Letters to the Churches

And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this?

Although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present.

When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus,

hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?

Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth.

I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.

I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.

But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?

God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

If any of you has a grievance against another, how dare he go to law before the unrighteous instead of before the saints!

Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases?

Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!

So if you need to settle everyday matters, do you appoint as judges those of no standing in the church?

I say this to your shame. Is there really no one among you wise enough to arbitrate between his brothers?

Instead, one brother goes to law against another, and this in front of unbelievers!

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means that you are thoroughly defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, even against your own brothers!

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,

nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

“Everything is permissible for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me,” but I will not be mastered by anything.

“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food,” but God will destroy them both. The body is not intended for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.