Saturday, May 12, 2018

1Corinthians 5:1-6 comments: one bad apples spoils the bunch


5:1 ¶  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?

Paul has criticized the Corinthians for following celebrity rather than Christ and for being full of themselves, bloated with their own self-importance and self-righteousness. Now, he is going at them for permitting open sin in the congregation. There are several points that need to be made here.

In the Old Testament writings of Moses, to uncover someone’s nakedness implied a sexual act or even an assault as we view it today.

Leviticus 18:6  None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD.

This incestuous relationship was forbidden as under the culture a man’s wife’s body was as his own.

Leviticus 18:8  The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father’s nakedness.

Notice how Paul relates the ownership of a wife or a husband.

1Corinthians 7:1 ¶  Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2  Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. 3  Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. 4  The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5  Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency. 6  But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment. 7  For I would
that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. 8  I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 9  But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.

We will discuss that passage more later but it is clear under Christian doctrine that the husband and wife make an offering of their bodies to each other and should not deny their bodies to each other. Someone in the Corinthian church has committed an egregious sin here, probably we imagine, with his step-mother although we cannot rule out an even more abominable sin.

The Latin word incestum from which we get the word incest was any act that violated religious purity in the pagan Roman world. Incestuous unions were frowned upon in the Roman world as acts against the gods and man, according to some authors. Perhaps Paul is referring to a fact that a man having relations with his father’s wife fell into those categories and was considered wrong even to the pagans, the Gentiles.

Like a modern church the Corinthians were so high on their spirituality and sense of self-righteousness that this sin in the congregation was being accommodated in a perverted kind of Christian liberty. There was someone in the congregation openly committing a sin that was even condemned in the pagan world. This was not to be tolerated.

Paul says that even though he is not there that he has judged the situation and now he calls for some severe church discipline.

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.

There is a similar sentiment expressed in Paul’s first letter to Timothy.

1Timothy 1:20  Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Remember that Satan is the god of this world. This was not the consumer church of today where if you got caught in adultery you could just get in your car and drive to a church in the next town where they might not know you. The Christian community was close-knit then and people knew each other. To exclude a member from this community tossed them back into a world of paganism, emperor-worship, and fear of the power and influence of demonic so-called gods.

For a true believer to be ejected from the church body would be devastating. In college I was taught about an African tribe, the name of which I do not remember, that exiled members for serious crimes. The tribal member typically could not survive outside of the protection and care of the community and exile was often a death sentence. For this Corinthian, if he was truly a Christian, and we all know that Christians are capable physically, in their flesh, of committing any sin an unbeliever commits, it would have been a heart-breaking event to be castaway, delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

We know from the book of Job that God can give Satan sometimes authority over violent weather and the actions of wicked men, that he has power over death as per Hebrews 2:14, and that Satan is the god of this world system. Unfortunately, today the church offers little more than a social club so it is no big deal to leave one to go to another since there is little real spiritual power in it.

Paul, in this passage, finishes off with noting that it only takes a little corruption to pollute all or, as we say, ‘one bad apple spoils the bunch.’ Solomon wrote in;

Ecclesiastes 10:1  Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour.

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