Evicting Wickedness

If you would take your Bibles
and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. I first began to feel the effects
of my more energetic youth when I was about 40 years old. It
was only then that the toll of the injuries that I had sustained
from both sport and recreation Together, just with the wear
and tear of life, began to reveal themselves. Those old injuries,
of course, manifested themselves with aches and stiffness. Within 10 years, my right shoulder,
in particular, became so weak and painful that even reaching
for a cup on an upper shelf became too much for me to bear. I eventually
had surgery to repair it, and when the doctor explained the
surgery afterwards, he said that my tendon was almost completely
torn. A tendon. That narrow, fibrous
little tissue that attaches muscle to bone. It’s about the diameter
of a pencil. And yet it had rendered the use
of my right arm and really me almost completely useless. I
couldn’t lift, I couldn’t carry, I couldn’t pull, I couldn’t throw. And so it should
serve as quite a graphic illustration for us this morning. when we
learn that the great reformer John Calvin referred to church
discipline as the sinews of the body of Christ. In other words,
tendons. Church discipline is as the tendons
for the body of Christ. Without these tendons or sinews,
Christ’s church, the body of Christ, cannot function. just
as I could not even do so simple a task as to reach for a coffee
cup on a shelf. You see, if we at once acknowledge
that holiness is our God-ordained standard and that sanctification is the
process by which we progress toward that holiness, We must
also acknowledge that there must be a procedure, something in place when one of
God’s children ceases his or her pursuit of that holiness. As with a child and the necessity
of the application of a loving father’s discipline, So the church
must also lovingly apply ecclesiastical chastisement, church discipline,
when it’s needed and appropriate. If the church refuses such discipline,
her right arm becomes withered, and she cannot function as she
was designed to be. And it gets worse, because the
tolerance for sin spreads. And the church begins to falter
and die. She is not what God designed
her to be. As we glide into chapter five,
we find that the failure to apply necessary discipline is just
another of Paul’s many concerns for this Corinthian church. He
has only just introduced the idea of church discipline at
the end of chapter four. Remember this? There, he pointedly
inquired of this troubled church, what do you desire? Should I
come to you with a rod, verse 21, or with love and a spirit
of gentleness? What do you want? The rod there,
as we saw, is a symbolic reference to church discipline. Paul wasn’t
actually bringing a stick on his visit to Corinth. He’s referencing
that common metaphor for parental discipline that we find in Proverbs,
Proverbs 13, 24. He who withholds his rod hates
his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently. Proverbs
22, 15, the rod of discipline will remove foolishness from
a child. Proverbs 29 15 the rod and reproof
give wisdom but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his
mother. Paul is not coming with a stick
a literal rod to Corinth. He’s speaking metaphor metaphorically
there of church discipline. Church discipline is not pleasant
for anyone not the recipients not those who must deliver it.
nor for the rest of the entire church. It’s not pleasant, but
it’s necessary. Just like parenting in the administration
of chastisement, it is a painful process for all. But after softer appeals have
failed, church discipline serves the purpose of urgently calling
sinners to repentance and back to the path of righteousness.
And so church discipline really is for the sake of the offender,
but it is also designed to maintain the purity of the church. And
ultimately church discipline is for the glory of God. Well,
Paul may well have had to bring the proverbial rod because his
beloved church plant is ignoring one of the ugliest, vilest, and
most troubling sin situations ever mentioned in scripture.
Very few were worse than this. So, whereas Paul mentions church
discipline in chapter four, here in chapter five, he unfolds church
disciplines in one of the clearest, passages on the subject in all
the Bible. If you would, I’ll be reading
beginning in verse one, if you would follow along. It is actually reported that
there is immorality among you and immorality of such a kind
as does not even exist among the Gentiles, that someone has
his father’s wife. you have become arrogant and
have not mourned instead so that the one who has done this deed
would be removed from your midst. For I, on my part, though absent
in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has
so committed this, as though I were present. In the name of
our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled and I with you in spirit
with the power of our Lord Jesus, have decided to deliver such
a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your boasting is
not good. Do you not know that a little
leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven
so that you may be a new lump, just as you are, in fact, unleavened. For Christ, our Passover, has
been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the
feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Pardon me. I wrote you in my
letter not to associate with immoral people. I did not at
all mean with the immoral people of this world or with the covetous
and swindlers or with idolaters for then you would have to go
out of this world. But I actually wrote you not to associate with
any so-called brother if he is an immoral person or covetous
or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler not
even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging
outsiders. Do you not judge those who are
within the church. But those who are outside God
judges. Remove the wicked man from among
yourselves. Paul’s inclination to come to
Corinth with the rod of discipline is not merely to deal with this
wretched offender we’ll talk about this morning, this young
man whose dating life must be addressed, but really the entire
church stands in need of corrective discipline. They had mishandled
this horribly. So that the probing question
of chapter four, shall I come to you with a rod, provides a
natural segue into chapter five, a chapter focused almost entirely
on immorality and the church. Two things that are hard to speak
of in the same sentence. Evidently the Christians in Corinth
stood back and watched this disgusting affair unfold. Not only had their
pride led to factiousness, fighting, grouping, but worse yet, in their
arrogance, they are engaged, even presently, in self-congratulation
about how accepting they are of a diverse lifestyle. They
were spiraling out of control in their tolerance for gross
inconsistencies. At one end of the spectrum, they
were zeroed in on these trivial differences. Whose outline was
better in the preachers? Who used better illustrations?
