Again, let’s turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5 in your Pew Bible. It’s page 1,213. Thank you. See, Paul’s about to shift his focus from talking about all the ways that the Church of Corinth was dividing themselves up, now he’s going to turn to some of the ways the Church of Corinth was defiling themselves. He’s going to help them redirect their focus in terms of the purity of the Church. And I thought it’s interesting how, as you anticipate a new pastor coming into your church, we’re going to see in these next few chapters what responsibilities you still very much have. and how they can’t be hired out regardless of the leaders that we have or don’t have in the life of a church. The members of the church themselves have biblical callings and responsibilities to help the leaders uphold the integrity of their own churches. That’s what we’ll see beginning in chapter 5. I’ll read all of chapter 5 for our reading this evening. 1 Corinthians chapter 5, I’ll start in verse 1. This has gone to work. Paul writes, 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. And you are arrogant.
Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who has done such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, 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. Your boasting is not good.
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedies and swindlers or idolaters, since then you need to go out of the world. 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, or vile, or drunkard, or swindler. Not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outsiders. Herbs, the evil person. from among you.
This is God’s Word. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, help us now as we consider your Word to pause, to quiet our hearts, to see in what way this passage of Scripture might reshape our lives today and help our church be purified evermore and upheld in the integrity and sincerity and truth that you call us to. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen. Well, I’m not premeditating any of these passages. I’m just taking the next one from the one I left off in 1 Corinthians months ago and will continue to talk about it as long as the Lord has me here. In 1 Corinthians 5, we have the situation about what do you do?
What do you do? when the star player on your team happens to be the biggest jerk? What do you do when the friend who has got the most influence in the group is the most insensitive to everyone else’s speeches? What do you do when a family member who’s done something terrible suddenly shows up at the family picnic? What do you do when an arrogant man happens to be a prominent leader in your church?
Despite all the hopeful expectations that we might have for what life in the church is gonna be like, it’s sometimes shocking to find out how messy it actually can be sometimes. And when no one’s doing anything about it, it’s pretty awkward. This is the context for our passage this evening, 1 Corinthians 5. Yes, the members of the church in Corinth did live in a time when, in a culture that was very sexually immoral, but what was happening in this case in Corinth was something that even the pagan world avoided because of how wrong it was. And when the Apostle Paul heard about what was happening, he was shocked and he was disturbed. But did you notice where he aimed his shock? Why was Paul so upset? Did you notice?
It wasn’t the fact that there was a man who was living in open, gross, sexual immorality, but the fact that everyone in the church knew about it, and no one was doing anything about it. And because no one was doing anything about it, it was creating that awkward feeling of, Being on the team when the star player is the biggest jerk.
Or eating with your friends at lunch when the one with the most influence is the most insensitive to everyone else’s feelings. Or when a family member who’s done something terrible suddenly shows up unexpectedly at a family picnic. Or when an arrogant man happens to be the prominent leader in the church. It’s bad enough when someone is arrogant and living in open immorality. It’s even worse when nobody is doing anything about it. How can you enjoy life with other people when there’s this big, awkward cloud hanging over the room and acting like everything’s fine? You can’t.
Well, imagine feeling that way every time you came to church. The Bible describes Christians gathering together for worship and fellowship like a family gathering together for a meal. And in fact, we can take this picture literally at times because one of the main things that we do when we gather together in worship is partake of the Lord’s supper. It’s a meal that signifies our fellowship with Jesus and with one another. And this meal, as Jesus said, also makes us look ahead and long for a life with Him in glory forever. It’s described in the book of Revelation as a great marriage feast of the Lamb, a feast that was described in the book of Isaiah that we read.
But how can you enjoy that? How can you enjoy the fellowship in your church when there’s this big, awkward, dark cloud over the whole room, and everyone’s trying to act like everything’s fine, The fact is you cannot. So this is what Paul is getting at with his big idea, his big idea in verse eight. He says, folks, let’s observe this feast with sincerity and truth. Let’s be real. Let’s be sincere and truthful in what we’re doing.
