1 Corinthians 5
Butler17. We have the history of the apostle Paul stated fully and circumstantially in the Acts, and then we have thirteen letters of the same apostle, purporting to have been written during the period covered by the history. If, therefore, the history and the letters are both genuine, we should expect to find the same general character ascribed to the apostle in the history that is indicated by his letters; we should expect to find in the letters numerous minute and undesigned references, such as could not be counterfeited, to the facts stated in the history. And all this we do find. The character of Paul was strongly marked, and no one can doubt whether the Epistles ascribed to him were written by such a man as he is described in the history to have been. How different are the characters of Paul, of Peter, and of John, and yet how perfectly do the writings ascribed to each correspond with his character! M. H.
1. Ir is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is 2 not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. And ye 3 are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be 4 taken away from among you. For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have 5 judged already, as though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in 6 the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the 7 power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the 8 flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. 9 Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old 10 leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is 11 sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven 12 of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote 13 unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolators; for then must 14 ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if 15 any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a jailer, or 16 a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat. For what have I to do to 17 judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? but them that are 18 without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
1. Ancient vices still infected the Christian converts. They carried into the Church the savor of their old life, for the wine-skin will long retain the flavor with which it has been once imbued. We find from these Epistles that gross immorality still existed, and was even considered a thing to boast of. We find their old philosophy still coloring their Christianity, for, on the foundation of the Oriental idea that the body was the source of all sin, they denied a future resurrection. We find the insolence of wealth at the Lord’s Supper. We find spiritual gifts abused by being exhibited for the sake of ostentation.
2. It is a mistake to suppose that punishment is only to reform and warn. It is an expression on earth of God’s indignation in heaven against sin. He who has done wrong has identified himself with wrong, and so far is an object of indignation. In our own day we are accustomed to use strange, weak words concerning sin and crime: we say, when a man does wrong, that he has mistaken the way to happiness, and that if a correct notion of real happiness could be given to men, crime would cease. We look on sin as residing, not in a guilty will, but in a mistaken understanding. Thus the Corinthians in Paul’s days looked at it, and felt no indignation. They had some soft, feeble way of talking about it. They called it “mental disease,” “error,”
“mistake of judgment,” “irresistible passion,” or I know not what.
In Scripture we read of two principal objects of punishment, viz., as an expression of righteous indignation and the reformation of the offender—his amelioration; and here the merciful character of Christianity comes forth. A third ground is the contagious character of evil. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” Worldly minds, irreverent minds, licentious minds leaven society. You can not be long with persons who by innuendo, double meaning, or lax language show an acquaintance with evil, without feeling in some degree assimilated to them, nor can you easily retain enthusiasm for right among those who detract and scoff at goodness. F. W. R.
5. Church discipline is primarily a process of self-purification in the Church, designed for the restoration and maintenance of her essential attribute of holiness. But it necessarily has reference also to the good of the offender on whom it is exercised. And here appears its evangelical element; since even in its strongest form, the anathema, it has in view not punishment but correction, the reclaiming of the soul, to which the temporal punishment is intended to serve only as a means. This is what the apostle intends by delivering a backslider “unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” In this much-mistaken passage, as in the book of Job and 2 Cor. 12: 7, Satan is conceived as a servant of God in the wider sense, as a being to whom power is committed to send upon men certain bodily chastisements and afflictions, but under the oversight and for the ends of Providence. So in the case before us, Paul expected that God, by means of the prince of darkness, would bring upon the excommunicated fornicator at Corinth some heavy trial, or sudden calamity, but that this punishment might arrest the sinful course of the unfortunate man, drive him to repentance, and result in his salvation in the day of the second coming of Christ. P. S.— There are cases occurring in almost every Church of Christ in which no means avail; applications, advice, prayers, have no permanent favorable effect. The difficulty is found to be unimproved by delay month after month; the Church is exposed to weakness and reproach; and the only hope is in the excision of that member from the body. Not that the body hates that member; not that its removal is not a calamity; but that the general health and salvation require it. R. T.