Sexual Immorality Will Defile the Church

1 Corinthians 5:1-13

English Standard Version (ESV)

Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church

5 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 younot rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

³ For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. ⁴ 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.^[a]
6  Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? ⁷ 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. ⁸ 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.
⁹ 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^[b] whom you are to judge? ¹³ God judges^[c] those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

1 Corinthian 5 presents us with a letter written by The Apostle Paul to the church in Corinth. He tells us that there has been great sexual immorality going on within the church that is not being dealt with. In the second half of verse 1 he says, "... sexual immorality is among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife." In the church, some man was having continual sexual relations with his father's wife, who would be his step-mother. In order to understand the extreme taboo factor of this, this was even immoral in the non-Jewish community. Sleeping with your father's wife was wrong in all cultures at this time.

So in this letter, Paul is outraged that this is happening. Not only is he furious that it is happening, but that the guilty has not been taken care of. He says that   a man who does such a sin should be cast out from the church. He goes on to say that even while he has not physically been there with them, the Holy Spirit has been among them the entire time. Paul is telling them that even though he wasn't there, they should have dealt with matter according to the Holy Spirit.

In verse 6, it says, "Your boasting is not good..." The Corinthians were proud of how they had been dealing with the situation. They had been tolerating this man and his sin because they thought they were being loving and accepting of this man. The Corinthians were easily deceived by sexual sin because it was so dominant in their culture. In their environment, sexual immorality was so regular that they did not see it as immoral at all. But in the church, Paul says no, this man's sin is not to be tolerated in the least bit.

He says that this man should be cut off from the fellowship of the church. Not only for the man to be dealt with for his sins, but for the church to not be torn apart. Since they were accepting of this man's sin, they were telling the world that this kind of perversion was ok. The church was becoming of this world by accepting sin. Paul tells them again that that is not how things are. We are to reject sin no matter how big or how small it may seem. Paul says that even as he would associate with sinful people, he would not accept their sin.