All the while ignoring a major moral transgression in their
midst. So, although they should have
dealt with this sin issue decisively, they had not. And this too must
be addressed even prior to Paul’s in-person visit. And so here
in chapter five, Paul begins what amounts to a treatise on
church discipline, what I’ve entitled Evicting Wickedness,
where Paul will issue forth his arguments for purging sin from
the church. Let’s begin by looking down,
if you would, at verse 1, evicting wickedness. And the first argument
we have from Paul for purging sin from the church is the cause
for church discipline. The cause for church discipline,
we find it in verse 1. It is actually reported that
there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind
as does not exist even among the Gentiles. that someone has
his father’s wife. We can hear the shock and disgust
in Paul’s words when he says it is actually reported. This
is commonly known. We don’t know exactly how Paul
came to hear this particular report. Perhaps it came neatly
packaged with the rest of the news provided him from Chloe’s
people. Or perhaps it was even Stephanus,
the fellow worker in the gospel that Paul mentions in chapter
16. I would even say that it’s quite possible, and I would suggest
to you even likely, that the source for this particular piece
of information came from Apollos himself. Perhaps a disgusted
shepherd bewildered at what he was even supposed to do next.
We don’t know from whom it came. We only know that it was a common
report. Everybody was saying this. But of those four opening words,
the one that sticks out is the word actually. That’s the word
that reveals Paul’s astonishment and dismay. This is actually
taking place among you. We might say it this way, I can’t
believe my ears. Of all the possible sins, I’ve
actually received report of this vile transgression. Now in discussing
this, we’re going to have to be delicate. But this is one
of the most disgusting offenses ever mentioned in the Bible.
Paul refers to it generally as immorality, pornea, from which
we get our word pornography. It simply referred to sexual
sin very generally, translated most often as fornication or
immorality. And he points out that this sin
was among them. It was in the Corinthian church. He brought this sinful liaison
into the place of fellowship and worship. And it was a well-known
fact. Everyone knew it. And therein
lay the problem. They all knew about it and nobody
did anything about it. Paul quickly proceeds to isolate
this particular case. This is not a case of some run-of-the-mill
adultery. That would be bad enough. No,
this particular incident involves something that would have even
stunned the heathen world. Paul details that this particular
kind of immorality, that it does not even exist among the Gentiles. Even the godless didn’t practice
this sin. There, Paul basically gives a
backhanded compliment to the heathen world. As bad and as
profligate and as immoral as the godless were, Not even they
engaged in this kind of immorality. Not even they do this. That’s
the sound of disgust in Paul’s lines here. What would Corinthian
Christianity have meant to the ungodly society in which they
lived? Nothing. Why would they need
Christianity if people lived like that? Glance at it, if you
would, the end of verse one, where he specifies the sin that
someone has his father’s wife. Absolutely shocking. And the
account is vague as to details. We don’t know if the man’s father,
the woman’s husband, is dead or alive. We don’t know. And
we don’t know the status of the marriage. Were they separated?
Were they divorced? We don’t know. Most likely, the
father was still alive, adding to Paul’s disgust, and the two
were known as an item in the church, perhaps living together,
but it was public knowledge, at least, that they were having
an affair. It’s at least possible that they
were married. There were some commentators that seize upon
the word has. He has his father’s wife as proof
of a marriage. Well, it’s possible. The word
is used, that little verb is used to speak of essentially
the bonds of marriage. Matthew records that when John
the Baptist, remember this? When John the Baptist confronted
Herod about his own liaison with his brother’s wife, He said,
it is not lawful for you to have her. Later on in this same epistle,
Paul says that each man is to have his own wife. Each woman
is to have her own husband. So the word is used to speak
of marriage, that a man has a wife. But Jesus himself also used this
verb to refer to adulterous relationships outside of marriage. Remember
John 4, the woman at the well? You have had five husbands, and
even the one whom you now have is not your husband. Further, that word has, not had. could be used simply to indicate
the ongoing nature of this relationship. That it was not just a fling,
this was an ongoing affair. That alone is sort of detail
enough, but let’s be very clear here. Even the language that Paul chooses
here indicates that this was not his own mother. That’s a small consolation. But
that’s about all we know for sure. It was his father’s wife.
