1 Corinthians - talk 4

What are you doing? This is a no-brainer! Expel the immoral brother that he may be saved on the day that the Lord returns and you may be acting properly.
Intro
The only sport I’ve ever been sent off in, is netball, and it was mixed netball at that. My illustrious playing career lasted 2 games and then we parted ways. It is fair to say that netball and I have some philosophical differences in what we think sport should be. To me it is a game of contradictions.

It’s a ball sport where you get penalized for going for the ball, at least while anyone else is within 3 feet of it. It is supposed to be a fast moving sport, which it is, except that the referee blows their whistle and halts play every 3 seconds. It is a game of contradictions it seems to me, and contradictions are just so frustrating aren’t they?


Well when it comes to Christian judgment, the apostle Paul in the book of Corinthians seems to be offering something of an apparent contradiction. Last week in Chapter 4 he says, ‘Don’t judge a brother!’, this week in chapter 5, he bemoans ‘why aren’t you judging a brother?’. It looks like a contradiction doesn’t it?

Why can’t we just have a simple rule to cover every situation, instead of this Christian wisdom stuff? Well because that simple set of rules to cover it all would make the Old Testament look brief, and would be about as exciting to read as tax law. How does that sound?

So Paul today is going to point out the issue we need to use Christian wisdom to address sin within our community, and he is going to demonstrate some principles in this particular case in Corinth that we will be able to follow.


Well if you remember that Paul finished Ch4 last week with some stern words of challenge, the rod or in a gentle spirit, you choose, and at the time it seemed a little harsh for mind, but now as we start the new chapter, it all becomes a little more clear. The Corinthians has some serious problems with morality in their Church.

1. Don’t Boast, but expel this man!
NIV 1 Corinthians 5:1
It is actually
reported that there is sexual immorality among you,
and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans:
A man has his father's wife.
2 And you are proud [arrogant]!
Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and
have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?

Paul in this section of Corinthians certainly calls a spade a spade, and he asks how can you be boasting, you need to expel this immoral brother out of your fellowship. Now it seems a little odd to us doesn’t it?
Exactly how could the Corinthians be proud of this?

[Aside] Now it is possible that people were proud because they were such “enlightened and liberal” people that they “knew” that what a person does with his body doesn’t count. But this kind of idea owes more to Greek philosophy than it does to Christianity. This kind of idea that the flesh is essential evil and needs to be disposed of, and the flesh is what my spirit needs to be set free from, this is classic Greek philosophy and is a view of life called dualism.

Christianity however, points out that although the body is riddled with sin, it is not evil, but it is broken. Christianity teaches that we don’t need the body to be destroyed, but renewed. Christ was bodily resurrected, not just a spirit or some ghost, and in the same way we will be bodily resurrected. In Christianity the spiritual and the physical go together in the one person.

‘But what kind of bodily resurrection will we have?’ you may ask, well you are going to have to hang around to later in the year when we do Chapter 15.


Getting back to the main point, it is possible that the Corinthians were boasting about this man, (seeing themselves as enlightened in allowing this kind of behaviour), but it seems more likely to me that that Paul is asking them the question, ‘how can you be arrogant towards me when you have this kind of thing going on in your midst that even the Greeks won’t do?’.

You are proud towards me, and you should be grieved and ashamed. Now why should they be grieved? Well it seems (based upon a more general sense of Paul’s views of life from his letters), that if they have a lack of awareness of the seriousness of sin, (which they quite clear do), the question is have they really grasped the gospel properly?
Have they understood the seriousness of the intense interest of a holy God?
Have they understood the seriousness of the cost that God paid to achieve their freedom, the price of his own son’s life?
Have they really understood that to call on Christ as your saviour is to call on Christ as your Lord?
Have they really understood that to call on Christ as your Lord is to be his disciple?
And to be a disciple, is to be like Paul, and follow Jesus in the way of the cross!

It’s up for grabs a bit isn’t it whether they have grasped the gospel properly, because their wrong thinking about the gospel is exhibiting itself in wrong behaviour, and well what do you make of the behaviour we are seeing in their midst?

The way of the Cross is not about sexual immorality that much is absolutely clear, (so this one brother is in some imminent danger), but more than that, what does it say about their whole fellowship that they would allow this sought of thing in their midst?
This one person’s sin has a corporate impact upon the rest, in contrast to what those great theologians the Bee Gee’s said, which was so impressively restated by Kenny Rodgers and Dolly Parton, we are in fact not ‘Islands in the Stream!’. And what we do impacts on the rest of the body of Christ.

The book of Leviticus in Chapter 18 prohibits this exact sin, so how can this kind of behaviour be good for the people of God, when the same God who clearly prohibited this kind of behaviour, is the same God who told them, ‘Be Holy for I am Holy!’.

Whatever Holy is, this kind of immorality is not it, but then neither is standing by and allowing it to go on!

Paul commands them in quite a surprising manner really, that what is holy, is to expel the immoral brother from their fellowship.

In fact he is going to say that four times in this chapter, that’s pretty emphatic isn’t it!



