June 19 Click on verses for Full Scripture

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Today's Pathway: I Corinthians 5:1-5 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. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. 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, In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, 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.

Through the first four chapters Paul has been dealing primarily with the divisions that were occurring in the Corinthian church. These had been caused by the worldly thinking of the members there. Now Paul begins to deal with physical sins that were taking place in the church. The first is that there was a man in the congregation who was committing fornication with his father's wife. This was not only forbidden by the Mosaic law (Levitius 18:8), but even in the unsaved and immoral Greek world parent-child incest was universally abhorred. It was one of those few crimes that all cultures agreed were terrible. Relations with stepmothers were treated like relations with mothers and were considered to be incestuous. This particular case was not some hidden sin, but it was common knowledge in the church, and probably in the community as well.

While this gross immorality was a terrible transgression, perhaps the greater sin is that the church stood by and allowed it to take place. In fact, according to verse 2, they were very proud of the fact that they were tolerant of this type of behavior. They should have found this activity to be shocking and abhorrent, and immediately taken action to either stop it or remove the perpetrator from their church, but they did not. Unfortunately, today we find that many Christians are no longer shocked by sin. They invite into their homes movies and television shows that contain all sorts of immorality and cursing and are completely unfazed by it. It gets to the point where they don't even notice it. And if someone should dare to admonish them for it they often call that person a Pharisee or a Legalist and say that they will do what they please. We need to get back to seeing sin as being offensive to God and dealing with it appropriately in our own lives, and if need be, in the lives of others.

Paul says that the church members should have been grieved over this sin. They knew better, for Paul says in verse 9,

"I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators."

"Discipline is not inconsistent with love. It is the lack of discipline, in fact, that is inconsistent with love. The Lord disciplines his children because He loves them (Hebrews 12:6), and we will discipline our brothers and sisters in the Lord if we truly love Him and truly love them."

Paul uses his apostolic authority to tell the Corinthians what they need to do. They must remove this man from the church. In Matthew 18:15-17 Jesus spelled out how the church should handle the discipline of its members. Tomorrow we will look at that in more detail. But for today, we need to consider these questions: how tolerant have we become of sin in the lives of others, and how tolerant have we become of sin in our own lives?