Paul is in this chapter dealing with another issue this congregation has a problem with.
It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife.
This is probably not his mother, but more of a step-mother, or a woman his father married after he was grown up.
You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst.
They had not recognized the evil of this kind of immorality, but were congratulating themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness.
For I, on my part, though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present.
Paul considered himself an elder in this church, and as such, had already evaluated the situation and come to a determination.
In the Name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord Jesus.
As the leaders convene this church council, they are to disassociate with this person and treat him as an outsider, not welcome in the intimate life of the church. Kicking him out like this could have resulted in his physical death with the removal of the support the church provided. But if he was saved, then he would still be redeemed in the Day of the Lord.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?
Here Paul is using the figure of leaven representing sin. When you are making bread, you put a little yeast into a whole batch of dough, usually enough to make several loaves of bread. Then you let it rise, and that little bit of yeast leavens the whole batch. That's how sin can infect a whole congregation.
Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
They are to consider themselves to be what they are, the unleavened lump of dough that will not rise at all. Paul brings in the Feast of the Passover, that required all leavening agents to be put out of their houses completely during the whole week of the celebration. Now we have Jesus, the Lamb of God, who was sacrificed for us, as our Passover Lamb. He died once for all, so we don't ever again need to offer an animal as a blood sacrifice on an altar. That means we are still in the time of the Passover Feast.
Therefore let us celebrate the Feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
So we need to live our lives without the sinfulness of worldly attitudes; instead embracing openness and transparency with one another, according to what is actual about each of us according to the Truth.
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;
Paul had written a first letter to these Corinthians that has been lost. But we do have it's contents and meaning here in this letter.
I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the World.
If we cut ourselves off from associating with our neighbors and co-workers who aren't Christians, then how can we witness to them, or show them God's love? This is not making them our best friends.
But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler--not even to eat with such a one.
If someone claims to be a Christian and live an immoral life, then he is probably either trying to deceive you or is lying to himself. Because God's children cannot persist in an immoral life-style because God will either bring them back to His righteousness or take them home, out of our picture.
They were not to treat this immoral person as a respected member of their church.
For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?
But those who are outside, God judges.
Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. (Deuteronomy 13:5; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21--The same verse repeated 5 times.)Paul quotes a verse that was repeated five times in the Second Giving of the Law. God loves His people so much that He will go to extreme measures to insure that they follow Him in His ways, not the damaging and unhealthy ways of the World or the pagans that surrounded them.
When I was in Bible College and taking an Old Testament Survey class, I read through the whole Old Testament for the first time. I remember reading through Deuteronomy and being struck so hard by how much God Loved His people!
They were to use Capital Punishment against individuals who refused to accept God's ways, so that they would not influence others to also go astray.
God wants us to know Him, to understand His ways, and to live our lives according to how He designed this Earth to work. When we build our World on it within the parameters of His ways, then things work for us.
Even when people who don't know or acknowledge God have discovered some of His ways, and done according to them in this World, they have reaped a bountiful amount of prosperity. Because that's how He designed it to work.
How much better for us to actually know the God who made our Earthly home, and live according to His ways that He designed it! We can also enjoy it's bounty, and share it with others, to also gain eternal rewards!
But we cannot tolerate as one of ourselves someone who does not honor God or live according to His Love, and let that evil one influence others to turn away from God. Even if it means removing support that sustains his life.
This person could have died. But we find out in Paul's II Corinthians that he had repented and turned his life around, so they were to take him back. So he didn't die, we have a "happy ending." Their obedience to Paul's injunction actually saved this man's life.
God works like that. When it looks really bleak, that's when God's Light shines. And we are His lights in the World. Light shines brightest in the darkest night.
O my Father, You are so great! You are so good! Your Love for us is so unimaginable to our puny brains, but the evidence of it is undeniable.
O Father, please teach us, teach me, how to love others as You have Loved each one of us! Show us how we can have compassion and mercy on others, even as we take stringent methods to preserve our spiritual health.
Father, strengthen us to trust Your strength in our weakness, to do all the things You have determined we are to do, each moment of each day. Both the things we enjoy doing, and the things we do in obedience to Your ways, knowing that every task, every job, every doing that we do, according to Your will, will bring us eternal rewards.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
