We live in a world that is rather obsessed by sex. The ancient Greek world was rather like that, and especially so at Corinth with its temple to Aphrodite and the hundreds of prostitutes that worked from there.

Here Paul moves on to an issue that probably caused him to make his letter a lot longer than the ones he normally wrote to churches. Paul had heard that there was immorality among the church members.

One of the problems that Christians face on this issue is that we are often seen by so many to be a religion that is against sex full stop. I think it is important that we begin by reminding ourselves of the morality that we do believe in.

When Jesus was asked about sexual morality, he went right back to the beginning. He went back before the Ten Commandments to when God created the human race. It is in Matthew 19 v 4. At the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’

At creation, God said it was not good for man to be alone. So he created woman to be with him. God made men and women for relationship. In fact he made them for lifelong relationship. Jesus says ‘What God has joined together, let no-one separate.’

The Christian belief is that in our human relationships between husband and wife we should reflect the love and loyalty to each other that God has for us. Somewhere else Paul writes ‘Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.’ Sexuality is not something sinful, it is a wonderful gift of God to express love and give joy. Through it we participate in the process of creation by the conception of children. It helps couples to sustain a loving environment into which children will be born and nurtured.

The problem in our world of course, is that we take God’s gifts, but instead of worshipping him in thankfulness, we worship the gift instead. The world does that with the gift of sex. For millions across our world, instead of God being first, instead of letting him direct and inform how life is lived, sex is first. In fact many have made sex their God, sex is the prime motivating factor in their lives. When sex becomes God, devoid of God-given human love, then people become enslaved to sex. Sex then becomes a cause for all sorts of evils. It becomes a cause of jealousy. People lie and kill because of it. It becomes a means of transmitting disease.

That was the reality in ancient Corinth, and it’s the reality in our world today. But God has not given up on his world. He has devised a way for people to be saved from the terrible mess that so many are in. Salvation for the world is through Jesus. In Jesus God has shown people a better way to live. But he has ordained to make that way known through the church. We are here to be an alternative society, to show people a better way.

We have to remember also that marriage is a God given concept, given to mankind from the creation, and so you find that marriage is something that exists in all human cultures across the world. Even in Corinth with all its permissiveness, they had an understanding of marriage, and they had their understanding of what relationships were or were not acceptable.

What was going on in the life of one member of church at Corinth was certainly not acceptable. He was in a sexual relationship with his father’s wife we are told. Some suggest the woman involved could have been his stepmother. It could have been his own mother, and from the way Paul states the abhorrence of his behaviour even by the standards of pagans, it seems most likely to me this man was sleeping with his own mother.

But what was worse than that was that the church was proud of his behaviour. Do you grasp the gravity of that? The gospel had come to Corinth. The church had been founded. Those believers were the body of Christ in that city. They were the ones who were entrusted with God’s message of salvation through repentance towards God, faith in Christ and baptism. They were the ones entrusted by God with the task of showing people a better way, and instead they were proud of the fact that one of their members was behaving worse than their pagan neighbours.

The words of Jesus come to mind when he warns of God’s judgement on those who cause others to stumble or sin. The whole church is guilty, because they just condone and accept this immoral behaviour, rather than showing the people an alternative Christian lifestyle.

Well, what is to be done? Paul is very clear in his instruction. There has to be discipline in the church. People cannot just behave how they want in any area of their life regardless of God’s law, and still expect to belong to the church. The person who has acted in this way has to be disciplined. This will give a clear sign to those around that the church is a people who have accepted God’s call to be holy, to live by his standards.

From what Paul says in verse 5 it is not altogether easy to understand exactly what sort of discipline is envisaged, but some things are clear. Firstly, discipline is to be carried out by the assembled church. It is to be done when they are assembled together. That’s not to say that all church discipline should be public, Jesus taught that if a person sins, we should initially approach them privately, but this was a matter that was now public knowledge. Secondly, it is to be done with God’s authority, when the power of the Lord is present. When a church exercises discipline, it is doing it on God’s authority, not its own authority.

Thirdly, it’s to be done with the intention of restoring the individual to a right relationship with God, that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. Paul tells the church that they should hand this man over to Satan. Perhaps the way to understand that is to remember that Satan is referred to in scripture as the prince of this world. On the other hand, the church is the domain where Jesus is Lord. So to hand over to Satan, means to remove a person from the church which is Christ’s, which places him back in the world which is Satan’s domain. What Paul was saying was that they should expel this man from membership of the church. That is confirmed by v 13 where Paul says ‘Expel the wicked man from among you’.

There is also that difficult phrase where Paul says that the discipline should be imposed ‘so that the sinful nature may be destroyed’. Alan helped me by pointing out Barclays translation of the phrase: ‘Hand this man over who has acted in such a way to Satan until his sinful lusts shall be eliminated from his body.’ Perhaps the best way to understand what Paul meant is to recall the principle of people reaping what they sow, the scriptural idea that sin results in suffering and death. Perhaps what it being taught here is that where a person wilfully persists in sin, then they should be expelled from the church in the hope that when the consequences of their sin work out in their life, what we sometimes call learning the hard way, then they will come to repentance and will be restored to relationship with God.

It is usually helpful after disasters have occurred, to reflect on what actually went wrong. When there’s a disaster we usually hear calls for a public enquiry, some people want it to apportion blame. We are a community who worship the one who took blame upon himself, so we do not need to apportion blame. But we do need to learn and remember the lessons, because the church in the 21^st century in Britain is just as prone to the same mistakes as the Church in Corinth.

At the root of the problem in the church at Corinth was the fact of immaturity. They had not really begun to face up to their responsibilities, they had accepted the blessings of the gospel, but were avoiding the challenges of the teachings of Jesus; they were wanted an easy life.

For one thing they were avoiding the challenge of bearing witness to their faith by cutting themselves off from their neighbours. They had misunderstood Paul when he had told them not to associate with immoral people. What Paul was really saying was that immorality should not be accepted in the church. Christians often make that mistake; they cut themselves off from society. We are not meant to do that. We are meant to be in the world as Jesus was. We are meant to be there so the world can see at close hand that there is a better way to live by following Jesus.

For another thing, they were avoiding the challenge of living disciplined lives. Paul uses the idea of the Jewish Passover to remind them that there is need for repentance in the Christian life. In the bible yeast, is sometimes used to illustrate the way, that sin can spread and spoil or contaminate a community. Every year at Passover the Jews sacrificed the Passover lamb, disposed of all the old yeast in their homes and ate bread without yeast in it.

Paul says to the Corinthians ‘Jesus has died as a sacrifice for our sins; let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast of malice and wickedness, but bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.’ The problem was that the Corinthians had been allowing their surrounding culture to influence their behaviour as Christians.

That is still a temptation for us as individuals, and even as a church. Christ calls us to be a people who are very much involved in our society, but are yet a community that is distinct. Churches are societies of people who have found forgiveness for their past and have found a new direction in life as followers of Jesus. We find direction for our lives from God’s word; we draw strength from a living relationship with God through the Holy Spirit living within us.

Amen.

Return to top of page