1 Corinthians 5

The Text

Word has reached Paul that a man in the Corinthian church is sleeping with his father's wife, and the congregation is not embarrassed by it; they are proud of themselves. Paul renders a verdict from a distance: when the church gathers in the name of Jesus, this man is to be handed over to Satan, so that in the end he may be saved. Then Paul shifts to bread imagery: a little yeast spoils the whole batch, so clean the house, because Christ our Passover lamb has already been slaughtered. Finally he clarifies an earlier misunderstanding: he never told them to withdraw from the world, only from a brother who lives like this.

The Core

Everything in this chapter hangs on one sentence that sounds almost out of place in a disciplinary case: "For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place." Paul does not ground church discipline in morality, reputation, or the need for order. He grounds it in an accomplished sacrifice. The church is not asked to make itself clean so that God will accept it; the church is told what it already is, "even as you are unleavened," and asked to live consistently with that. Holiness here is not a ladder but a status, and the status has consequences. A community that belongs to a slaughtered lamb cannot keep on cheerfully as though nothing was slaughtered.

The Common Thread

Paul is reading the church through Exodus 12. On the night of the first Passover, the blood went on the doorposts and the bread had no time to rise; for seven days afterward every crumb of leaven had to be searched out of the house. Israel's freedom was not something they achieved, it was something a lamb's death gave them, and their unleavened bread was the daily shape of a rescue already accomplished. Paul takes that whole pattern and says: the lamb has been slaughtered, once, definitively, and it was Christ. That means the church is not waiting for its exodus; it is living in the week after. The removal of leaven is therefore not a bid for God's favor but housekeeping in a house that has already been spared.

The Mirror

Notice what Paul actually attacks first. Not the man's sin, but the congregation's mood: "You are arrogant, and didn't mourn instead." There is a way of being relaxed about wrongdoing that feels like maturity and is actually pride, a quiet satisfaction that we are the sort of people who do not make a fuss. And there is an opposite pride, the sort that makes a fuss loudly and enjoys it. Paul offers neither. He offers grief. When someone in your small group is destroying a marriage, or the treasurer's accounts do not add up, or your brother-in-law drinks himself out of his family, the first Christian response is not indignation or tolerance. It is mourning, because a lamb died for that person.

Context

Corinth was a rebuilt Roman port city, brash with new money, full of migrants, cults and social climbing. The church met in houses, which meant that hospitality and the shared meal were the visible boundary of the community; who ate with whom was public information about status and belonging. The specific sin, a man with "his father's wife," meaning his stepmother, was scandalous even under Roman law, which is why Paul can say it "is not even named among the Gentiles." Very likely the man was wealthy, and his patronage bought silence. Paul's instruction, "Don't even eat with such a person," strikes precisely at the social machinery that was protecting him.

The Question

"Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh." That is a brutal sentence, and no gentle paraphrase makes it soft. Paul seems to mean: put him outside the sheltering life of the community and let him experience what the world he has chosen actually does to a person, in the hope that ruin will do what warnings could not. The purpose is stated plainly, "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus," but the means are frightening, and Paul offers no guarantee it will work. We should admit what we cannot control here. This is not a technique. It is a wager on grace, made by people who have to keep loving someone they can no longer eat with.

The Detail

"Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump." The verbs are worth slowing down over. Purging is something the church does; being a new lump is something the church is given. And in the middle of the sentence Paul says they already are unleavened. He is describing a Jewish household on the eve of Passover, sweeping crumbs from behind the cupboard, not to become a Passover family but because it is one. That is the logic of the whole chapter, and the logic of the gospel: the indicative comes first, the imperative follows, and the imperative is never a way of earning the indicative. Discipline done in any other order becomes cruelty.

Reflection

Where in your church, or your own life, has tolerance become a form of self-congratulation rather than love?

What would it look like to grieve over someone's sin before you decide what to do about it?

Go deeper in 1 Corinthians

Hand picked books that unpack this Bible book further.

The Message of 1 Corinthians

David Prior

Church problems, cross shaped answers: Corinth feels very modern.

View the book →

Paul For Everyone: 1 Corinthians

N.T. Wright

Wright's readable guide through love, gifts and resurrection.

View the book →

1 Corinthians: An Introduction and Commentary

Leon Morris

A trusted Tyndale commentary: compact, careful and clear on every passage.

View the book →

1 Corinthians

Craig Blomberg

Explains what it meant then, and bridges it honestly to life now.

View the book →

As an Amazon Associate, Faith.network earns from qualifying purchases. This helps keep the platform free.