A Church Freed for Holiness (1 Corinthians 5)
Incest,
adultery
sexual immorality,
greed,
idolatry,
slander,
drunkenness,
theft,
lawsuits between Christians,
frequenting prostitutes
This is what awaits us in the next three weeks.
With just one question:
Do we know who we are?
Do we know who we are?
Do we understand our identity?
When someone asks you, "What is your church?", what do you say?
An evangelical Protestant community?
People who share a tradition?
A family?
A group of friends?
Perhaps you have never asked yourself this question.
But it's crucial.
Our identity always guides our behaviour.
During the Six Nations Championship or the World Cup, some people change their shirts, their schedules, their moods... why?
Because of their identity.
(After yesterday's results, my mood has changed too! Forza Italia!)
Our identity always guides our behaviour.
And that is exactly the problem in Corinth.
In the new section of 1 Corinthians that we are beginning, chapters 5 and 6, we see a Church that tolerates things it should never tolerate —and Paul keeps coming back to the same question:
Do you know who you are?
1 Cor 5:6: "Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are unleavened." We will see what this means. Let us just note the question: do you know who you are?
1 Cor 6:2 "Do you not know that the saints—that is, Christians—will judge the world?"
1 Corinthians 6:3 “Do you not know that we will judge angels?”
1 Corinthians 6:15 "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
1 Corinthians 6:19 “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.”
Do you see the logic?
Our identity always guides our behaviour.
***
This morning, we're going to talk about the connection between our identity, sin, and what we call church discipline.
The word itself may sound boring.
"Discipline"
Many of you here participate in summer camps for teenagers. We always start by explaining the rules of discipline.
Not many young people say at the end of camp, "You know what my favourite part was? The discipline briefing!"
And yet—it's vital.
If we understand our identity correctly, we will see that the health of the Church,
the credibility of our mission,
and the reputation of Jesus are at stake.
Before going any further, two things.
First, our supreme pastor is Jesus Christ. He cares for us by teaching us. He teaches us through all of his word, the Bible, even the passages we would rather avoid. So let's keep our noses in the text.
Second, we are going to talk about sexuality, among other things. We do so as sexual sinners saved by grace. Preachers included.
We are not here to preach! I need to hear this passage as much as anyone else.
***
This morning, we are going to look at this:
We are the people whom God has liberated for holiness.
And so... a people called to purify themselves from the remnants of their former slavery.
Let us read together 1 Corinthians 5.
It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and immorality of a kind that is not even mentioned among unbelievers—so much so that one of you has taken his father's wife. And you are proud! Should you not rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? As for me, absent in body but present in spirit, I have already judged the perpetrator of such an act as if I were present. When you gather in the name of [our] Lord Jesus[-Christ]—I will be with you in spirit—with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the sinful nature, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.
You really have nothing to be proud of! Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean in an absolute sense the people of this world who are sexually immoral or are always greedy for more, thieves, idolaters; otherwise, you would have to leave the world. In fact, what I wrote to you was not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself your brother, lives in sexual immorality, is always eager to possess more, is an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a thief, not even to eat with such a man. Is it for me to judge those outside? Is it not those within that you are to judge? God will judge those outside. Drive the wicked out from among you.
We will not start at the beginning of the passage but in the middle this morning.
Verses 6 to 8 give the reason for the other instructions that are given.
First point:
1. We are no longer of the same mould – what a liberation!
Since God has saved us from sin, let us throw away all its rotten remnants!
Our daughters love to bake cakes.
One day, we opened the packet of flour... disaster.
There are worms in it.
"This is rubbish! We can't make snacks anymore!"
So we rush to the supermarket, buy more flour, and throw away the old one. "We're saved! Chocolate fondant!"
Now imagine someone saying: "It's a shame to throw away the old flour... We've already eaten it and we didn't die... Come on, let's get some back out of the bin... for the taste! More protein..."
(Come and have afternoon tea at our house whenever you like!)
