1Cor 5:9-13 - Scrubbing the Mission

9-13 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."



Here’s a very interesting nuance. The first epistle to the Corinthians is not really the first. Paul had written to them before in a letter that the Holy Spirit has not preserved for us. Perhaps it was not preserved because it was ambivalent or unclear. It seems that Paul had decried immorality to them in earlier correspondence. Hardly surprising, since they lived in perhaps the most immoral city in the entire empire. Many of these people had participated in the pagan temple worship involving temple prostitutes.

But how easy it is for the focus of our feeble minds to get into the wrong place. They hear the earlier commandment to be separated from immoral persons but not to separate themselves from immorality. They are seeing externals and missing the objective of the commands. It’s easy to slip into that frame of mind that sees the world as corrupt, to view "them" as immoral and to raise ourselves up as if we did not come from the same lump.

Worse still, some went even further by abusing grace; they believed that the saved could live as they pleased because once they were "in" it was a fait accompli and they could indulge themselves because all their sins had been forgiven already.

See how narrow the way is? See why the bread must be unleavened? See how wickedly our hearts deceive us? But don’t we have new hearts? Indeed, if we show the fruit of our regeneration we can believe that. But if we persist in wickedness we shall find there is no spark of true life within us, and never was. But by then we may not care.

The narrow way (note that not only the gate but also the way is narrow) - the narrow way steers between the shoals of pride and the rocks of asceticism - between self glory and carnal self abasement. The true Christian will not glory in his accomplishments, for he knows he has none. Neither does he need to keep putting himself down, for he already knows he is nothing and can do nothing apart from Christ.

It is by abiding in these things - this death - that Christians can be in the world but not of it. Some walk so close with the world that they indulge in its corruptions. Some are so removed that they are of no use in the world. We are constantly in danger of shifting to one side or the other of this divide. Christ is the balance.

The fact that the Corinthians are tolerating a person in their very midst who is living in gross immorality shows that they have not grasped the teaching on immorality at all. Whether they are Pharisees or free grace abusers they have apparently missed the concept of the purity of the church - meaning of the whole body - through the purity of each person making up the body. In other words, the purity of the church is a both community responsibility and an individual duty. Individual impurity affects the whole body.

The church must be pure in a world that is not. The light must shine in the darkness. The difference must be apparent. If the church looks, for all intents and purposes, just like the world then it has lost its witness. The salt has lost its savour and is good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under foot. But the church must be in the world for this difference to be apparent at all - and it must be in the world both corporately and individually. Sinners cannot be saved except the means is brought to them where they are.

But it is of little value to take the world to worldlings. If we take our identical divorce rate as a professing church to the world and profess the sanctity of marriage we are fools. It is the blind leading the blind. We shall be rightly called hypocrites. But you say that you have never divorced. You have loved your spouse through thick and thin. Then you shall have your reward. But have you tolerated divorce in the church? Have you winked at it for reasons of incompatibility, trumped up mental abuse or other things, trivial or not? Have you encouraged or ignored the marriage of believers to unbelievers? All these things are not causes, but symptoms of the loss of the doctrine of the purity of the church, and they bear their own fruit (thorns instead of figs) in the world.

So we don’t avoid people who are sinners - even those who are outwardly gross sinners. We don’t get drawn into their corruption, but we must witness to them and to do so we must associate with them. Just so long as it is light in us shining in darkness in them.

But when it comes to the church there cannot be dark shining in the lightness, so to speak. Inside the church of professing believers the objective is that light alone be seen. Darkness has not overcome the Light of the World, nor can it - but we can allow that light in and among us to be dimmed and thereby to bring darkness where light once shone. A wet log will quench the fire rather than stoke it.

Church discipline is largely a forgotten commandment. The doors of the church are thrown open so widely in the name of false love that the world floods in through the opening, and the church becomes the world. In the name of false love we make salvation a wide gate and, because in doing so we mistakenly make worldlings our “brothers” in Christ, we are then compelled to teach a broad way in order to maintain the associations we ourselves have created. The world loves us when it ought to hate us for Christ’s sake. Don’t misunderstand me - we do not desire nor do we invite the hatred of the world, but when we are loved by the world you can be absolutely certain that we ourselves are worldly without even knowing it.

How interestingly Paul puts it. We have nothing to do with judging outsiders - meaning unbelievers. But we most emphatically are to judge insiders - meaning those who make a profession of faith. We must be careful with the word "judge" here. It is not the final judgment that is spoken of. It is not the weighing of the heart and the condemnation or justification of the person. God alone can do that.

Outsiders make no profession of relying upon God for justification or for righteousness (imputed and experiential), so we can have nothing to do with their relationship to the body of Christ of which we are a part. They have no part and they claim none. They are outside of Christ and under the condemnation of God, where His wrath is already being revealed from heaven upon their unrighteousness, by which they suppress what truth can be known about God from nature and conscience.

But insiders profess to know Christ. They profess to having received Him Who is the justifier of those that believe, and the transformer of their lives. Is there evidence of those facts? Is there progress in experiential holiness? That is the sign of the transforming presence and work of the Lord Jesus Christ through the Spirit. Sometimes the signs are faint, but the Lord sanctifies those whom He justifies. And those who belong to him strive for holiness, without which no one will see Him. {Heb 12:14} His presence in them moves their will to run after Him.

Holiness is the forgotten attribute of God. It has been subsumed in a sentimental love. But Paul commands believers to purge not just evil itself, but evil people from among the flock. The Greek word poneron used here is precisely the same word used in the Lord’s prayer to describe evil, or the evil one. It is the word commonly used for a wicked or evil person. Yet how are we to know who is evil or wicked unless we make a judgment? Again, we do not judge the heart itself, but the fruit of the heart, according to the profession made by the person himself, who is claiming to have fellowship in Christ.

James has something of the same flavour when he says, "Show me your faith apart from works and I will show you my faith by my works." {Jas 2:18} Or John the Baptist telling the Pharisees to "bear fruit in keeping with repentance." {Mt 3:8} Jesus Himself speaks of various fruits and trees producing only after their kind, and how "grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles." {Mt 7:16} All of these make obvious comparisons between profession and actual fruit - implying that where no fruit (or wrong fruit) is found the underlying problem is serious indeed.

Paul commands the Corinthians to act upon the evil fruit in their midst, and he reproves them for not having already done so. We who shall one day judge angels must discern and discipline within the body of Christ.