Bible Question: 1 Corinthians 5:1-13 what extra insight does this chapter provide about the whole process of church discipline? |
Bible Answer: For context: 1 Cor 5:1 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. 1 Cor 5:2 You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. 1 Cor 5:3 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. 1 Cor 5:4 In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 1 Cor 5:5 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. 1 Cor 5:6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? 1 Cor 5:7 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. 1 Cor 5:8 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. 1 Cor 5:9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; 1 Cor 5:10 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. 1 Cor 5:11 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. 1 Cor 5:12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? 1 Cor 5:13 But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES. We can infer a lot from the OT. Throughout that dispensation, the Lord instructed the Israelite nation to maintain a pure bloodline so as to produce the Son of God. Now there were several exceptions, like Ruth and Rahab but these exceptions were blessed by God to show us demonstrations of His wonderful Love and Grace. But my main point here is back to "mainenance of God's purity" in God's familly regardless of the dispensation. God is the very epitomy of Love, Perfect Justice and above all total separation from anything that represents any semblance of sin. So God wants us, his children to come Home to Him but he must get us transformed to sinless beings. It's a refining process, as described in several places in the NT, Rev 3:18 and others. First God must get us used to the idea of doing without sin in our lives here on earth. Then with His Assistance and Grace, he is able to graduate our beings from this existance to the next, Heaven for an eternity. On the other hand, if we allow sin "to infiltrate the camp" as in the example Achan in the Israelite family, then we endanger the whole group. One of the main jobs of the elders in a congregation of christians is to maintain this purity of God's family as cited in Acts 20:28-30. The procedure for maintaining this kind of discipline is found in Matt 18:15-20. It's a serious job, one that must be approached with much humility and love for that sinful party so he will repent and turn from his wicked ways. Hope this helps and God bless. Rowdy |
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Questions and/or Subjects for NT general Archive 1 | Author | ||
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ewaljaard | ||
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Tan_Flipper | ||
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Rowdy | ||
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ewaljaard | ||
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Salms168 | ||
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Bible Student | ||
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administrator | ||
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cardio | ||
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shaunswoods | ||
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john s | ||
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jjleader | ||
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Msingo |