Letters to the Churches

And you stay proud? Shouldn’t you rather have felt some sadness that would have led you to remove from your company the man who has done this thing?

For I myself, even though I am absent physically, am with you spiritually; and I have already judged the man who has done this as if I were present.

In the name of the Lord Yeshua, when you are assembled, with me present spiritually and the power of our Lord Yeshua among us,

hand over such a person to the Adversary for his old nature to be destroyed, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord.

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know the saying, “It takes only a little hametz to leaven a whole batch of dough?”

Get rid of the old hametz, so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are unleavened. For our Pesach lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed.

So let us celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz, the hametz of wickedness and evil, but with the matzah of purity and truth.

In my earlier letter I wrote you not to associate with people who engage in sexual immorality.

I didn’t mean the sexually immoral people outside your community, or the greedy, or the thieves or the idol-worshippers — for then you would have to leave the world altogether!

No, what I wrote you was not to associate with anyone who is supposedly a brother but who also engages in sexual immorality, is greedy, worships idols, is abusive, gets drunk or steals. With such a person you shouldn’t even eat!

For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders? Isn’t it those who are part of the community that you should be judging?

God will judge those who are outside. Just expel the evildoer from among yourselves.

How dare one of you with a complaint against another go to court before pagan judges and not before God’s people?

Don’t you know that God’s people are going to judge the universe? If you are going to judge the universe, are you incompetent to judge these minor matters?

Don’t you know that we will judge angels, not to mention affairs of everyday life?

So if you require judgments about matters of everyday life, why do you put them in front of men who have no standing in the Messianic Community?

I say, shame on you! Can it be that there isn’t one person among you wise enough to be able to settle a dispute between brothers?

Instead, a brother brings a lawsuit against another brother, and that before unbelievers!

Actually, if you are bringing lawsuits against each other, it is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?

Instead, you yourselves wrong and cheat; and you do it to your own brothers!

Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality,

who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who assail people with contemptuous language, who rob — none of them will share in the Kingdom of God.

Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.

You say, “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but as far as I am concerned, I am not going to let anything gain control over me.

“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”? Maybe, but God will put an end to both of them. Anyhow, the body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.