If we go on and try to pretend like everything’s fine, everybody suffers. The person who’s caught in sin suffers as well as everyone else in the church who’s being harmed by their example and unable to enjoy worship. Everybody suffers. But when we take responsibility and pursue restoration, everybody benefits. The person who’s caught in sin has a chance to be restored. And everyone else who’s been dealing with this awkward feeling and cloud over the room can now breathe a breath of fresh air.
Everybody benefits when the truth takes this responsibility. And there’s two steps that Paul gives toward enjoying the Feast of Fellowship. How can we enjoy the Feast of Fellowship? Here’s two steps. First, he writes about taking responsibility. Second, pursue restoration. Take responsibility. Pursue restoration.
See, the question is not if sin will ever pop up in the church. That’s not a question. That’s a silly question. The question is, when it does, will you do the right thing as a church? That’s the question. Will we do the right thing as a church family when it does? If we’re gonna be able to enjoy fellowship and worship among our church, the way we mentioned, we need to be sincere and truthful about the way we address sin that pops up in our church. So to the first step about regarding enjoying this feast of fellowship, take responsibility. Paul’s specific instruction begins in verse two. He writes, be filled with grief. We’re having so arrogantly overlooked this issue. He says, be filled with grief and remove that person from your congregation. Now this might seem, strange or even harsh.
But every group of people, every community and organization, they do this. A company will address an employee that is violating their policies. A brand will penalize one of its celebrities that’s misrepresenting them. A family will confront a family member who’s taking advantage of everyone else. Every kind of community does this to uphold the integrity of its group.
They will confront behavior that is inappropriate when it’s found among their group. A term we use for this in the church is church discipline. Church discipline is the process of confronting sin that pops up in a church. It may start out as simply one friend holding another in their church accountable for a simple action or attitude that they’ve been noticing in their life.
You take them aside one-on-one. If that person refuses to listen then It may grow to a smaller group of people privately addressing this person, as Jesus himself instructed in Matthew 18. So I love it when someone in my church might come tattle on somebody else, and I’ll ask them, did you go to that person? You gotta do your job first, and I’ll do mine later, if we need to. But if a person refuses to change, and continues to act out in inappropriate and perhaps even harmful ways, then they’re ultimately removed from the community. In a company, the employee is fired. In a brand, a celebrity, loses their sponsorship.
In a family, the family member might be kicked out of the house and cut off from support. And the term that we use for this in the church is called excommunication. Excommunication is that final step in the process of church discipline where a person is removed from church membership for refusing to change sinful behavior. So now they may no longer, as being excommunicated apart from the church membership, they may no longer receive pastoral care, Participate in members’ meetings, they no longer take the Lord’s Supper, things like that.
But notice who’s actually responsible to do this. Who’s responsible? Paul says in verse three, define. He says, I’m with you in spirit, and I’ve already pronounced my own judgment on the one who’s doing this thing, yet when you are assembled in the name of the Lord, and I am with you in spirit for the power of the Lord Jesus, you are the ones who must hand that one over to Satan. In other words, they put him out of the church, and he says in verse 7, clean out the old Lebanon, and he concludes in verse 12, remove the evil person from among you.
Isn’t that amazing? The apostle Paul knew what he would do if he were there, but he says, it’s not my job. It’s yours. Neither does Paul write to a pope figure of some kind, or an archbishop, or a presbyter. of the Antiochus about their job. He writes to the church.
This is your responsibility. The members of the church together, this is something they must do because they are the ones responsible. So if you’re a member of this church, you realize what level of responsibility you have. But did you think that when you saw some obvious display of sin, you could just ignore it and leave it for somebody else to handle? No, the church is like a spiritual neighborhood watch community where every member steps up and takes responsibility to make sure the community is safe. Everyone does their part, and together we uphold the integrity of the church.
I mean, even think about the churches of Galatia. When there was false teaching, you’d think that elders would be the ones correcting, but no. you with more authority than this? Is there any greater cost for you to serve than the purity and integrity of your church family? Absolutely not. And is there any more wonderful result than when someone is brought back to experience a renewed worship and fellowship with church family?
