1 Corinthians 5: Dealing With Sin in the Church
Paul addresses unchecked sexual sin and calls the church to discipline it.
After warning in 1 Corinthians 4 that he would come with correction, Paul confronts a specific case the Corinthians have tolerated: a man living with his father's wife. He instructs the church to hand the man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may yet be saved.
On all hands, there is reported to be among you—fornication, and such fornication as this—which, not among the nations, [is found],—as that one should have, his father’s wife:—
And, ye, have become puffed up, and have not rather mourned, in order that he might be removed out of your midst, who, this deed, hath wrought.
For, I, indeed,—being absent in the body, but present in the spirit, have already judged, as present, him who, thus, this thing hath perpetrated:—
In the name of our Lord Jesus, ye being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
To deliver such a one as this, unto Satan, for the destruction of the flesh,—that, the spirit, may be saved in the day of the Lord.
Unseemly, is your boast! Know ye not that, a little leaven, doth leaven, the whole of the lump?
Purge ye out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump,—even as ye are unleavened; for, our passover, hath even been sacrificed—Christ:
So then, let us be keeping the feast, not with old leaven, nor with leaven of baseness and wickedness,—but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote unto you in my letter—not to be mixing yourselves up with fornicators;—
Not at all, [meaning] the fornicators of this world, or the covetous and extortioners, or idolaters,—else had ye been obliged, in that case, to go out of the world!
But, now, I have written unto you not to be mixing yourselves up,—if anyone named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such a one as this, not so much, as to be eating together,
For what have I to do to be judging them who are without? Do, ye, not judge, them who are within,
Whereas, them who are without, God, judgeth? Remove ye the wicked man from among, yourselves.