No one does that! That's exactly what Paul says to the Corinthians
Verse 1 - He has learned that there is immorality among them that even non-believers do not tolerate: a man is sleeping with his father's wife.
And Paul replies: Don't you understand that Jesus came to save you from this?
To show them why they cannot tolerate this, he takes them back to the Old Testament.
Verse 6
"You really have nothing to be proud of! Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purify yourselves [therefore] from the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, since you are unleavened.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed [for us]. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
Paul compares our salvation to the liberation from Egypt in the book of Exodus.
The Pharaoh refused to let Israel go; God sent plagues; the last one was the death of the firstborn.
To be spared, the Israelites sacrificed a lamb and put its blood on their doors: the death of the lamb took the place of the firstborn.
They had to leave quickly, without letting the bread rise. The only bread they had time to eat was unleavened bread.
At that moment, leaven was incompatible with their liberation and therefore became the life they were leaving behind.
When they later celebrated this liberation, they cleaned their homes to remove all traces of it.
Jewish families still do this today.
Hence verse 7
Purify yourselves [therefore] of the old leaven so that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened.
In other words, God has set you free!
Jesus' sacrifice saved you from his judgement! You are... unleavened. Pure! Free! Saved from judgement! No longer slaves!
This is an objective fact! Are you a Christian?
You have a totally new life and identity!
You are no longer made of the same stuff as before!
In Christian life, the indicative precedes the imperative.
What we are... determines... what we must do.
Not the other way around.
So Paul says: you have a new identity, you are free... get rid of all the rotten remnants of your former slavery!
What remnants?
Verse 8 - Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
The problem with the Corinthians is that they have too narrow a view of salvation.
For them, it's like personal development... a new philosophy.
Paul says no.
It is God's dramatic intervention to free a people.
A new life.
A new identity.
True freedom.
And the special flavour of our new dough, our new identity, is not perfection —
It is... repentance!
The effort to live in accordance with our status as liberated people.
We too can have too narrow a view of salvation.
For example, by confusing grace with something that superficially resembles it but has nothing to do with it... complacency. Tolerating evil.
'I know I'm doing wrong, but God forgives and accepts us as we are.'
That's true. God forgives and accepts us as we are. Thank you, Lord!
If you are here this morning because you have questions about God, God wants to meet you as you are.
He is not waiting for you to reach a certain level of holiness.
Come as you are!
But... his salvation is too great to leave us as we are!
He did not say to the Israelites: if you want, take your chains with you!
He does not say to us, "If you want, continue to eat infested flour!"
He says that all that is in the past!
Get rid of the remnants of your slavery.
This may be the message that some need to hear this morning.
Perhaps you attend church as spectators; intrigued but unwilling to embrace the change God wants to make.
God does not want us to be spectators of his salvation. He wants us to be participants!
If that scares you, rest assured! This salvation does not lead to a new slavery, but to purity, truth, freedom, and life.
We are no longer made of the same stuff – what a liberation!
***
It is because we have this new identity that Paul asks us to draw all the consequences from it.
Sometimes this means taking radical measures, not only individually but also as a Church.
2. We are no longer of the same mould – the need for separation
The second thing to understand is that as a redeemed community, we must be prepared to sometimes exclude from the church, out of love, those who persist in sin.
Let us return to verse 1
It is widely reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and immorality of a kind that is not even mentioned among unbelievers, to the extent that one of you has taken his father's wife. 2 And you are proud! You ought rather to have been filled with grief, so that the one who has done this deed might be removed from among you. 3 For I, though not present in body, am present in spirit, and I have already judged the one who has done this deed, as though I were present. 4 When you gather in the name of [our] Lord Jesus[-Christ]—I will be with you in spirit—with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ 5 deliver such a man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.
Let us acknowledge this from the outset: talking about exclusion is painful to hear.
To say that sometimes someone must be excluded from the Church—or, as Paul says, delivered over to Satan—does not seem very loving to us.
We live in a society where tolerance is a supreme value:
"We can tolerate everything except intolerance!"