Yet some churches might go to the opposite extreme when it comes to church discipline. Rather than ignoring church discipline, they go to the opposite extreme and get trigger happy with this responsibility and actually start abusing their authority on the other end by judging people who are either not part of their church or shaming people who are in their church that are sincerely trying to grow and change but keep stumbling. So Paul provides two boundaries that help us keep us on line when it comes to church discipline, two boundaries for this responsibility of ours. He defines the who and the what of church discipline, the who and the what of church discipline. So first, the who. Who are we actually responsible for as a church family?
Well, when you’re at the grocery store, you sometimes hear young children acting completely bonkers. Rolling on the floor, yelling out across the store, opening a package of snacks and digging in. And everyone seeing this, they’re all wondering, who’s kid is that?
Not my kid. That’s the only thing I need to know. Not mine. I’m not responsible for that child, much less do I have authority over that child. This is somewhat of Paul’s idea in verses 9 to 12, at the end of the passage. He says, I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, and he clarifies, I did not mean the immoral people of this world. Otherwise, you’d have to leave this world. But actually, verse 11, I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister. And it’s sexually immoral, or greedy, or an indulgent, or verbally abusive, or drunkard, or swindler.
So who are we responsible for? Insiders, not outsiders. Insiders, not outsiders. When Paul is talking about not associating with people who live in hope and unrepentant sin, we might assume that he’s talking about, you know, all those bad people out there in the world. But no. We might form a holy huddle and stop interacting with those outside of the church. But that’s not what he’s saying. Paul’s actually saying the exact opposite. He’s saying, what business of mine to judge those outsiders? Aren’t you supposed to judge those who are inside? God won’t judge outsiders.
And since I’ve been a pastor just a few years, non-Christian people, unbelievers who have met me out and about and found out I was a pastor, You might be surprised, they asked me, multiple people asked me if they were allowed to come to church. Am I allowed to come to your church? Could I do that? I was like, yes, of course you’re allowed to come to church. We don’t check IDs at the door. We’d love to have you. Why would they think that? No question to ask.
Every human being has a right to hear the gospel because they’re an image bearer of God. And since the church is the only organization that has been given the responsibility to proclaim the gospel, it would seem to me that every human being has a right to attend a public worship service. Of course, I told somebody recently, I qualified that. As long as you’re able to peaceably assemble among a group of people, anyone is allowed to come to church.
In this passage, Paul mentions if you’re not a believer, You do have a judge, and I can tell some of that. You do have a judge, it’s just not me. It’s God, as Paul writes. You’re not under the jurisdiction of our church. The responsibility of church discipline is not for the outside world. It’s for unbelievers. It’s not for unbelievers who attend your church. It’s not even for Christians who attend your church, but aren’t members of your church yet. We’re responsible for insiders, not outsiders, meaning the members of our church.
And yes, at our church, I’m sure you do too, we do have a list. We do keep track of who our members are and aren’t. Because we’re responsible for caring for each other. We want to make sure we do that. That’s who we’re responsible for. Now second, what are we responsible for? Comes to church discipline. What are we responsible for? What kinds of sins should we be concerned about? Well, I’ve heard that some celebrities request strange things when they’re preparing for a show. So they’ll be in the green room, relaxing before they go on stage.
And they’ll request strange things like, I want a bowl of M&M’s, but I don’t want any of the green ones. And so an intern or staff member will dump a bowl of M&M’s for them, and they’ll start picking out all the green ones and have it the way they like.
Now, unfortunately, this describes the self-righteousness of some churches. We’re not OK with the green sins. Who are OK with the blue ones? We’ll let the red ones slide. The particular case here in Corinth is about sexual immorality. That’s the excuse for this section of the letter. And I think it’s fair to say that it’s easy to be wrapped up and concerned about sexual sin in a church.
