1 Corinthians 5

Notes on the verses

Chap. V. Ver. 1—13. The necessity of excluding from the church incestuous persons, and all heinous offenders.—The term here used for fornication is of extensive import, and sometimes includes adultery, and every species of uncleanness; but this species of fornication was of a nature so aggravated, as not to be named, even among the heathen, but with reprobation. It is astonishing, therefore, that it should be tolerated for a moment in a Christian church. The apostle directs them how to proceed in order to exclude the offending member from their * communion. This he calls delivering him over to Satan, who reigns as god of this world, and claims a dominion in the hearts of all those who apostatize from Christ.

This is said to be “for the punishment of the flesh,” probably by some severe illness; it being evident that the apostles, and Paul in particular, had such power, as in the case of Hymeneus and Alexander, ((1 Timothy 1:20),) and gives us reason to hope that, thence, rather to take such freedom with himself, and his most particular and intimate friend, than with others.”—Doddridge.—Above that which is written.—Namely, as servants and stewards, ver. 1. Compare (1 Corinthians 3:7). Ver. 8. I 2could—Ox “wish;” the word ‘‘God’’ is not in the Greek. Doddridge’s paraphrase of this verse gives, we think, its true sense—“Ye are full; ye are rich;’’ you enjoy so great a degree of prosperity and plenty, that ye ‘have even reigned as kings without us:”

so happy in a variety of secular enjoyments, that you have hardly missed my company. And, indeed, “I wish you did reign,” in the truest and noblest sense, and were altogether as happy as you think yourselves. See (Revelation 1:6). Chap. V. Ver. 1. Not so much as named among the Gentiles.—Cicero, indeed, calls it an incredible and unheard of wickedness.—Doddridge.—His father’s wife—i.e. his step-mother, or mother-in-law, his father being living; otherwise she would have been his father’s widow. Ver. 3. Present in spirit.—Some suppose this to refer to the exercise of some miraculous power; but Dr. P. Smith says, “I perceive no evidence of any thing, more than that exercise of the imagination in cases strongly interesting to us; which is no uncommon form of speech in all languages, to denote an ideal presence.” See (Colossians 2:5). Ver. 4, Power of our Lord—i.e. miraculous power. Do ye not know that the saints * shall judge after all, the party might be saved—“Yet so as by (or through) fire.” See (1 Corinthians 3:15). The apostle first writes to the Corinthians not to keep company with fornicators; yet, considering that this licentious city was full of such characters, he farther explains himself, as not meaning that they might not do business with them; he only cautions them, not to form intimacies with them; and this applies particularly to the case of Christian brethren, who had been guilty of such enormities, in whom the crime was far more aggravated: much less should they allow such to communicate with them in the Christian Passover, the Supper of our Lord.

And we cannot help observing here, that covetous persons, and extortioners, and railers, are ranked in the same class with fornicators, idolaters, and drunkards! Alas, how would a rigid attention to this rule thin some of our popular Chap. VI. Ver. 1—20. Against going to law with the brethren before heathen judges. All believers members of Christ’s myste[ries]. Ver. 7. Purge out…. the old leaven—i.e. the leaven of hypocrisy. See (Luke 12:1). Ver. 9. I wrote unto you in an epistle.—From this, some have inferred that St. Paul had written an Epistle to the Corinthians before this; and we are by no means sure that we have all the writings of the apostles, more than of the prophets. Others, however, so render this verse, and verse 11, as to apply them to the present letter.

‘‘I write (or have written) to you [in this epistle] not to [keep] company,”’ &c. So Hammond, Whitby, Dr. Edwards, Claude, Lardner, Macknight, Boothroyd, &c. Ver. 10. Not altogether—i.e. not in the civil concerns of life. Ver. 12. For what have I to do to judge them also that are without?—That is, “confine these remarks to those who are within the church, because I have no right to judge them that are without”—God judgeth them.—Do not ye judge? &c.—The connexion is here obscure, unless we allow ourselves to supply the adversative particle, but, before it, as thus: ‘I have no right to { do not ye yourselves judge them that are f | judge those, that are without; but ¢ within? If so, surely I (Paul) may.”

Chap. VI. Ver. 1. Dare any of you, &c.—“Josephus saith that the Romans (who were now masters of Corinth) permitted the Jews who resided in foreign countries to decide private affairs, Nader ey capital was in question, among themselves; and from hence Dr. Lardner argues the justice of this rebuke of St. Paul, as there is no doubt but the Christians might have had the same privilege, as they were looked upon as a Jewish sect. But, separate from that, they might certainly, by mutual compact, have chosen their brethren as referees” (a way of arbitration.)—Doddridge. It is observable, that the Greek church have such a dread of the Turkish magistracy, that they take the advice of St. Paul, and generally refer their disputes among themselves to the decision of their own prelates.—Hughes’ Travels in Sicily.

Ver. 3. We shall judge angels—i.e. fallen angels, as the text is generally understood: but if it must be taken literally, the term judge must be used with great latitude, though not with greater, perhaps, than when applied to the Judgment of mankind. It may refer only to the plaudit of the redeemed. Ver. 4. If then ye have judgments.—Doddridge, * controversies”’—matters which call for judgment. Set them.—Doddridge; “‘Do ye set them?” Rather, perhaps, Why do ye set them? &c.—Who are least esteemed.—Doddridge, ‘‘of no esteem,” or not esteemed; i.e. the heathen, ‘The sense is, If you have disputes among yourselves concerning worldly matters, why do you refer them to the judgment of the heathen?

(Or the apostle perhaps meant that the meanest person in the church were competent to decide the causes which they brought before the heathen magistrates.)—Bagster. Ver. 7. Why do ye not rather take—(Doddridge, ‘‘endure’’)—wrong? Ver. 9. Nor adulterers.—If there are any persons in the community who are unfaithful in the conjugal relation, and who are accustomed to “drink stolen waters as sweeter than their own;” these are usually much delighted to hear that there is no hell, and that “‘adulterers’ shall ‘inherit the kingdom of God.”’—Nor effeminate.—The original term is much stronger than the translation, and refers to certain men dressed in women’s apparel, for the use of the next class, “abusers of themselves with mankind,”

both which were allowed in the heathen temples, and Corinth was so infamous for its voluptuousness, that Asian says, it was thereby totally ruined. Orient. Lit. No. 1473. Ver. 11. Ye are sanctified. We have here an instance, as Dr. Whitby remarks, of the figure called hyperbaton, by which, the words are transposed from their plain grammatical order; for we ‘are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus,” and “sanctified by the Spirit of our God,” as in Phil. 5. J—Bagster. Ver. 18. Every sin.—Doddridge, “every [other] sin.” All and every are often used for many and most. Xenophon represents Socrates as saying, that ‘intemperate men hurt themselves far more than others; whereas other sinners secure some profit to themselves, though they are injurious to others,”