And yet... there are situations where exclusion is the most loving thing to do.
We do not accuse a doctor of lacking love when he quarantines a contagious patient—to treat him and to protect others.
By tolerating in the Church this man who sleeps with his mother-in-law,
the Corinthians did not act out of love but out of pride.
Perhaps they boasted about being so open-minded.
Perhaps they just didn't see what was wrong with it.
But for Paul, the question was not whether what this man was doing was right or wrong.
Even the pagans of Corinth knew it was inexcusable.
Paul's target is the Church:
Why did you do nothing?
You think you are spiritual — your inaction proves otherwise.
You should weep.
***
Let's be clear: Paul is not saying that this man should be excluded because he sinned.
We all sin.
Nor is it someone who was struggling with sin without having overcome it.
We all struggle.
Paul does not even say that this man should be excluded because his sin was particularly serious.
He had to be excluded because he was someone who was clearly living in sin without wanting to come out of it. Without repentance.
In verse 11, he says: "What I have written to you is not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself your brother, lives in sexual immorality."
This sin characterises him. He indulges in it instead of putting a stop to it.
He is like an Israelite who remains in Egypt instead of seizing his salvation.
This passage made me think about how to practise church discipline at Connexion.
Here is a very important principle.
Connexion Church will never exclude someone we believe to be a true Christian.
Where it becomes necessary is when someone persists in sin in a way that contradicts their profession of faith.
The mark of genuine conversion is repentance.
Exclusion is always a last resort.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus describes the steps:
First, one-on-one, we approach the person. "Dear friend, I care about you. I believe the Bible requires you to stop doing this."
Then with one or two others,
then involving the rest of the Church,
and only if they still refuse to repent... exclusion.
At each stage, the goal is repentance, involving as few people as possible.
Exclusion—removal from the membership list, prohibition from partaking of the Lord's Supper—is the last resort.
And note: Paul is speaking to the whole church.
The holiness of the assembly is everyone's business.
If you are a member, it is as much your concern as it is the elders'.
The covenant of membership that you have agreed to says so.
If you'll pardon the pun, we are all invited to lend a hand in promoting the holiness of God's people.
Perhaps this seems harsh to us.
But when the Church comes to the conclusion that someone must be excluded from the congregation—which is extremely rare; in ten years of pastoral ministry, I have never seen it, thank God—
When it comes to this conclusion, it acts first...
Out of love for the unrepentant sinner who refuses to change.
Verse 5
“Hand such a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus.”
To hand someone over to Satan is to stop considering him a member of God's family.
It means no longer considering them a Christian.
And it is the loving thing to do!
If someone has a terminal illness, it is not loving to say that they are healed.
Love is telling them that they still need treatment.
We must not give false assurance. If someone persists in sin in a way that invalidates their profession of faith because there is no repentance, they must understand that they are in danger.
The goal is the "destruction of the sinful nature."
This is a way of saying that, after several warnings, we allow the person to go to the end of their sin, to the end of their slavery, so that they realise that it is horrible, that they are heading towards death and that they need a saviour.
What does this mean in practice?
In verse 11, Paul says not even to eat with such a person.
I am not convinced that this means cutting off all social contact.
Jesus says to treat him like a pagan or a tax collector.
How did Jesus treat pagans and tax collectors? With love and compassion... offering them forgiveness... but without giving the false impression that they were part of God's people until they repented.
It is up to us to think about the types of activities, synonymous with fellowship, that we could no longer do with such a person.
What form would the relationship take?
***
This approach works!
In 2 Corinthians, Paul speaks of a man who was disciplined by the church, perhaps the same one in this passage, who repented and was restored as a brother.
We act out of love for the unrepentant sinner.
We also act...
Out of love for the church
Verse 6 again
You really have nothing to be proud of! Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
My children love baking. Our interns are good at baking.
It's not my area of expertise. That's why Debs, Dahlia, Eva and Silvain, I'll leave the baking to you.
One thing I do know is that sachets of yeast are small, and you only need to add a tiny pinch to make the whole cake rise.