But the fact is, according to our passage, the Apostle Paul is not calling them to be concerned with special kinds of sins at all, as opposed to ordinary, more common sin. He’s calling the church to be concerned with, he’s not calling the church to be concerned with just particularly offensive sin, as opposed to sins that we might find more respectable, if you will. This is what he says, look back at verse 11. I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister, and is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or verbally abusive, or a drunkard, or a swindler. He probably could have gone over. You see, it’s much broader than sexual sin that we need to be concerned about. The core issue is not actually about sexual sin at all, or any special sin for that matter.
The issue is unrepentant sin. What are we responsible for? Unrepentant sin. Any sin that a person is refusing to change. So, for example, a person could be completely sexually pure with their life, and how they’re treating their bodies, they’re glorifying God with their body in every way, and yet be a greedy person. addicted to something, being a shady business person.
And that’s a problem that the church is called to address as much as any other kind of sin. It’s unrepentant sin that’s the problem here. And this is one reason some people maybe are wondering whether or not they’re allowed to come to church or they despise church altogether. They went to a church that only cared about special sins, you know, like the agreement ones. They decided were unacceptable, but they let other sins go, particularly the sins that they themselves called open their own hearts, like pride or greed. And this is wrong.
The issue in 1 Corinthians is not about special sins, but unrepentant sin. No matter what kind of sin it may be, no matter how big or how small, no matter how public or how private, no matter who’s doing it, whether it’s a brand new Christian or a prominent leader in the church, And when the Church does not take up this responsibility of Church discipline the way we’ve been called to, everybody suffers. We create a legalistic, self-righteous culture that does great harm to people that are trying to learn what the Christian faith is all about. And it does great harm to the Church itself. Being distracted with other people’s special sins, we easily forget about our own.
Did you think the Church was made up of perfectly sanctified people? Did you think you needed to be sinless in order to come to church? No, not at all. A healthy church isn’t made up of perfect people, but repenting people. Do you want a healthy church? You need a repenting church. Because the Christian life is not about being sinless.
It’s about what we do when we sin. Do we hide our sin away? Or do we bring it in the light before God? We are called to be a repenting people who confess when we stumbled into sin. and continue to pursue progress with God’s help, with the encouragement of our church family. That’s what we need to do. We need to take responsibility. Now, second, how do we do this? What does this look like?
Paul describes pursuing restoration. Pursue restoration. As counterintuitive as it might seem, when we do take up our responsibility as a church and pursue church discipline the right way, everybody benefits. That’s because We don’t pronounce condemnation, but we pursue restoration. That’s what he tells us. The church discipline has a redemptive purpose. Two, in fact, we find in our passage. Two redemptive purposes of church discipline. First, the salvation of the sinner, and second, the sanctification of the church. Pursue the restoration, first, of the one who’s caught in sin, because church discipline has the redemptive purpose of saving sinners.
One of my favorite novels describes a world that’s infested with orcs. Now, if you don’t know what an orc is, large, ugly, violent creatures that are meant to intimidate villagers, destroy villages as they spread out and take control so the supreme leader can rule over the whole earth. Now, in this fake world, this made-up world, there’s this open wilderness of hills. Anyone would be certainly nervous to pass through this open wilderness, unless you’d be spotted by a troop of orcs.
But if you know where to look, there’s this opening in some of the hills. There’s this little narrow path that you might notice, and it’ll take you down this exact path, winding around for miles and miles. And eventually you start to hear the trickling of water in this path, and the closer and closer you go, then you realize you start hearing singing even. And before you know it, this path opens up into a beautiful valley, with streams and trees in the elven fortress called Rivendell. It’s a safe and secret refuge from this wide-open, dangerous wilderness around it.
In verse 2, Paul instructs the church to, quote, remove that person from your congregation. But then in verse 5, he says, hand that one over to Satan. These are parallel phrases. He’s saying the same thing in two different ways. The idea is that this world and its fallen condition, apart from God’s protection, is like a realm of darkness over which Satan rules, while the Church is meant to serve as a kind of safe spiritual refuge. Scripture elsewhere refers to Satan as the ruler of the power of the air, actively working with steam. He’s an adversary who prowls around like a lion, seeking to devour someone.
