1 Corinthians 5
About 1 CorinthiansWritten by AI
First Corinthians is a letter from Paul to a church he planted in Corinth, a busy, wealthy and diverse port city in Greece. Paul wrote it from Ephesus, around AD 54 or 55, and few doubt that it is his. It answers bad news he had heard and questions the church sent him in a letter of their own.
The church was gifted but divided. Members lined up behind favorite leaders, took each other to court, argued over sex, marriage and food offered to idols, and turned worship and the Lord's Supper into occasions for showing off. Paul takes the issues one at a time, often starting with "Now about."
Watch how every answer comes back to the cross and to love. Chapter 13 is the heart of the letter, and chapter 15, on the resurrection, is its great climax: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”
Before you read 1 Corinthians 5Written by AI
A man in the church is living with his father's wife, and the church is proud instead of grieving. Paul tells them to remove him from their fellowship, hoping it will lead to his rescue. He clarifies that he means judging sin inside the church, not withdrawing from everyone outside it.
Immorality Rebuked
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this?
Although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth.
Expel the Immoral Brother
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.
What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”