Paul knew this too. A tiny bit of leaven is enough to affect the whole dough, the whole church.
Tolerating serious sin risks contaminating the whole Church.
If we allow someone to persist in sin, even though God is calling them to change, we are sending the message that it is okay. It is not.
God cares too much about his people to let them sink because complacency has replaced repentance.
I have never been on a leadership team that has asked for someone to be excluded from the church.
I have had to ask someone to step down from a position of responsibility because of serious sins.
It's not a pleasant thing to do. There's no joy in it.
It had to be done.
God loves his people too much to let them return to slavery.
We act out of love for the church and...
Out of love for the world.
Verse 9:
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean in an absolute sense the people of this world who are sexually immoral or are always greedy for more, thieves, idolaters; otherwise, you would have to leave the world. In fact, what I wrote to you was not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself your brother, lives in sexual immorality, is always greedy for more, is an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a thief—not even to eat with such a man. For what business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Is it not those within that you should judge? God will judge those outside. Drive the wicked out from among you.
Church discipline does not mean sectarian ghetto.
We are the pure ones! Outsiders, yuck! We want nothing to do with them.
Perhaps this was the attitude of the Corinthians.
We must seek the opposite!
The Church must be in the world, but not of the world.
We are like the crew of a lifeboat sent to rescue people who are drowning.
To succeed in our mission, the boat must be in the sea.
The sea must not be in the boat.
If the captain discovers someone opening the portholes to let water in and sink the boat, that person must be removed from the crew. It is a matter of life and death for the crew and for those who need to be saved.
This is what Paul says about the church.
That there are people in mortal danger because of their sin outside the church is our world.
That is why God sent a Saviour!
This should inspire in us not moralistic judgement, but compassion.
We have received salvation by pure grace to share it.
The problem is when the church itself does not take its own salvation seriously.
We are saved for the beautiful and good life of freedom and joy that can only be found in God!
The church is therefore of no benefit to the world if outsiders say, "They are just like us."
Then we are just a club for early risers on Sundays!
The world needs a church that truly lives out its salvation, that seeks holiness...
...and so strange as it may seem, the world needs a church that enforces discipline.
So that it is clear that true salvation from God is salvation from sin... for... freedom and holiness.
A true liberation that cannot be found anywhere else!
***
So, becoming a moralising ghetto could be dangerous for us.
We stay among Christians.
We do everything together.
We despise those who do not share our faith.
God calls us, on the contrary, to be open to the world, in contact with our contemporaries, serious about our salvation, and therefore serious about holiness.
That doesn't mean we want a culture of policing at Connexion. Always looking for faults in our neighbours.
God forbid!
No, the first thing I must do, if I care about the church, is look in the mirror.
How am I doing?
Do I have a beam to remove from my own eye?
Only then can I humbly approach my brother and say, "I think you have a little splinter to remove." It happens to me too.
God wants us to have the humility to examine ourselves, and also to listen to the brother or sister who, out of love, points out something we need to correct.
________
So... do we know who we are?
It is easy to have a much too small view of who we are as a church.
A Sunday morning club
A tradition
A place where we feel comfortable
A group of friends – great if Connection is your group of friends.
But it's much, much more than that!
The Church is the people whom God has rescued from slavery through the blood of His Son.
The Church is the community of liberated people
The Church is the people saved for holiness and for a mission
of rescue in a world that is perishing
No other group has such an identity!
Not our sports club
Not the alumni of polytechnic or ENA, No one!
We are the people saved for holiness...
and to show the world that true freedom exists.
There is nothing on earth that God cherishes more... than you! His church.
Let us cherish it too?
When the Church takes its identity seriously, it becomes beautiful and attractive.
A Church where we repent,
where we rise again,
where grace truly transforms lives
where we take our salvation seriously
that is what the world needs to see.
Since we are already purified, already liberated, already God's people, let us live as we are.
It is a privilege
It is a blessing
It is also... a responsibility