But in this present darkness, there are places of refuge. There are shelters for spiritual protection. A biblically grounded and spiritually healthy church is going to care for those who are suffering under the dissolution of life in this fallen world. It’s going to feed people, refreshing food and water of God’s word. It’s going to provide the comfort of friendship and family in a world that is often isolated, lonely, and divided. A church is going to defend people from false teaching about God that would otherwise lead them astray. It’s going to provide prayerful protection for those who are suffering under spiritual attack. A biblically grounded and spiritually healthy church is a refuge for God’s people.
So when Paul writes, hand that one over to Satan, he’s saying, cast him out into the spiritual wilderness. Unprotected and vulnerable, Satan’s attacks. The next phrase he says is, quote, for the destruction of his flesh. Now Paul doesn’t mean the destruction of his body, as if he’s going to suffer some physical harm because of his sin, although he might. Rather, Paul often uses the terms flesh and spirit as a picture to describe two different lifestyles. The lifestyle of a person who lives their own way versus the lifestyle of a person who lives God’s way, by the Spirit.
So what Paul is saying here is that this one should no longer be under the Church’s protection, let him suffer under the kind of life that his stubborn sin is going to bring him, in the hopes that he will come to his senses and realize that life outside of God’s rule and blessing and protection is absolutely miserable and dangerous.
You know, sometimes being fired from your job, or kicked out of your house, or removed from the church is the only way some people are able to realize the consequences of their actions. And yet sometimes we who have this responsibility don’t have the courage to do it. But when the church overlooks sin within its own family, We give off the impression to people that sin isn’t that dangerous. We give people the idea that we can be just fine without wholeheartedly following God. People might start to assume that we can live however we want, Monday through Saturday, as long as we come in Sunday for our weekly dose of grace. Worst of all, it might give people the impression that you can live an unrepentant life of sin and still be saved in the end. But none of this is true.
Paul points out the redemptive purpose in verse 5. He says, do this so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord. Now why would that be the result? Salvation. But because as it stands right now, this man is going to be condemned. There is a day coming when the Lord will hold all people to account.
And the only way to receive God’s redeeming grace in that day is by repenting of our sin and clinging to Jesus. If we sincerely believe that sin is dangerous and the Lord is our only refuge, then we’re going to continue to live a life of ongoing repentance. Now, we won’t continue to repent ongoingly out of fear that we’ll be judged. For we have God’s promises as our assurance that we’ve been hidden in Christ and are now counted as His children. Rather, the reason that Christians will continually repent ongoing throughout their life is because we know how dangerous sin really is. But the one who stops repenting proves himself in the end to be someone who’s denying the Christian faith altogether.
Now as serious as all of this is and as sobering as it would ever be to excommunicate someone in this manner, remember the redemptive purpose that we have in church discipline. Not to make a person pay, but so that the person might be saved. Our hope is that by being outside the care of the church, an unrepentant person will come to their senses and realize that life outside of God’s rule and blessing and protection is absolutely miserable and dangerous. So the church should never carry out church discipline as a form of judgment or condemnation. For the Lord is judge and he will handle those matters as Paul says. But we did this as a last resort when nothing else has worked so that perhaps this final measure might restore this person back into the church one day and give them that true assurance. of their ultimate redemption in Jesus.
That’s the first redemptive purpose of church discipline, the salvation of the sinner. But there’s a second redemptive purpose Paul mentions, which is the sanctification of the church in verse 7. What about the rest of the church? They need to be restored and protected as well. And so we also pursue the restoration of the church itself because church discipline has a redemptive purpose of sanctifying the church.
The other day, I was preparing my typical breakfast. Typical breakfast, oatmeal with honey, chia seeds, almonds, and strawberries. When I pulled out the package of strawberries, though, I noticed that there was a little mold on one of the strawberries. And I had a decision to make. Maybe it’ll be okay.
