We live in the “Age of Toleration.” Our society calls on us to tolerate different religions and different sexual practices, different forms of worship and different gender-leadership in worship, different forms of “baptism,” and the list goes on and on. The fact is, though, that you have to rip much of the Bible out of its context to be as open minded as people want to be in our society.
That “open-mindedness” (or, toleration) was afflicting the church of Christ in Corinth as well. Corinth was suffering from arrogance (4:6, 18; 4:2) and boasting (1:29, 31; 3:21; 4:7; 5:6). That arrogance had led them to “examine” (or “judge,” ESV; NKJV) their fellow Christians or criticize them in an unfair, unrighteous way (4:3-4). So, Paul told them to “stop judging” (4:5).
But, not all judging is wrong. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul critiques the Christians for not judging – for being too tolerant of sin. In the Orations of Demosthenes, we find in the first century that a man said, “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children.” Sexual immorality was widely practiced in first-century Corinth and is usually at the top of “vice lists” in the NT (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9-10).
1 Corinthians 5 is the longest NT passage related to “withdrawing fellowship.” Other similar texts are: Matt. 18:15-20; Rom. 16:17-18; 2 Thess. 3:6, 14. Here in our text, Paul will tell the Christians to “withdraw fellowship” four times!
A man in the church was having sexual relations with his father’s wife. The word translated “immorality” is porneia which includes all forms of sexual deviancy. While the Greco-Roman culture practiced every form of sexual deviancy, most everyone rejected the idea of a father and son having relationships with the same woman!
The church was, in fact, boasting in its toleration of immorality! But Paul writes that he, while absent, had already judged the man (5:3). The church needed to do the same. This suggests that Paul’s authority carried through in the written command found in his letter.
The “withdrawal” was to be done publicly in the assembly (5:4), which was the assembly, we learn from chapter 11, where the Lord’s Supper was taken. Withdrawing fellowship is a congregational activity!
Withdrawing fellowship is done so that the man’s “flesh”-ly desires will be destroyed (cf. Col. 3:5) so that his soul will be saved in the day of the Lord. We ought to live every day in the anticipating of the second coming of Christ (cf. 1:8; 3:13; 4:5).
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In 5:6-8, Paul gives an analogy from the Passover Feast. It was instituted in Exodus 12 as the Israelites were getting ready to leave Egypt. Specifically, they were to eat unleavened bread since they would be leaving quickly. When God turned that feast into an annual celebration, the Israelites had to clean out the old leaven from their house before they could celebrate the Passover.
So, here, Paul tells the Christians that they needed to quit boasting of their toleration! They needed to realize that a little influence (leaven) goes a long way! They, themselves, had been cleansed from sin by the sacrifice of Christ, who is our Passover Lamb. Therefore, they needed to keep themselves clean from sin.
So, Paul says they did not need to celebrate the “feast” (perhaps a reference to the Lord’s Supper or, more likely, to the Christian life itself) with the old leaven, with sinful practices like malice and wickedness, but rather in “sincerity and truth” (cf. John 4:24).
Finally, Paul corrects a misunderstanding from a prior letter he had written to them, a letter which God has not saw relevant for us today. That is, we must be in the world but not of the world in order to win the world (cf. John 17:15-16). We don’t withdraw fellowship from the world.
We withdraw fellowship from Christians who refuse to repent of sinful behavior. We don’t judge outsiders. God does. But, we even have to be careful how we judge Christians (see chapter 6). In the last verse, 5:13, Paul quotes from any one of five verses from Deuteronomy (13:5; 17:7, 12; 21:21; 22:21) to require the Christians in Corinth to remove the wicked Christian from their assembly.
To “live cross-culturally,” we must keep sin out of our lives and impenitent sinners out of the church.
Paul Holland
