1 Corinthians 5:3

Chapter 5 turns from the divisions and pride Paul has addressed in chapters 1 to 4 to a single grave sin. He has already told the Corinthians that they are God’s temple, and that the temple of God is holy (1 Corinthians 3:16–17). Now he brings that truth to bear on a man in their own fellowship, and his instructions run on to the end of the chapter (1 Corinthians 5:6–13).

“It is reported commonly” tells us the matter was out in the open. The word behind “commonly”, hólōs, stresses that this was a widely known fact in Corinth, something people talked about openly. The sin is porneía, “fornication”, the broad word for every kind of sexual immorality, from prostitution to adultery, and here incest. It covers any sexual relationship outside the marriage of a man and a woman, and Paul uses it twice in one sentence.

Corinth was a wealthy, busy port city in Greece, full of trade and of temples, and known for its immorality. It had a temple of Aphrodite where sacred prostitution was practised, and “to Corinthianize” became a byword for sexual sin. The church there, made up of Jewish and Gentile converts, lived in the middle of all this. Yet Paul says this sin “is not so much as named among the Gentiles.” The word éthnos means a nation or people, and in an extended sense the Gentiles, the nations outside Israel. Pagan society had its own vices, and it still held this one in horror. Roman law forbade it, and common custom condemned it. So the church, called to be set apart for Christ, was putting up with what the pagan city around it would not, and the disgrace fell on the name of Christ among unbelievers.

“And ye are puffed up.” The verb physióō means to inflate, and figuratively to make proud. Paul comes back to it again and again in this letter. He warns that none of them be “puffed up for one against another” (1 Corinthians 4:6), and he says that “knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). The picture is of something swollen, large on the outside and empty within. Their pride may have come from a sense of spiritual superiority, as if their freedom in Christ or their gifts let them tolerate what others condemned, or they may simply have been too proud to admit that anything was wrong. Either way, the pride kept them from seeing how serious the sin was.

What they should have done is mourn. The verb penthéō means to grieve, mourn or wail, the word for sorrow at a death or a great loss. Paul expected the church to grieve over a sin that offended God, defiled their fellowship and put the man himself in danger. Humble sorrow over sin is the mark of a mature church, and their pride showed how immature they still were.

That mourning was to lead somewhere: “that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.” The verb exaírō means to lift up, lift off or remove, a general word for removal of many kinds, and in this chapter it is applied to putting a wicked man out of the church. The whole church is responsible here. Sin among its members is the business of all of them, and the failure to act was a failure of the whole fellowship. Paul goes on to explain why with the picture of leaven, which spreads through the whole lump, and with Christ our passover, sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:6–8).

Paul is far from Corinth, and he gives his verdict anyway: “For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already.” The verb krínō means to distinguish, to decide in the mind or as a judge, and by implication to try or condemn. Paul puts it in the perfect tense, kekrika, a decision completed and still standing, and he adds ḗdē, “already”, a word of time meaning now, by this time, ahead of the church’s meeting. His mind is made up, and the church’s task is to carry out the judgment he has reached. “I verily” makes it personal. Paul himself, as an apostle, stands behind this verdict. It concerns “him that hath so done this deed”, the one man and the sin the church had allowed to go on.

Paul’s authority came from Christ, who is “the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18) and to whom the Father “hath committed all judgment” (John 5:22). Paul uses the same authority when he warns this church in his second letter that if he comes again he will not spare (2 Corinthians 13:2–3), and he says the Lord gave it to him for building them up (2 Corinthians 10:8).

Verse 4 tells how the judgment is to be carried out. The whole church is to meet, “when ye are gathered together.” The early church gathered, often in homes, for worship, teaching and decisions made together, and an act this solemn belonged to the whole assembly. The church is one body, where what touches one member touches all (1 Corinthians 12).

They meet “in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The word ónoma, “name”, carries a person’s authority and character. To act in his name is to act by his authority and as his representatives, with his backing, as Peter healed the lame man with the words “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). Paul’s spirit is with them, joining his apostolic verdict to their action. And they act “with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The word dýnamis means force or power, often miraculous power, and here it is Christ’s own power that makes the church’s act effective. Christ is named twice in the verse, because the authority and the power are both his.

Jesus gave his church this authority when he spoke of binding and loosing, and promised to be in the midst where two or three are gathered in his name (Matthew 18:18–20). He has “all power ... in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18), he is head over all things to the church, which is his body (Ephesians 1:22–23), and he is with his people always (Matthew 28:20) by the Comforter, the Spirit who abides with them (John 14:16–17). So when a church gathers in obedience to his word and acts on a matter like this, its decision carries his weight. That makes the act a solemn and humble one, done for the health of the body and the good of the sinner, with no room for anger or a personal grudge.

Verse 5 says what the gathered church is to do: “To deliver such an one unto Satan.” The verb paradídōmi means to surrender, yield up, entrust or hand over, and here it is a formal act, done with authority. The man is to be put out of the church. Israel too knew the duty of putting what defiled out of the camp, and the young church needed clear boundaries for who belonged to it and how its members lived.

Jesus himself set out the steps of discipline: telling a brother his fault alone, then with one or two witnesses, then before the church, and if he will not hear the church, treating him “as an heathen man and a publican” (Matthew 18:15–17). Paul calls those who are spiritual to restore a brother overtaken in a fault, in the spirit of meekness (Galatians 6:1). In every one of these places the purpose of discipline is to bring the sinner back.

In his second letter Paul tells the Corinthians that the punishment the many had inflicted on a certain man was sufficient, and that they should now forgive and comfort him, lest he be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow, and confirm their love toward him (2 Corinthians 2:5–11). Whether that is the man of this chapter is uncertain, but the instruction shows the end Paul has in view whenever the church disciplines: repentance, forgiveness and a welcome home. Hebrews says the same of God’s own chastening: “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Hebrews 12:11). Christ came to call sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32), and the church’s discipline follows him in that.

Every part of this passage rests on who Christ is. He “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), and his church, his body, is called to share his holiness. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and Paul calls him “our passover” a few verses later. He bore the penalty for sins as grave as this one, so forgiveness and a changed life are open even to this man. Christ “gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works” (Titus 2:14). He loved the church and gave himself for it, “that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27). A church that shrugs at open sin hides that purpose from the world.

The saving of the spirit is the heart of Christ’s own mission, since God sent his Son “that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). He was manifested to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), our old man was crucified with him to set us free from serving sin (Romans 6:6), and God means his people to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29). The day of the Lord Jesus, which verse 5 looks toward, is the day when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10–11).

These verses show us a God who cares too much for his people to leave them in their sin. He wants his church holy, because it is his temple and the body of his Son, and he wants the sinner saved, so the same act that guards the church reaches out to the man who is put out of it. The church grieves where the world would shrug or boast, and it acts in the name and with the power of the Lord Jesus, who is present with it. Even the hardest words in the passage, “deliver such an one unto Satan”, end on the hope “that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” God’s discipline, in the church as in our own lives, is aimed at that day, and his grace is large enough for a man whose sin shocked the pagans.