It takes things that we recognize are not good for a person or a community, and wants to make those things good. We are taking evil and calling it good while calling good evil. This is a dangerous game! This is playing with matches in a dynamite factory. No good will come from it, and death is what is earned by our sin.

This is the reason that we do not take sin lightly. No matter what the news or your social media feed tells you, sin brings death. And we are not in the business of death. Why do we take sin seriously? Because it brings death with it.

The second reason we say that sin is serious is that it is pervasive. It has impacted everyone and everything. Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Since Genesis 3, the world has been dealing with the impact of sin on it. And not only the world, but people deal with what sin has done. Disease, hurt, pain, and suffering are all symptoms of the bigger problem, sin. And as we look around us, we see those symptoms on display.

Finally, we know that sin has consequences. The symptoms of sin are visible, but so are the consequences. The brokenness that some of us feel and experience from the effects of sin is palpable. We can feel what sin has done. The ultimate consequence is the death that sin brings. We see that. We are aware that the mortality rate for men is 100%. Death is a reality for us, as we await the call of the trumpet.

Paul speaks harshly about the sin that is in the church at Corinth because sin brings these things to the church. And Paul is aware of the consequences of sin; that is why he says what he does in verses 9-11. Those who are dominated and ruled by sin and are called these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. You cannot live in sin, being slave to it, and expect to walk into eternal life with God.

But what is the difference between those who are slaves to sin and those who follow Jesus? We have already said that our heart posture toward sin should show us where we stand. Why are our hearts different? Because of what Paul says in verse 11:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6:11.

These people who are ruled by sin will not inherit the kingdom, and such were some of you! But you have been washed, sanctified, and justified by Jesus.

By washed, we mean you have had the blood of Jesus wash away your sins. The atonement, the payment for sin, was the blood of Jesus, and the bible says that this blood can make us white as snow. The sin in our life that has marred and marked us is washed and cleaned away. We are a new creation!

We are set apart; that is what we mean by sanctified. We are now the called-out ones, the church. We have a unique and collective mission to take this good news that has washed us clean and tell others. We spread the gospel as we go through life and pray that the seeds we plant take root and more and more people can say they once were those things, but now they are washed in the blood of the lamb.

And finally, we have been justified. This is a legal term, and for the believer, it means that we have been declared righteous. Someone has taken the sentence, the punishment, that was meant for me. Jesus takes that for us, he takes our punishment, and it is through his act of obedience and our faith in Jesus as our savior that we are declared right. Understand that this is not our work or doing. This is not my righteousness placed on me, but it is Christ’s placed on me. The gospel washes me clean of sin, it sanctifies me, and it justifies you.

A life that follows Christ is not one that is marked by a life controlled still by sin. As we follow Jesus we are called to a life marked by holiness. This simply means that we are striving to be more and more like Jesus, not through our own power but through the work of the Holy Spirit in us. This holiness is a work of God, a byproduct of the Gospel, and it marks our new life in Christ. This is why Paul is so adamant about not allowing sin into the body, it is contrary to the work of the Gospel. We are no longer to be ruled by sin, but by the Holy Spirit as we are shaped and molded into Christians, literally meaning ‘little Christ’s’.

Holiness is not something to be received in a meeting; it is a life to be lived and to be lived in detail.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Welsh Preacher and Writer)

Why is sin serious? It was enough to send our savior to the cross! And when sin is left alone, it is left to grow.

This morning, we can rejoice that many of us here can loudly declare verse 11, “we once were those things, but now we are washed by Jesus.” What a reason to celebrate and what a testimony we can declare to the world around us. But maybe today you are looking at these verses, and you know that you have not given your heart to Jesus. You can see you are still controlled and dominated by these sins. This morning, I invite you to take the step of faith and follow Jesus. Repent and believe that He is your savior. Turn from your sin and turn to Jesus.