1 Corinthians 5

Recently, I have been teaching Kylie how to ride a bike with no training wheels. She likes learning how to ride a bike so it does not matter how hot it is outside or what the weather is like she is constantly asking me dad can we work on riding the bike again. Dad can we work on riding a bike again. She begs me to work with her on riding a bike.

In teaching to ride a bike, what if I never told her anything she done wrong? What if I only told her to do right. The other day she had the peddle and her foot was pushing down on it to apply the brake. She was trying to move forward but the brake was applied. I had to tell her that she had to take her foot off the brake and move the peddle around.

Most everyone is familiar with riding a bike so there are times in this teaching process that you have to show a child what they are doing wrong. It can be positive to point out the negative.

In Paul addresses the negative.

1 Corinthians 5 HCSB

1 It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles —a man is living with his father’s wife. 2 And you are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief so that he who has committed this act might be removed from your congregation. 3 For though I am absent in body but present in spirit, I have already decided about the one who has done this thing as though I were present. 4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus with my spirit and with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord. 6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch. You are indeed unleavened, for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast or with the yeast of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. 11 But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13 But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves.

Pray

I am confident that it takes an immense amount of love to help people understand sin in a Christ like manner.

Paul has addressed them in a loving tone and called them brothers and children in the previous chapter

1 Corinthians 4:14 HCSB

14 I’m not writing this to shame you, but to warn you as my dear children.

1 Corinthians 4:21 HCSB

21 What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness?

So Paul continues to address them in a spirit of love and gentleness.

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 5:1 HCSB

1 It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles —a man is living with his father’s wife.

So this guy is sleeping with his step mother. If it was his mother then Paul would have said so.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 1. The Fact (5:1–2)

But whether it means that the offender had seduced his step-mother, or that the woman was divorced from his father, or that the father had died, leaving her a widow, is not clear.

This sin that is happening Paul says is not even tolerated among the pagans or Gentiles.

This is a sin because God says it is a sin in His word. How do we know what sin is? We find it in the Word of God and if scripture calls it sin then it is sin.

Leviticus 18:8 HCSB

8 You are not to have sex with your father’s wife; it will shame your father.

Deuteronomy 22:30 HCSB

30 “A man is not to marry his father’s wife; he must not violate his father’s marriage bed.

Notice he says the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles.

Scripture lays out other kinds of Sexual Immorality and a quick search of scripture brought out some of these and as Paul writes to the church at Corinth I thought it would be helpful for us this morning to understand other types of sexual immorality.

Incest: ,

Adultery: Vince spoke about this sin last week , ,

Prostitution: , ,

Fornication: , Samual 2:22

Homosexuality: ,

So we know it is sin because the word of God says it is sin. This sin that is being dealt with here in 1 Corinthians is not a sin because not even the pagans or Gentiles will put up with it but it is a sin because the Word of God says it is sin.

Paul address the negative.

1 Corinthians 5:2 HCSB

2 And you are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief so that he who has committed this act might be removed from your congregation.

1 Corinthians 5:

He addresses the attitude of the church. He says they are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief.

Pride gives us the ability to believe the ways are men are better than the ways of God. What we think is right is better than what God’s Word says is right. Pride causes us to think we know better than God.

You are inflated with pride, instead of filled with grief.

1 Corinthians 5:3–5 HCSB

3 For though I am absent in body but present in spirit, I have already decided about the one who has done this thing as though I were present. 4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus with my spirit and with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 turn that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.

1 Corinthians 5:

Turn over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 2. The Punishment of the Offender (5:3–5)

To be expelled from the church accordingly is to be delivered over into that region where Satan holds sway. It is a very forcible expression for the loss of all Christian privileges.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 2. The Punishment of the Offender (5:3–5)

One sees ‘the flesh’ as the lower part of man’s nature, and takes the passage to mean the destruction of the sinful lusts (so NIV, that the sinful nature may be destroyed; cf. Redpath, he ‘is to be given over to Satan until that principle of yieldedness to the flesh is ended’)

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 2. The Punishment of the Offender (5:3–5)

The other view is that ‘the flesh’ is to be understood as physical, the reference being to sickness and even death. The difficulty is in seeing how this could be effected by excommunication. But Paul speaks of physical consequences of spiritual failings (11:30)

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 2. The Punishment of the Offender (5:3–5)

Paul sees the punishment as remedial: though the flesh be destroyed it is so that his spirit may be saved. That this means saved in the fullest sense is made clear by the addition, on the day of the Lord. At the final day of judgment he expects to see the disciplined offender among the Lord’s people.

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 HCSB

6 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch. You are indeed unleavened, for Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast or with the yeast of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians

This church had allowed the influence to the outside world to infiltrate the church and they did more than deal with the situation at hand. They would boast about the sin that was present among them and in the same way Paul tells them to address the sin in their life of boasting.

Paul uses an illustration from the kitchen. He says a little yeast permeates the whole batch of dough.

Clean out the old yeast so that you might be a new batch.

You are a new batch

Go back to me teaching Kylie to ride her bike. She is accustom to riding with training wheels. You ever try to ride a bike with training wheels lately. If the bike leans sometimes it is easier to ride it with leaning into one wheel or the other.

In order to ride without training wheels you have to do things differently. In the same way when you come to the Gospel you have to do things differently.

Paul says you can’t have sexual immorality and you can’t have pride about the sexual immorality. You have to get rid of the old yeast.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 3. Exhortation to Clean out All Evil (5:6–8)

Christ is for believers what the passover was for the Jews.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 3. Exhortation to Clean out All Evil (5:6–8)

Ancient Israel was commanded to remove all yeast before the sacrifice (Exod. 12:15; 13:7), and in Paul’s day a feature of passover observance was a solemn search for and destruction of all yeast before the feast began. This had to be done before the pascha, the kid or lamb, was offered in the temple. Paul points out that Christ, our Passover has already been sacrificed. It is time and more than time that all yeast (i.e. all evil) was put away.

v.8 The Christian life is a continual Festival

1 Corinthians 5:9–13 HCSB

9 I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. 10 I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters; otherwise you would have to leave the world. 11 But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a believer who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such a person. 12 For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? 13 But God judges outsiders. Put away the evil person from among yourselves.

1 Corinthians 5:9-

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 4. A Misunderstanding Cleared up (5:9–13)

The verb to associate with (synanamignysthai) is an expressive double compound, used outside this passage only once in the New Testament (2 Thess. 3:14; see note in TNTC). It means ‘to mix up yourself with’; Paul has forbidden them to have familiar intercourse with sexual offenders.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 4. A Misunderstanding Cleared up (5:9–13)

His point had been that they must not maintain intimate fellowship (the same picturesque word as in v. 9) with anyone who calls himself a brother, but denies his profession by the way he lives. He is not really a brother, but ‘a fornicator’ or the like.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 4. A Misunderstanding Cleared up (5:9–13)

Believers are to have no intimate intercourse with people who continue in such practices. Do not even eat will refer primarily to ordinary meals (cf. 2 John 10), not to Holy Communion, though that, too, would be forbidden.

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary 4. A Misunderstanding Cleared up (5:9–13)

But Paul’s main point, that the church must not tolerate the presence of evil in its midst, is clearly permanently relevant.