It’s a Hebraism to speak of a man’s second or subsequent wife. And this would render her as
the sinful man’s stepmother. The relationship of this sort
was absolutely forbidden among the Jews as Leviticus 18.8 shows. There I’ll have you read it on
your own. The uncovering there is used euphemistically of an
illicit affair. Absolutely forbidden. And it
was forbidden by Roman law, even though that culture readily accepted
almost any other form of immorality. And there’s one last ugly detail
I need to point out about this union. The woman herself is obviously
not a Christian. Otherwise, Paul would have rebuked
her as well, right? The situation gets worse and
worse the more we look at it. He’s having an affair, at least,
with an unbelieving woman who was or is married to his own
father. Does it get any worse than that? Most often, the sin in your brother
or sister’s life is not going to reach the ugly depths of this
man’s sin. But that is never an excuse to
ignore it or play it down. Whether that sin is putting down
roots in our own lives or those of our fellow believers’
lives, we are to make every effort to uproot it. As Paul warned, the Ephesians
do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead
even expose them. Remember the words of Richard
Baxter? I’ve shared it several times. He said, pretend not to
love them if you hate not their sin and seek not their salvation. If your brother or sister is
in sin, the most loving thing that you can do is go to him
and appeal to him to repent of his sin and to return to Christ. To ignore a brother’s sin is
to put him in peril. We’re placed in communion with
one another for the very purpose of holding one another accountable. You see, even with all this that
Paul has discussed and with obvious distaste and shame, there is
a matter that is even more grievous to Paul’s heart. It was the fact
that the Corinthian church had not confronted this evil. Instead,
they embraced it under the banner of toleration. And this is what
he addresses in verse two. And so as we begin to see Paul’s
plan for evicting wickedness, purging sin from the church,
we not only see the cause for discipline, we see the neglect
of discipline. Look at verse two. You have become
arrogant, have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done
this deed would be removed from your midst. Do we grasp this
abrupt transition? if you can even call it a transition.
Paul is in the very midst of discussing this horrible transgression,
and he pivots suddenly to confront the very ones that were enabling
such behavior, the Corinthian church itself. And as Paul has
already attributed their factiousness to pride, what he creatively
refers to as being puffed up, arrogant, He says that same arrogance
also led to another sin, the sin of toleration, even the promotion
of wickedness. This low moral lapse should have
stunned and humbled this church, and it didn’t. Perhaps they didn’t
champion this man’s behavior. Maybe they didn’t cheer it on.
But they were too busy infighting to pay attention to the horrific
offense unfolding in their very midst. At the first report of such evil,
they should have mourned. Should have mourned that someone
in their church could be engaged in such behavior. That word mourned
means exactly what we think it means. To mourn as over someone
who had died. They should have cried out in
shame. Oh, brothers, look at this. We can’t have this in our
midst. And beyond just mourning, they
ought to have confronted this sin and if need be, even removed
the one who had done this deed from their midst. Their mourning
over the wretchedness of this sin should have led them to address
it. And here Paul circles back to the subject of church discipline.
But this time he circles back to discipline so as to address
its neglect by this arrogant church. This was appalling news. And it didn’t even seem to faze
the Corinthians. No big deal. After all, who am
I to judge? Remember, that is the universal
backdoor escape from responsibility. It’s the coward’s escape route
from dealing with sin, whether it’s your brother’s or your own.
I’ve said this before, having pastored in small town churches,
they’re often in small areas, develops this attitude of Christianity
by lowest common denominator. You don’t touch my sin and I
won’t touch yours. Such was the Corinthian church.
Last year, and it even continues, doesn’t it? Last year we saw
the entire world respond in the extreme to an earthly sickness. Masks, distancing, shots, all
of it. Well, a church’s response to
sin ought to make that response look feeble. This is eternally
deadly, guaranteed deadly. Church discipline, again, is
for the sake of the offender, the purity of the church, the
glory of God. We cannot soften Paul’s directive
here at all. Paul says that such an unrepentant
sinner must be removed from your midst. He cannot be allowed to
commune with the saints, not while he lives like the world.