2. This is a No-brainer! Expel the man that he may be saved.
3 Even though I am not physically present,
I am with you in spirit.
And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this,
just as if I were present.
4 When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and
I am with you in spirit, and
the power of our Lord Jesus is present,
5 hand this man over to Satan,
so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and
[in order that] his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

Well Paul’s red hot instruction to the believers in Corinth continues and he offers possibly the most radical, and yet essential, interpretation of ‘Love your neighbour’ you are ever likely to see. Paul commands the Corinthians, ‘This is a no-brainer, Expel the immoral brother from your midst that he may be saved!’

Now lets be clear here, Paul is no right wing talk back radio shock jock here, he does not make this decision for retribution alone. But instead Paul’s goal is for repentance and then restoration.

Is their any punitive (or punishment) element to this command, well sure it is supposed to be severe wrap over the knuckles for this brother, but the goal is that this punishment would lead to his repentance, and then his repentance would lead to him being restored properly to the fellowship of the believers at Corinth.

Paul’s logic seem to be that the judgment of the fellowship, as hard as that can be, is better than this person having to face the judgment of God. This man’s eternal salvation is at stake.

But Paul’s goal is that this rectified situation would lead to all of them being just a little more like their God, who is Holy. And it seems that Based on 2 Corinthians 2:5-11, Paul’s approach works (notwithstanding the fact that some commentators insist it isn’t the same man), the same principal was employed and it has clearly worked in this real case, which you can look up later.

So as we move in to the third section of chapter 5, Paul isn’t sure we got the point, so he goes on to restate his point, and this time he backs it up with the work of Christ and an analogy of Passover bread.

3. Expel the man and act like you should because of Christ
6 Your boasting is not good.
Don't you know
that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?
7 Get rid**[cleanse thoroughly] of the old yeast
that you may be a new batch without yeast [unleavened]—
as you really are [unleavened].
For Christ, our Passover lamb,
has been sacrificed.
8 Therefore let us keep the Festival,
not with the old yeast,
the yeast of malice and wickedness,
but with bread without yeast,
the bread of sincerity and truth.

Paul’s analogy, or mixed metaphors, here is clearly pointing out that this one man’s sin is of the kind that will infect the whole congregation. This man and his sin needs to be quarantined to protect the rest of them from being struck down and bearing the guilt themselves for allowing this sin to go on in their midst.

Paul calls them to do the right thing and expel the brother (that’s the third time incase you are keeping count!) and act properly. Paul is pointing out that these sins are not just an issue of personal piety, but a matter of communal responsibility, which means communal guilt, and which means they need to be repented of communally. Communally they need to put things right.

Paul calls upon the believers in Corinth to be what Christ made them to be. Christ died to wash away your sins and to make you more than this, and currently you are acting like the base level of humanity. So the Corinthians are to repent and get rid of the wrong and to live how they as really are. ‘They are to be Holy for I am Holy!’. They are to act as they have been made, with sincerity and truth.

APPl: Well at this point in the passage Paul moves away slightly to a new topic, so it is worth us stopping for a moment and considering what does this first topic of Christian judgment mean for us today?

Firstly, the relationship between grace and discipleship. The Corinthians had forgotten the essential teaching of the gospel, that Jesus is both saviour and Lord. They have forgotten how they have been saved and just how costly the cross was God. And more than that (if you can actually say that!) they have forgotten what it means to call Jesus Lord. They have forgotten what they have been called to. They have forgotten that are called by the Lord (and indeed bought by the Lord) to follow him, and to ‘be holy’ as they have been made.

Secondly, Corporate care in a church means real relationship, how else can you love your neighbour and tell them the truth?
We live in a culture of consumer Christianity, where people shop around for what suits them and meets their needs. And the church, (to it’s shame), rather than challenge this view, has pandered to it, and reduced the expectations of commitment to church, and indeed the basics of the Christian life (just do a straw poll on personal Bible reading and see how you go!), to the least demanding and a lowest common denominator type of Christianity.

We live in an age of de-facto Church goers, you know the ones who want all the benefits but are unwilling to commit themselves to the other believers for better or worse. So Real relationship comes at a personal cost of investing in each other, and it is more than the share accommodation approach to relating we so often see today.

Paul is telling us here that Real relationship mean speaking truthfully to each other, even if that truth can be difficult to hear. But it also means being willing to hear that truth for what it is, because sometimes others can see the truth about us more objectively than we can. And this truth may be of eternal importance for the hearer. It is better to have a difficult conversation with a friend, than a difficult conversation with God.

These things can only be said and heard properly in the context of real Christian relationship, so get committed to each other!

Now a mate of mine, was once on a beach mission team, and at the beginning of the week a girl from the team piped up with great confidence and announced to a number of the team that she had been spiritually gifted for the good of the body, and in this particular case the beach mission team. Do you know what her professed spiritual gift was?

Well she said with great confidence that, ‘my particular spiritual gift, is the gift of rebuking.!
Can you believe it, rebuking! And she wasn’t kidding!
Right now 30% of you are shocked someone could be so brazen!
And the other 70% of you are just wishing you had of thought of it first!
Now Just in case, and to be clear, there is no such gift, but in contrast to this girl the Bible tells us that rebuking is the responsibility of all Christians to each other.

