1 Corinthians 5:1–2

1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 5

The Necessity of Church Discipline. 1 Cor. 5, 1–13.

A case of incest: V. 1. It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. V. 2. And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.

The apostle here opens a new section of his letter, in which he treats of some questions of social morals.

The matter of party strife in Corinth had been reported to him by certain witnesses, but the monstrous case of which he now briefly treats is notorious, is a common scandal, is being bandied about wherever the name of Corinth is mentioned: Actually, fornication is heard of among you. It was not a question of vague report, but it was a confirmed, undoubted fact, generally, everywhere spoken of and recounted with horror. For it was a form of fornication, of sexual impurity, which was unknown even among the Gentiles, namely, that a man should have his stepmother as his wife. Compare Deuteronomy 22, 30. This was a degree of relationship which was prohibited everywhere, even the heathen respecting the reverence due to the wife of the father, aside from all laws of nature.

But the guilty member of the Corinthian congregation, like so many carnal Christians since his days, probably thought that Christian liberty consisted in doing as he pleased and thus changed liberty into license. That was the situation, that was the abomination of foulness found in the midst of the Corinthian congregation.

It causes the apostle to ask: And you are puffed up? Under these circumstances it is still possible for some of your members to brag and boast and to act as though you were beyond instruction? With one accord they should have humiliated themselves on account of this unheard-of scandal, instead of fostering party spirit.

And not rather have you mourned, broken out in grief, with the result that he who perpetrated this deed should be removed from your midst? They were so busily engaged with their imaginary intellectual brilliance, with their false religious enthusiasm, that they took no time to investigate the injury which was being done to their congregation by this standing offense of their fellow-member. They probably shrugged their shoulders and decided to ignore the disagreeable matter, believing, with many Christians of our days, that the matter was really not of much consequence; they did not consider the incest in their midst an insult to the Church of Christ, a desecration of the temple of God.

It was an unfortunate incident, but entirely the man's own business!

Paul, however, impresses upon them the consciousness of responsibility, that they cannot permit such a defilement to go on; they must be stirred up to action. For the sinner must either discontinue his public scandal, or he must be put out of their midst; he can no longer be considered a member of the congregation.

Note: The matter of church discipline is sadly neglected in many parts of the Church. But congregations and individual members must never forget: If love for their neighbor's immortal soul will not induce them to make all efforts in his behalf, even to expulsion from their midst, then the reverence for the name which they bear, and which they dare not dishonor with impunity, should influence them seriously to take up the matter of proper church discipline.