Do we realize that the very nature of communion, partaking of the
blood and the cup and the Do we realize that the very nature
of communion means a commonness with those with whom we commune?
So that if someone comes in and is a murderer and we know it,
we share in his crime. Such a person cannot be allowed
to remain in the church. He must be removed. Here’s how
one pastor stated it. Excommunication can only have
its full effect when it is felt to proceed from the outraged
corporate conscience of the church. It’s the entire body of Christ
that says, you cannot live like that. In other words, it’s a
church action, not just a leadership action. We devastate the efforts
to reconcile a brother to Christ when we disregard the discipline
of the church. When we maintain a brotherly
friendship with such a sinner. Some months ago, in another context,
I shared with you the words of Puritan William Ames on this
subject. He said regarding church discipline,
an obstinate sinner cannot be separated from the faithful unless
the faithful be separated from him. And this produces a salutary sense
of shame. He lost his brothers and sisters
in Christ. They treat him like an unbeliever
now. And he goes on, he says, those
who are lawfully excommunicated are to be avoided by all communicants,
all members of the church. This refers not only to moral
and other necessary duties, but to those aspects of social conduct,
which presuppose acceptance and inward familiarity. Kind of a
friendly engagement with this individual. And then he lists
it out. Speech, prayer, farewell, entertainments,
table are all denied. You cannot just hang out with
somebody who’s been disciplined from the church or you undermine
the efforts to reconcile him to Christ. But because the Corinthians had
not applied this tough love in this particular situation, because
they had not exercised discipline to correct the man and purify
their church, Paul must. If they won’t do it, Paul must.
And we see the exercise of discipline beginning in verse three. And
so, as we’re looking at evicting wickedness, these arguments for
purging the sin from the church, not only the cause for discipline
and the neglect of discipline, but here third, and finally,
the exercise of discipline. This is what it looks like. For
I, on my part, though absent in body, but present in spirit,
have already judged him who has committed this, as though I were
present. In the name of our Lord Jesus,
when you are assembled and I with you in spirit with the power
of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan
for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved
in the day of the Lord Jesus. This was a shame. The situation
at Corinth, the church there had not done right. They had
not dealt righteously and decisively with sin in their midst. And
so Paul must. And even as he begins, the contrast
between him and this church is glaring. And so he says, I on
my part, even if I have to stand alone. I’m going to deal with
this dreadful situation. His efforts here pertain to the
man. He will deal with the church in the subsequent verses, beginning
in verse six and on. But first, the sinful man. And
Paul declares that he doesn’t even need to be present there
in Corinth to handle this. He will be there, he says, in
spirit. He’s very much one with this church that he planted.
And he doesn’t need a trial in order to reach a verdict. There
is no case here of flying off the handle or providing a knee
jerk reaction to the situation. Paul is not being flippant or
hasty here at all. The report was well documented. The situation was well known
to a great many people. And because of that, Paul has
already judged him. This provides another great contrast
between this shepherd and his arrogant flock. They were living
with this situation. He is prepared to deal with it. And what follows in verses four
and five reads like an exceedingly solemn sentence. Look, if you
would, at verse four. In the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ. It doesn’t get any more solemn
than that. Paul elicits a mood of utter solemnity here. This action, he says, which we’re
about to take is in the name of, that is, by the authority
of the Lord Jesus. There is here no ordinary church
business meeting. where we’re gonna vote on the
curtains or the carpet. This meeting occurs under the
most extreme seriousness. We can easily picture a fearful
hush over the entire congregation. And he continues with what might
be considered a parenthetical remark in the remainder of verse
four. If that opening line in the name of our Lord Jesus sets
the mood. The parenthetical thought here
establishes the occasion. When are you gonna feel this
way? Here, when you are assembled. And when I am with you in spirit. Not only operating with Christ’s
authority, but with his power as well. Paul essentially calls
a church meeting here. The act of discipline is to be
the action of the entire church body, not just the leaders, not
just Paul. And the suspense, the tension
builds, doesn’t it? Look at that sentence again.
In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you’re assembled, I am with
you in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus. Yes, Paul,
go on. Now the meeting has been called
and it is by the authority and power of Jesus Christ that he
now pronounces his judgment. And these words, the entirety
of verse four are deliberately written here to allow the tension
to build. And suddenly in verse five, Paul
declares the alarming sentence. I have decided to deliver such
a one to Satan. What? To any believer’s ears,
this has to be the most awful sounding statement ever uttered. But in Matthew 18, where Christ
is explaining the same church discipline process, ultimately
Jesus himself says something very similar. that if the sinner refuses to
listen to those who come to him, pleading for him to repent, Jesus
says, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax gatherer. Put him out. Treat him like an unbeliever.
