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NOTES for Co1 5:1-13

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1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.
2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.
3 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,
4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
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Confirming his concerns about the spiritual condition of the Corinthian church, Paul mentions an unnamed brother among the Christians there who, while sinning very seriously, apparently repents of nothing and has no intention of changing anything in his life (vv. 1, 9–11). The apostle treats this as a problem for the whole church. He believes that in such circumstances the Corinthian Christians should mourn rather than boast (vv. 2, 6). He cannot understand why they calmly watch what is happening without taking any action (vv. 3–5). The Corinthian church was evidently quite large, and it is possible that amid its many activities the spiritual problems and sins of particular individuals receded into the background, probably obscured by a busy life within and around the church. This life may well have involved many necessary and useful undertakings.

For Paul, however, these clearly do not in any way outweigh the sin that so outrages him in his letter to the Corinthian Christians. Speaking of it, he recalls leaven, small in quantity but decisive for the quality of the dough, repeating words the Savior spoke more than once during His earthly ministry (vv. 6–8). Of course, if the Church were merely a human organization, something like a religious brotherhood founded to promote a new religious teaching, one member's sin would not invalidate all the activity that presumably characterized the Corinthian church. In that case, one could always answer the apostle's indignation by citing 'great achievements' against a background of 'isolated shortcomings.'

Such an answer would be neither deception nor a distortion of the facts: in our world, not yet transfigured, everyone has shortcomings, and any organization has to be judged by which predominates in its work—successes or failures. But that is precisely the point: for Paul, the Church is not an organization of promoters of a new religion, but a community of people living in the Kingdom. By definition, such a community cannot contain deliberate sinners who sin without repenting of anything. Otherwise, not only the sinner but also those who cover up the sin and become accomplices in it will have to forget about the Kingdom. Once again Paul reminds the Christians of Corinth of the Church's central task: to be the keeper and witness of the Kingdom in our world, which is being transfigured but has not yet been transfigured completely.

Other notes

 
For Co1 5:1-13
1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.
2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.
3 For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed,
4 In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,
5 To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
6 Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?
7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:
8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
9 I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators:
10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
Hide
In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul mentions very serious sins committed by some of its members. At the same time, the apostle considers it necessary to "deliver the one who has done such a thing to Satan." Such a proposal can sound strange, but only at first glance...  Read more

In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul mentions very serious sins committed by some of its members. At the same time, the apostle considers it necessary to "deliver the one who has done such a thing to Satan." Such a proposal can sound strange, but only at first glance. If one sees the Church as Paul sees it, everything falls into place. For the apostle, the Church is not an organization and not even a religious community, but the body of Christ.

It is above all a spiritual reality, the manifestation of the Kingdom on earth, in our world, which is being transformed but has not yet been transformed to the end. And if a person is deprived of fellowship with the Church, if he is separated from the Kingdom, the consequences for him can be most serious: he has already shared in the life of the Kingdom, and rejecting it means spiritual death for him. Of course, one could say that many people know nothing at all about the Kingdom and live the life of this world without experiencing, as it appears, any special inconvenience. But these people have never known anything except that imitation of life in this world which they mistakenly consider real life.

Their souls and bodies have adapted to such a half-alive existence and function somehow in the corresponding mode, not allowing their owners to die completely. But if someone manages to live differently, then he is still living not only by the life of this world, but also in part by the life of the Kingdom, catching its breath. Now that it has drawn near, according to the Savior's word, it has become much easier to feel and catch this breath than it was before, before Christ's coming.

But for a person who has already tasted the full life of the Kingdom as part of the body of Christ, falling back means an almost inevitable spiritual, and even not only spiritual, catastrophe. Yet in the case of deliberate sin it is impossible to act otherwise. One thing is sin over which the sinner grieves and of which he repents, understanding that he has done something incompatible with his Christian life: here forgiveness and a return to the former state are possible. In the end, God wants the sinner's salvation, not his destruction.

But to save means first of all to deliver a person from everything that prevents him from living the life of the Kingdom, and therefore first of all from sin. If a person does not want to be delivered from anything, considering his sin the norm, then the Kingdom is closed to him. Not because God does not love him, but because he himself loves his sin more than himself, at least more than his true self, created in the image and likeness of God. And here nothing more can be done: a person is free and chooses for himself what is dearer to him. And he bears all the consequences of his choice.

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For Co1 5:1-2
1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife.
2 And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.
Hide
For Paul, this is essentially a cry from the heart. To the surrounding world, what the apostle writes about may not be very respectable, but it is still part of the normal order of things. Yet the Church belongs to Heaven; it is...  Read more

For Paul, this is essentially a cry from the heart. To the surrounding world, what the apostle writes about may not be very respectable, but it is still part of the normal order of things. Yet the Church belongs to Heaven; it is an enclave of the heavenly Kingdom surrounded by the kingdoms of this world. That is why he writes with such sorrow that it is impossible to be a member of the Church without observing the moral standards of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christians are always tempted to follow the much more permissive moral ideas of their own age—whether the first century or the twenty-first—and to feel ‘righteous enough’. Thus, people today say, ‘I am not a sinner, because I do not do anything particularly bad; I live like everyone else.’

So the apostle writes that, in the Church, this ‘like everyone else’ is not worth a penny. The standards here are different.

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