But when you talk about judging (or rebuking, or Church discipline, same thing by any other name), the problem is that as Christian’s, we just don’t tend to be very good at it do we?
Most times it seems that we use the passive aggressive approach, of do nothing about it for ages despite our better instincts because we really don’t want to offend, and we all know we all have our own sins to deal with. And then after the passive approach hasn’t worked, we overcompensate and try the aggressive approach and run them out of town with torches and pitch forks.

So how can we do this important aspect of real relationship and church life well?
Well a couple of thoughts.

Church discipline happens in the context of real relationship.
And Church discipline happens in regard to obvious and unrepentant sin.
But Church discipline is focused upon end goals not just moral imperatives.

What does this mean?


Well believers are called to leave their old ways of life, and if they can’t, or more to the point won’t, well we should act as a community to ensure they realize the seriousness of the situation. But this action is not solely about our communal obligation to act in the right way (the moral imperative bit), but it is clearly an action focused with the end goal (the end goal bit) that the person who is sinning may be lead to repentance. And the goal of their repentance is that they be restored to a right fellowship with their Christian brothers and sisters. And the goal of this restoration of fellowship is that they will then be certain of their salvation on the day of the Lord.
Church discipline plays with high stakes doesn’t it?

In short, we need to have the humility on both sides of the relationship to realize that it is Better to be judged by your brothers with a chance to repent, than to be judged by God when it is too late.

But just in case someone is about to start the Spanish inquisition, remember the grace we all share in common and the words of Galatians 6:1-3,
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any sin,
you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.
But Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2
Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3
For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing,
he deceives himself.

Be honest with each other in love.

4. Expel the man and Judge the Church not the Outsider
9 I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people--
10 not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral,
or the greedy [covetous] and
swindlers,
or idolaters.
In that case you would have to leave this world.
11 But now I am writing you
that you must not associate with anyone
who [if he] calls himself a brother but is
sexually immoral [fornicator] or
greedy,
an idolater
or a slanderer,
a drunkard or
a swindler.
With such a man do not even eat.
12 What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?
Are you not to judge those inside?
13 God will judge those outside.
"Expel the wicked man from among you." (Deut 17:7)

This section is pretty self explanatory really, Leave the judgment of the World to God, but as for you watch over yourself and your brother, and stay away from these things, and tell your brother to do likewise.

And in the last verse Paul slips into the argument one more time like subliminal advertising with a quote from Deuteronomy, ‘Expel the wicked man’. In case you had forgotten or had missed it.

5. Rather be Wronged, but if it comes to this, the Church should Judge the Church not an outsider!
NIV 1 Corinthians 6:1
If any of you has a dispute with another,
dare he take it before the ungodly [unjust] for judgment
instead of before the saints?
2 Do you not know
that the saints will judge the world?
And if you are to judge the world,
are you not competent to judge trivial cases?
3 Do you not know that we will judge angels?
How much more the things of this life!
4 Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters,
Appoint**(?) as judges even men of little account in the church!
5 I say this to shame you. (re: 4:14)
Is it possible that there is nobody among you
wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?
6 But instead, one brother goes to law against another—
and this in front of unbelievers!
7 The very fact that you have lawsuits among you
means you have been completely defeated already.
Why not rather be wronged?
Why not rather be cheated?
8 Instead,
you yourselves cheat
and do wrong,
and you do this to your brothers.

For the sake of time, we’ll just briefly point out in that in this section the issue is no longer the immorality of one brother, (but another impressive charge in a litany of charges that testify to the Corinthians ungodliness). Instead the problem now is the personal grievances of one brother against another, and they are taking them to a secular court. And Paul says with irony and sarcasm, why do you go to the ‘ungodly’ and expect them to tell you what is the ‘godly’ thing to do here?
It’s patently crazy.



So rather Paul instructs them, let the offence be forgiven and the offended should rather be wronged. But in stark contrast the Corinthians to their shame are not even seeking justice, they are in fact the ones cheating and doing wrong to their brothers. And this should not be!

Paul goes on to say if comes to the point of needing a determination, (which it shouldn’t) then a wise elder from the church should decide, anyone but a pagan!

And if you need more advice on this, well then read the words of Jesus in Matt 18
If you’ve done wrong, then ask for forgiveness, if they’ve done wrong then speak to them about it, don’t gossip. And if they don’t listen take a brother with you, and then if that is no good, take the elders and they need to decide whether it is time that the brother was treated as an unbeliever and excluded from the fellowship.


Conclusion:
So in Ch5 Paul has pointed out that our corporate spiritual health counts. So it seems that in our age, a mark of it’s health is our willingness to enter into real relationship with each other. Real relationships where we speak the truth to each other, real relationships where we are willing to hear the truth from each other, and we together exhibit a willingness to act in accordance with the truth of scripture, for the good of us all.

What we do as individuals affects everyone else who calls on the name of Christ, but in particular those we meet with week to week. So Ch5 is a call to us to leave behind the things of the old life and follow Jesus faithfully, that we all may be saved on the day of the Lord’s return.