He’s no longer part of the church. The very thought of it ought
to be to be handed over back into the nasty clutches of the
evil one himself? It’s a horrific thought, it ought
to be. But this can refer to nothing
else but church excommunication. The thought is this, follow with
me. The church is God’s institution
in the world. It is that institution that he
loves and favors because Christ died for her. And as such, God
promises to bless and protect her. And so the church is this
place of blessing and comfort and discipleship and fellowship
and love and purity. But just outside the church.
Is the world. hell on earth. The world belongs to the devil
for now. He is the prince of the power
of the air, Ephesians 2. He is the God of this age, 2
Corinthians 4, 4. He is the one who lies, pardon
me, there is the world where the whole world lies in the power
of the evil one, 1 John 5, 19. There he prowls around like a
roaring lion seeking someone to devour, 1 Peter 5, 8. There
he aims his flaming arrows. Ephesians 6, 16, there he condemns
and reproaches and casts into prison. There he deceives and
tempts and thwarts and schemes and accuses and defrauds and
entraps and oppresses and lies and murders and harasses and
abuses. There he steals, kills and destroys. This is the same one from whom
we’re delivered when we’re saved. The father, Colossians 1 through
13 says, rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred
us into the kingdom of his beloved son. When we, by God’s grace,
turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to
God, Acts 26. And having come into the church.
This place of peace, safety, and brotherly care and righteousness.
Who would want to go back out there? Do you know that when a police
officer is convicted of a crime, they do not put him into the
regular prison? Because the prisoners would kill
him in an instant. What do you think the devil would
do to a professing Christian who comes back into his domain. But that’s what Paul says. A professing Christian who practices
unrepentant evil and effectively thumbs his nose at the blessed
protection of the church is then exposed to the devil’s malignant
ways. Listen to one pastor’s warning.
Exclusion from the church is far more terrible than exclusion
from any other society. He basically says here, you can
get kicked out of anything, but to be removed from the church,
far worse. For the church is the body of
Christ. To be excluded from the church is to be excluded from
Christ himself. This is a horrific sentence.
But it’s perfectly appropriate given this man’s sin. And I want you to hear this.
It’s a blessing. It’s a blessing. It’s for the
man’s good. Look at the way Paul says it,
it’s for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit might be
saved. It’s for his good. The destruction
of his flesh refers to just that, his flesh and bones, his body,
not his soul, not his spirit. And this can include physical
suffering from sickness, injury, disease, even ultimately death. Think for a moment of Ananias
and Sapphira, about whom we read just two weeks ago. Their lying
ways were judged by God on the spot. My understanding of the statement
in front of us is that this man may well be a Christian. Although
a very woeful example. And so he may be led to repentance
by Satan’s attacks. Satan in that circumstance becomes
the unwitting tool of God to bring about repentance. Or the man may die. But his spirit
would be saved. and he would come face to face
with his Savior in glory. One shepherd described it as
this. The church is a spiritual society,
a spiritual kingdom with definite laws and a definite purpose of
her own, and charged with a definite truth to be taught and handed
on. Her gates stand ever open to all, however ignorant and
sinful. But the wider her welcome, the greater the need for the
careful exercise of discipline over her members. She cannot
fulfill the divine purpose for her if she tolerates either conduct
or teaching, which willfully and persistently sets at naught
the very ends she exists to serve. Would you humble yourself as
you come before the throne of grace? Our merciful God. We remember this place. Well,
this world. Satan’s domain. He had us in
his clutches. He had us doing his bidding. And we were wretched and miserable
without God. But you moved on us and you brought
us into this delightful place, a place of forgiveness and a
place of growth and grace, a place of peace and joy. How could we ever even think
of going back out there? And so we plead with you. Every
single one of us, as we bowed our heads, likely had sins to
confess. The book of Hebrews says that
sin easily entangles us. And how do we know that these
sins in which we’re dabbling right now don’t become something
that we would be willing to die over, that we would be willing
to be cast out back into the world, back into
the evil clutches of the devil himself. Lord, prevent us from
that. Give us the grace as brothers
and sisters to watch out for each other, to call one another
to repentance when needed, to warn others, to plead with others,
to pray for others. Lord, we pity. We pity anyone in our midst this
morning who does not know Christ because that’s where they live. Why wouldn’t they come in here?
Why wouldn’t they put their faith in Christ? Why wouldn’t they
confess their sin? And to be brought into a right
relationship with God, even this morning. God so move in our hearts
and grant the church repentance. and grant us the grace to be
faithful with the shepherding of souls.
We pray all of these things in Jesus name. Amen.