How much mold would you allow in your breakfast before you threw it out and started fresh? How much disease would you allow in your body? before you agree to see a doctor. How many cracks in a foundation would you accept before building a new house on top of it? Well, that’s how much overlooked sin we should allow in our lives and in the Church. Because overlooked sin always infects the Church, no matter what kind of sin it is and who’s doing it. It always infects the Church.
The Apostle Paul illustrates this point by talking about how even a little leaven makes a whole batch of bread rise. Leaven, such as yeast, baking soda, or baking powder, makes baked goods rise so they can have a coarse, fluffy texture. And the Israelites in the Old Covenant had a yearly tradition where they would remove all the leaven from their houses and only eat flatbread for a whole week. And the point was to remember and celebrate how the Lord had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. Their deliverance of their ancestors from Egypt was going to come so quickly that night They wouldn’t have time to use leaven and bake fluffy bread for their journey, so they needed to remove all the leaven from their house the night before, because if any leaven got into any dough, it would spread and affect everything, ruining their entire meal before it could be fully cooked.
That night, the angel of death was coming. This was the final plague the Lord sent over Egypt. The angel of death was going to pass through the Israelite neighborhoods as well, not just the Egyptian neighborhoods. So in order to be saved from the angel of death, you needed to sacrifice the firstborn lamb and sprinkle its blood over the doorframe of your house and hide inside that house. The angel would pass over every house that had blood sprinkled on it, and that night the Israelites ate their final meal before their deliverance, a meal of unleavened bread. Now God’s people would continue to celebrate this meal for over a thousand years until the time of Jesus.
But after Jesus’ crucifixion, the Apostles taught, Jesus was the true Passover Lord, as Paul mentions here in 1 Corinthians 5. Everyone who hides by faith in Jesus is covered by His sacrifice on the cross, and they’re spared from the judgment of God that we all deserve.
In another sense, Jesus cleanses our sin, the way the Israelites cleaned out the leaven from their houses, so that none of them were ever to be affected by it. This was the problem. The church in Corinth had the idea that they could allow some leaven to remain in their house without it spreading and making all their bread rise. They thought, if one person is living in sin, why does it matter so long as everybody else is pure? We’re a healthy church. We won’t be led astray or affected by Corinthian sin.
But will a tiny speck of mold stay put and leave a whole batch of strawberries unaffected? Will a small cluster of cancer cells Will it crack in a foundation, hold together, and secure a new building project on top? Proverbs 10, verse 17 says, whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life, but whoever rejects reproof leads others astray. So let’s not fool ourselves.
If we allow unrepentant sin to remain among us, we’ll be affected by it sooner or later. But when we take up this responsibility and pursue restoration, everybody benefits. The church included. For example, church members. We ourselves are gonna be reminded about the seriousness of sin and warned away from sin that might have taken us captive in a similar way down the line. And if anyone is suffering because of that person who’s in sin, they can now feel safe again coming to a church that’s guarding its members. Everybody. is affected by this. And everybody can benefit when a church does this, according to scripture. The right way to pursue restoration. Life in a fallen world is often messy. Unfortunately, life in a church can be as messy, too.
But Jesus has come to cleanse his people together with all creation. And when he comes again to make all things new, life will be like an eternal feast of fellowship with him and with one another. Yet even now, while we wait, Jesus gives us that taste of peace. His Spirit, who dwells with us, gives us a sample of that coming feast as we gather for worship and fellowship within our church family. So, despite the fact that we still live in a fallen world and continue to battle our own sinful natures, we can enjoy the feast of worship and fellowship in our church.
With all sincerity and truth, we can enjoy this when we take up this responsibility God. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we’re grateful for your word. We’re grateful that you have the courage to tell us the truth and that your word brings life when we receive it. Would you guard this church by your word? Would you help them enjoy the benefits of having the courage to do the right thing when something pops up in their own lives, but also within their own church? Guard us, God, by your spirit through your word, so that we might enjoy the purity of your church and get a taste of the heavenly peace we’ll have with you one day. In Jesus’ name, we thank you for hearing us.